‘To live is to change, to be perfect is to have changed often.” This simple saying of Blessed John Henry Newman can make us uneasy – not only because we are all wary of change, but also because of the word “perfect”. I am not perfect, I reflect; but Jesus uses this unsettling word often.
So what is perfection? Perfection comes about by embracing change and changing often. The things of nature do not change by choice; they grow by nature. My man-made glasses are a perfect pair of glasses. They do what they were created to do, but they will never be anything else.
For me to be perfect, each day I have to become what God has created me to be. Thomas Merton reflects that “to be a saint is to be myself ”. These powerful words – perfection, being a saint – are consequences of a day-to-day struggle, through our free choices, to seek and live out God’s will in our daily lives.
We need to be constantly reminded of this truth, and in the second reading on Sunday (Romans 13:11-14) we hear that the time has come, we must wake up now, our salvation is even nearer than it was when we were first converted.
St Paul, in addressing the Romans, is calling them to “wake up”. These are people who have already been converted. Like us, they are followers of the Saviour, yet they have fallen asleep and have “preferred to do things under cover of darkness”. But our only light is the “armour of the Lord Jesus Christ”.
In Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 24:37-44), St Matthew continues this call to stay awake, because we do not know when the Master will come. Conversion is not simply a one-off event in a person’s life, a moment of religious awakening; it is the beginning of a life-long journey of faith.
The first moment of conversion opens us to the daily encounter with the unconditional love of God, as we seek to do His will each day. The first experience of falling in love lights a fire. This needs to be fed and nurtured. It cannot be taken for granted, for this leads to mediocrity and lukewarmness.
In her wisdom the Church realises that we need a time to have our faith re-awakened, to prepare for the celebration of the central moments of the Christian story. In 1399, the then archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, declared: “The contemplation of the great mystery of the Incarnation has drawn all Christian nations to venerate her from whom came the first beginnings of our redemption.”
The appearance of Our Lady at Walsingham in 1061 was one of the great influences that led to England being known as “the Dowry of Mary”, as the Mother of God asked the noblewoman Richeldis to “build a house in honour of my Salutation” (the Old English word for Annunciation). Our Lady reminded the people of that time to reflect on the God who walked and lived among us; hence Walsingham became known as England’s Nazareth.
Advent is the call to once again “contemplate the great mystery of the Incarnation” and reflect that “the Word was made flesh and lived among us”. Our reawakening reminds us not only that the Lord lived among us in the past, but that he still does.
Without this constant conversion and contemplation of the mystery, we face the truth in mediocrity. The central celebration of the Incarnation at Christmas can become a self-obsessed feast, a time of depression and isolation.
To celebrate any feast of the Lord, we must, like Jesus himself, give ourselves to others. We cannot become the person we are meant to be unless we change. We can live the words of the Mass by saying to our brothers and sisters: “This is my body, my time, my friendship, my forgiveness, my sorrow, my help and I give it to you.”
St Augustine tells us: “Your life, your behaviour, should be awake in Christ so that others – sleepy pagans – can see it and the sound of your watchfulness cause them to get up and throw off their sleepiness and begin to say with you in Christ: O God, my God, since dawn I have kept watch for you.”
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