From cave to temple
Whatever prison we are in, Christ is with us
In the Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Advent, we find John in prison. The John who leapt in the womb of his mother Elizabeth when she met Mary. The John who recognised his cousin Jesus as the Messiah at his baptism, when the Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove. The John who saw Jesus as the fulfilment of the prophecies he had so zealously guarded all his life. But now, as he awaits his death, he wonders: is this Jesus really the one who is to come? So, from his prison cell, he sends out his disciples to get help.
If this were a Hollywood blockbuster, John’s cousin and his gang would organise an elaborate prison break, overthrow Herod and his Roman overlords, get their girls and live happily ever after. But that is not the freedom Jesus brings. All he does is give a sign: the sign that John has been waiting for all his life. The sign predicted by the prophet. The blind see, the lame walk, left us a cleanse to, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the Good News is proclaimed to the poor. And by that sign, John is set free. No prison in this world, not even death itself can any longer hold him. Even with his head on a platter, he is free.
Are you in a prison? Are you imprisoned by suffering, lack of money, ill health, strained relationships, even imminent death, with her yours or that of someone you love? Or are you imprisoned by wealth, technology, society’s opinions, the desire for praise, the fear of censure? Do not despair. “Happy is the one who does not lose faith in me,” promises the Divine Word. We Christians sometimes forget nowadays that church fathers like Augustine stressed the importance of happiness in our faith. But that happiness is true freedom. And it is the happiness of knowing that whatever prison we are in, Christ is with us.
Plato spoke of this world as a kind of cave. There is a fire in the cave, and we are chained up facing a wall where shadows of real things flicker in front of us, but because we have never seen the real world, we think those shadows are all there is. Sometimes, someone escapes, and goes outside and sees the real world, and the real sun. It is more wonderful than he could have imagined, so he goes back into the cave to tell his friends about it. But the friends do not believe him, do not want to believe him, because they think that they already have everything they need. They call him insane. And for fear that they might go mad too, might become infected by his madness, they kill him.
In Christ, Plato's myth becomes reality. But it is even better than Plato imagined it. Because Christ does not merely offer us a way out of the cave into the sun: when he enters our cave, his glory transfigures the cave itself, so that our world becomes a glorious temple where Jesus, the High Priest, offers us up, soul and body, to God. A virgin womb becomes the tabernacle of Life itself. A cave full of animals becomes the maternity ward for the King of the universe. The wood of the Cross, made to kill, becomes the tree of life. An empty tomb becomes the gateway to eternity. Our prison becomes a palace.
In Advent, we await Christ in three ways: past, future and present. We wait to celebrate his Incarnation in the past at Christmas, when he was born of the Blessed Virgin; we wait for his second coming, when love himself comes to judge our love for him, in the hope of the rebirth to eternal life promised to us in Holy Baptism; but we make straight away in our hearts now, too, so that he may be born there not sometime in the distant future, but today. For if he is born in us, then we have everything we could possibly need. We have the source of all things, the spring of eternal life, welling up in our hearts. We have no need to prefer good health to illness, wealth to poverty, praise to disrepute, even life to death: because in him is everything, and in him everything lives and moves it has its being, even the things and people we think of as dead. He is life, light and love. And because he is love, he grows only when we diminish, he grows precisely as we give him away. Our needs, our desires, our clinging to the things of this world are just shadows on the wall. They are not enough. Look instead to the Sun of Righteousness, the true light that came to lighten the world. For he is the truth, and the truth sets us free.
Yet at the same time, we have this present hope only because of Christ’s birth, crucifixion and Resurrection in the past, and because of the future of eternal life he promises us. Without the reality of the Resurrection and the reality of heaven, the Christian faith is meaningless. As Christians, we live in the present, in this world, but always in orientation towards the eternal joy of being in God’s presence, the Kingdom of Heaven which in fact transcends time and space, but which we creatures who live in time and space can only comprehend in terms of past and future. In the Incarnation, the eternal God broke into the realm of time and space; and he does so still, in the Eucharist. For at the altar where Christ’s sacrifice is celebrated, the historic wood of the Cross and the future heavenly altar become one. The worship of the saints and angels penetrates our reality and transforms it.
Christ is with us. He always has been, and always will be: he is Emmanuel, “God with us.” He was there from the beginning, the Word giving order to the whole of creation. He was there with Moses, revealing the Law. He was there with the Jews in Egypt, and in Auschwitz. He is there with the people of Ukraine and Congo and Myanmar. He is with your loved ones in hospital. He is with the blessed dead whom you miss so much. And he is here now, “standing at the gates” of our hearts: in ourselves, in one another, in the order of the cosmos, in the Word of Holy Scripture, in bread and wine. So let us receive his Body and Blood in the trust that through them, he truly dwells within us. Let us receive him with the same faith that John the Baptist, our Blessed Lady and all the saints kept in him and still keep now. Let us stay true to God’s unchanging Word. For happy is the one who is not led astray by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, but who, like John, keeps the faith in Him.