What does God's coming mean to us?

What does god's coming mean to us?
- And John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness...and he preached, saying, after me comes one who is mightier than I.
  
  During the season of Advent we hear a lot about God's coming into the world, coming into our own lives in fact.
  We hear how he did that in the past when he became the man Jesús Christ.
  How he will do that again in the future when - he will come in glory to judge the living and the dead.
  
  And how he is doing it all the time by coming into our individual lives when we receive him in the sacraments and when we pray for his help.
  
  But what does all this talk about God's coming really mean?
  
  That's a good theological question because it makes sense to ask how God can come anywhere when he is already, and always, present everywhere.
  
  And the truth, the answer, is of course that he can't, not really.
  But we have to talk as though he did come, because it SEEMS to us that he has come to be where he wasn't before.
  When we wake up to his presence in our lives as we had not been aware of it before.
  
  Actually he was there all the time.
  Any change has been not on his part but on ours.
  Because the basic truth about God and us is this:
  
  "in God we live and move and have our being."
  
  It was an ancient pagan poet who said that and St Paul quotes him approvingly when he is speaking to other pagans in Athens.
  
  And for anybody to realize the truth of that saying hasn't really anything to do with being religious.
  
  Because "God is not simply a fact of religión; he is a fact." (Frank Sheed)
  
  "He is a fact," period.
  
  And to see that is not proof of sanctity by simply of sanity.
  
  Why, then, is it so hard for some of us, who are otherwise sane to see that truth at all?
  
  And for the rest of us who do see it, why is it so hard be always aware of it?
  
  So hard to "stay our minds on God" as the Quakers say?
  
  Why do so few of us make it the guiding principie of all that we do and think?
  
  1. For one of them we are not responsible.
  
  Which is that we have been born into and have no choice
  
  but to continué to live in a culture that while there is much good in it still, is also each year
  
  more Godless,
  more immoral,
  more inhumane,
  and less truly civilized
  
  than any other, I think, of which history tells us.
  
  And that isn't just an old man talking.
  Because anybody, young or old, can see how that culture shapes us.
  We are the victims and the dupes of its media:
  
  its TV
  its songs
  its magazines
  its best-sellers.
  
  We can hardly escape them and
  
  only the strongest of us can wholly resist their glamor
  only the wisest can clearly see their evil
  only the holiest remain untouched by them.
  
  And if we don't remember that we are Christians, and if we are taken in by all this Godless propaganda,
  then we are also going to forget the great truth that
  "in God we live and move and have our being."
  
  2. And the other reason we may find it hard to live by that truth is a more personal one and one for which we may be more to blame.
  
  It is that we allow our desires, and our prejudices, and our fears, and our ignorance, and above all our egoism
  
  ( in a word, all our psychological hang-ups)
  
  so to distort our vision that we are in fact living in an unreal world of our own creation rather than in God's real world.
  Or we may do that when, like the old people we live mostly in the world of the past,
  
  or, like some young people, we live largely in the future.
  Again these are unreal worlds that probably never really were or ever will be.
  
  It was on this subject, D.H. Lawrence who was a novelist with little use for religion.
  
  Nevertheless said one good thing when he wrote:
  
  "Few people live on the spot where they are."
  
  And someone else has commented,
  
  "which is equivalent to saying that few people really live" at all.
  
  How then are we to live on the spot where we really are, live in the one and only real world, the world where God already is?
  
  Its an important question because there is something ominously wrong when we live as though we could shut him out of our lives.
  Rather than that we must do what we can to communicate with or, better, surrender ourselves to this God who already dwells in the depths of our souls, and in whom "we live and move and have our being."
  
  Remember, God is very polite, and will never force himself upon us.
  
  But he has gone to great lengths to invite us to come to him.
  He has gone so far as himself to become a man so that we may more easily recognize and relate to him as one of ourselves.
  
  And that man, who is the Lord Jesus, appeals to us:
  
  HERE I STAND, HE SAYS, KNOCKING AT THE DOOR.
  IF ANYONE HEARS ME CALLING AND OPENS FOR ME,
  I WILL ENTER HIS HOUSE,
  AND HAVE SUPPER WITH HIM,
  AND HE WITH ME.
  
  of such an invitation from Jesus, our Holy Father St Benedict says
  
  "What, dear brothers, is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us?"
  
  See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life.
- About the author:
  
  Father Ambrose Wolverton (b.1930 - d.2016) was monk of Portsmouth Abbey, a music teacher, an organist and spiritual guide for many. He did sing a new song to the Lord through his life and works.