Joy of every longing heart.

ome, thou long-expect­ed Jesus! It is hard, and seems more than impos­si­ble, to be Advent peo­ple in a cul­ture of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. We rush to the Christ­mas music before it’s even Advent, let alone Christ­mas; and I want to scream every time I hear “What Child is This” when it’s still Ordi­nary Time. (“What Child is This” is for Epiphany!) But all this is more than just a defi­cient under­stand­ing of litur­gi­cal time. It is a defi­cient under­stand­ing of time itself—that is, an inabil­i­ty to rest in the instant. Those who want the next thing instant­ly can’t even enjoy the things of this instant. We leap sev­en fur­longs ahead of where we are. Even now, as I type these words, I curse at my slow com­put­er. (Mea cul­pa, mea cul­pa, mea max­i­ma cul­pa.)

But Charles Wes­ley, who wrote the hymn and lived in a slow­er time, and who, despite his schism from a schism, at least was still litur­gi­cal, understood—as no doubt you do too, as I pile clause on clause before arriv­ing at the point of the sentence—that wait­ing can and should be joy.

But wait­ing does imply the even­tu­al arrival of the “long-expect­ed Jesus”; wait­ing is a sub­ject in search of an object, and the real joy of Advent lies in this ten­sion: between the qui­et still­ness and peace of wait­ing in antic­i­pa­tion, and the long­ing for Christ alone and above all else.

I con­fess I do not much under­stand what Wes­ley meant when he described Jesus as “dear desire of every nation.” It seems to me that the “dear[est] desire of every nation” is to beat the swiftest path away from Jesus. The words are strange. But that Christ is the “joy of every long­ing heart,” I under­stand. I under­stand long­ing; and Advent is about long­ing, and the hymn is about the promise that the day will come and we will at last arrive at the end of all our long­ings.

LET US FIND OUR REST IN THEE

It is fit­ting that, in the midst of all the long­ing and wait­ing and prepar­ing that takes place dur­ing Advent, the Church reminds us to be joy­ful: foras­much as God will not leave us watch­ing and long­ing for­ev­er. The Mes­si­ah has been promised, and He will come. And it is fitting—and most important—that the Church calls to our mind the object of our only true long­ing. We think it is for earth­ly love, but earth­ly love is a fig­ure. We think it is for rich­es, but only the rich­es of heav­en will not become cor­rupt. What­ev­er else we think we lack, ulti­mate­ly we will only be sat­is­fied by the Beatif­ic Vision: Christ in the manger or Christ in His glo­ry. The arc of his­to­ry is long but it bends toward Christ­mas and East­er and the new Jerusalem:

Be patient, there­fore, brethren, unto the com­ing of the Lord. Behold, the hus­band­man wait­eth for the pre­cious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the ear­ly and lat­ter rain. Be ye also patient; sta­b­lish your hearts: for the com­ing of the Lord draweth nigh.” (James 5:7–8)

We wait because we expect. Our hearts must be estab­lished, and there­fore we need to be fore­told of a promised day; that we may wait, and rise, make our­selves ready. Who is not joy­ful even in the mere antic­i­pa­tion of a long-await­ed guest; who does not estab­lish the home a fit­ting place to wel­come that guest? When Christ comes, He comes to dwell in our long­ing hearts. So we estab­lish our hearts, for the com­ing of the Lord is at hand.

We wait because we have a miss­ing spot. It is cre­at­ed by sin—both our own, and the sins of the world in our midst. Few sin out of love of evil. Sin is twist­ed good; it is always and every­where the illu­sion of long­ings ful­filled. Sin replaces Christ with some­thing else as the object of our long­ing; and to the extent that there is sin in our midst, we are in Satan’s king­dom and not Christ’s. The world will always leave us unful­filled. And so we wait. The world is not our home.

But so we also rejoice, because we know that Christ came once before, as promised; and He has promised to come again. He comes when we are most lost and aban­doned, when we are most mis­er­able; He comes to free us from our sins and fears; He comes to share our sad­ness, and in shar­ing makes us glad. He is the joy of every long­ing heart that has found itself unsat­is­fied by every promise the mere world gives.

Gaudete.

BORN THY PEOPLE TO DELIVER

Once I heard the earth­ly life of a Chris­t­ian described as a per­pet­u­al Saturday—after cru­ci­fix­ion, but before Res­ur­rec­tion. I sup­pose you could also describe it as a per­pet­u­al Lent—always in repen­tance, and always wait­ing for East­er. And in like man­ner, you could describe it as an 80-year-long Advent. Unless Christ comes again in our life­times (which may God per­mit), we will final­ly rest in the Beatif­ic Vision only after a long and dif­fi­cult wait.

But it is pre­cise­ly in wait­ing that we must rejoice. C.S. Lewis, who held to a very sophis­ti­cat­ed the­ol­o­gy of joy, talked about how he had at last come to under­stand joy as only a road-sign to “some­thing oth­er and out­er.” At the end of Sur­prised by Joy he writes:

When we are lost in the woods the sight of a sign­post is a great mat­ter. He who first sees it cries, “Look!” The whole par­ty gath­ers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are pass­ing sign­posts every few miles, we will not stop and stare. They will encour­age us and we will be grate­ful for the author­i­ty that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much, not on this road, though their pil­lars are of sil­ver and their let­ter­ing of gold. “We would be at Jerusalem.

In wait­ing and expec­ta­tion are joy. But the way C.S. Lewis under­stood it, the Beatif­ic Vision is greater than joy. We are Advent peo­ple, but that does not mean we are to be impa­tient or glum as we watch and fast and pray. That is why all of Advent depends on Gaudete Sun­day. Advent is joy; and Christ­mas is greater than joy. The unsat­is­fy­ing world is long­ing; and the Beatif­ic Vision ful­fills all our long­ing and exceeds all our joy.

Come, thou long-expect­ed Jesus!