It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter.
It feels like years since it’s been here.
The Beatles have Good News for us: Here Comes the Sun!
In this iconic song, George Harrison captures (even if unwittingly) the Advent sentiments that the Church expresses in her liturgy today. Four days before Christmas, we look with expectation towards the Orient. We remember the long winter of sin in which humanity lived before the Incarnation of the Sun of Justice.
Each one of us also experiences winters, often long, cold, and lonely. Our ignorance of God, our sins, our sufferings, our frigidity in love can get the best of us, if we let them. They can leave us feeling like it’s been years since we’ve seen light or felt warmth in our lives. They can wipe the smiles from our faces.
It’s precisely to banish these winters of our soul that our Sun, Jesus Christ, shone upon the world. He comes to shine the light of his Truth upon the eyes of our hearts, and he sends his Spirit of Love to melt away all the ice that keeps us from loving our God and our neighbor. The light and warmth of the Son is offered to us especially in the sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist. There, we receive the forgiveness that dispels darkness and the love that gives us life. These sacraments apply to our lives the salvation Christ came to bring us. And they do work. First, the ice starts slowly melting; then, the smiles return to our faces; and after many years it’ll all be clear.
So we await the coming of the Sun and sing with the Church’s own, more ancient, voice:
O Rising Sun, brightness of eternal Light and Sun of Justice: come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.
Sun, Sun, Sun, here He comes!
✠
Image: J.M.W. Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise
