We Christians truly are an Advent people, not only at this time of year but always. Long after Christmas we will still be an Advent people, we will still be waiting for the return of Christ, the time of which the prophet Isaiah writes so joyfully in this First Reading.

It must be a strong element of our faith to constantly be looking forward in hopeful expectation to a new kingdom in which people will relate to God, to one another, and to all of creation on a new basis.

Because, the truth of the matter is, we are not home yet. Our home is not finished. This world, this society, this Church is still being built.

And that really is something like what it means to say that we are an Advent people. Our world, right now, is temporary. It works fairly well but not nearly as well as it will. Most of the time the situations in which we live provide us with most of what we need to make life possible and pleasant … most of the time.

But when it doesn’t, when we find ourselves feeling empty and disappointed, perhaps even a little betrayed by life, then is the time to remember that it is foolish to expect the world as it now is, people as they now are, to be completely satisfying, completely fulfilling. The kind of world, the kind of society, be it the family, the city, the town, the nation, the Church, that can fully satisfy a creature made in the image and likeness of God simply has not yet been created.

But it will be. And in the strength of that “will be” the inconvenience of an unfinished world can be so much more easily borne.

So, there will be, for now, this kind of tension built into the experience of being human. A tension between the “already” and the “not yet”.

But there is no great secret to living successfully, even joyfully, with this tension. It is confident patience, nothing more complicated than that. That is what hope is, really, confident patience, and in so many ways it is at the heart of Christian virtue. The patience of Mary – the mother of God. The patience of a person who knows that she has done and is doing all she can to prepare for the end result of a process which she doesn’t really understand but which she knows is going well.

The Gospel Reading today speaks of John the Baptist in prison sending his disciples out to ask Christ for reassurance, to ask him, “Really. Is something happening? Is the New Kingdom here?”

And Christ answers with the imagery of Isaiah to reassure John, to tell him, “Yes, it has begun. Be patient. Happy are those who do not lose faith in me.”

Fr Andrew