For Sunday
Advent 1B
Collect
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
This passage is part of the section of Mark known as the Little Apocalypse. It is an uncharacteristically apocalyptic teaching from Jesus. And it comes right after leaving the Temple during his last week.
We get it at the start of Advent as a reminder of what we really are in the middle of: world-changing grace. And the fact of that grace is that God has different ideas about what is good from the world we live in. And this has been the case for well over two thousand years.
We need the reminder that we are struggling to save ourselves. In every single way. And it is that way for a reason—that we can’t. We can’t isolate ourselves to safety or spend our way to happiness. And we can’t do it alone. It takes community. It takes God’s grace.
And that promise, that God is with us, has already been fulfilled. And it will be yet fulfilled. It has happened and also will happen. We have grace and will receive grace. Because we have been freed and God will free us from what imprisons us. It is both at once and it is all of this. We must be persistent in faith.