Preparing for the birth

Scripture Notebook
Nicholas King SJ
First Sunday of Advent
Jeremiah 33: 14-16 1 Thessalonians 3: 12-4: 2 Luke 21: 25-28. 34-36 THIS SUNDAY we start not only the four weeks of preparation for Christmas, but also the third year in the cycle of gospel readings, and this year it is the gospel of Luke that the Church presents to us.
In the course of the year we shall be getting to know the third evangelist very well indeed, and shall come to see what are his distinctive "trade-marks".
To make it easier to know him, we are today presented with a passage that is for the most part found in Luke's gospel alone, and those who selected the reading have even gone to the trouble of leaving out the Parable of the Fig-Tree, which is found in Matthew and Mark also.
And what kind of evangelist is Luke? In the first place it is his gentleness. that most strikes us; Luke modifies the starkness of Mark's prophecies of the end by inserting the thoroughly biblical expression "When these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand".
This is partly Luke's temperament, of course: see, for an example of his gentleness, how deftly at 23: 46-47 he has toned down the unrelieved grimness of Mark 15: 34-39; but also it reflects the fact that by the time that Luke's gospel came
to be compiled the perspective had lengthened, and the second coming was no longer expected any day now; the Christian movement was no longer a harassed and beleaguered minority urgently requiring a dramatic resolution of their problems.
The Church had by this time acquired a certain selfconfidence, a sense of identity, and was in a position to await the future with a composure based on the knowledge that God is working in history, and cannot be long withstood.
For Luke there is a plan, according to which things are being worked out, the "plan you formed long ago", mentioned in today's preface, and it is on this plan that the Church's optimism is based.
So what should our mood be as this period of waiting for the Saviour's coming, the dark forebodings of Mark, or the lighter shades in which Luke depicts the time of waiting. In a sense of course, we need them both, for Mark's emphasis on the darker side of the Lord's coming is not wrong. Some of the Old Testament prophets had frequently to warn the people of God against having overbland expectations of the coming "Day of the Lord", and indeed, if we really understand who God is, we shall not find it a comfortable thing to have him enter our lives.
On the other hand he is also a God who comes in healing mercy. It is Luke who affixes to the beginning of Jesus' mission the prophetic claim, taken from Second Isaiah, that "he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, and has sent me to, preach freedom to captives, and sight to the blind, to send the oppressed away in freedom, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord".
The Christian message is above all good news, and if only we can during this Advent remember our poverty and captivity and blindness and oppression, then we shall have grounds for hope.
Then indeed we may stand erect, and hold our heads high, for our redemption will be near at hand.