Right Action is based in Grace

From the Advent 4 sermon by Fr. Richard Hall

Collect for Advent 4: O CHRIST our Lord, we pray for strength to increase and multiply within our hearts thy heavenly grace; that we, loving thee above all things, faithfully serve thee in all good works, through Christ our Lord...

Action is our goal. We are to faithfully serve the Lord in all good works. However, in order to accomplish this we pray for strength to increase (in us) and multiply God's grace in our hearts. We must act, and our actions must be based on heavenly grace within our hearts. But what is grace?

In the Western Christian tradition, grace is the love and mercy given to us by God because God wants us to have it. God wants us to be one with Him, for that is the ultimate mercy and the perfect expression of love. It is Divine Wholeness.

Wholeness doesn’t abide separateness; it doesn’t even abide the illusion of it. Wholeness is a “jealous god.” It does not tolerate those who do not experience it. It drags them, sometimes kicking and screaming, to itself.

It has always been this way, for everyone: FROM the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the gentiles… Gentiles are those who do not share my beliefs. But even those who are not of my religion know of wholeness and recognize its power. And they come to Him also. Or maybe he comes to them! Behold, I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before me...

You are the temple of the Lord. You must prepare the way of the Lord. And as soon as the way is prepared, the very instant it is ready, ... the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple…

This is the message of Advent.

You must be ready
But who may abide the day of his coming; and who shall stand when he appears? Who can take it! Whose knees don’t turn to rubber and who doesn’t cover his face and turn away from pure power? For those who are not yet ready… he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier; and he shall purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver…

Even if you haven’t prepared the way of the Lord, he will come anyway. And that is because He is wholeness; He has nowhere to go; He is already within his temple, and there he will always be.

Each time we turn to him, each time we open our eyes to His Glory, the fire of his radiance purges us of the illusion that we have ever been estranged. Each time we turn to Him and recognize Him, we become one with Him, and we offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.

A continuing process
And the process continues, over and over again, as individuals, as communities, as nations. Every time the illusion of darkness spreads, every time we feel that the Lord is not in his temple, all we have to do is turn away from the illusion and look deeply into the temple. And He’s there; the Lord is there; suddenly come into his temple, resting in the manger of our heart.

This is the last Sunday in Advent—the final stroke in our great preparation for the birth of Jesus, and the awakening of the Christ in our hearts and in the world.

Come, let us adore him! And he shall adore us, saying they shall be mine, in that day when I make up my jewels.