As Advent proceeds we see new images of the Shepherd King in the prophecies of Isaiah. If we remember that Isaiah lived some seven hundred years before Christ, this is the voice of the God Who saves, Who has plotted His moment in time when He should arrive as the Shepherd of the people. He has marked out our Blessed Lady as the vessel by which He should take up our likeness and be born a human being. For many centuries in the interval between His message to Isaiah and His arrival in a stable in Bethlehem, the people He loves would fall into dissolution and be almost completely destroyed by a sequence of political moves against their nation and capital, leaving the people in both spiritual squalor and national devastation and calamity. A frightful place to be for a people who rejoiced in God’s favour. What would sustain them for hundreds of years until their redemption should appear? A promise! Only a promise. The promise was of that Child born in a cave-stable.
“Take heart again, My people, says your God, take heart again. Speak Jerusalem fair, cry aloud to her that her woes are at an end, her guilt is pardoned; double toll the Lord has taken for all her sins. A cry, there, out in the wilderness, Make way for the Lord’s coming; a straight road for our God through the desert! Bridged every valley must be, every mountain and hill levelled; windings cut straight, and the rough paths paved; the Lord’s glory is to be revealed for all mankind to witness; it is His own decree.”
Prophecy of Isaias, 40: 1-5 [link]
So Isaiah sings in our first reading today: speak to the heart of the people, tell them that suffering has ended, that salvation is at hand. How would it begin? With a voice crying in the wilderness. Elijah returned, at last, if only in spirit. For in reality it was the son of Zechariah, John the Baptist, greater even than Elijah, who would for a long time prepare the people by repentance and baptism for the arrival of Christ. His very bearing and demeanour is one of rejection of the world and embrace of God. So, he is described as dressing and eating in a more humble manner than those around him, and calling for repentance, so striking the fearful figure of Elijah Returned.
“And so it was that John appeared in the wilderness baptising, announcing a baptism whereby men repented, to have their sins forgiven. And all the country of Judaea and all those who dwelt in Jerusalem went out to see him, and he baptised them in the river Jordan, while they confessed their sins. John was clothed with a garment of camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle about his loins, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And thus he preached, ‘One is to come after me Who is mightier than I, so that I am not worthy to bend down and untie the strap of His shoes. I have baptised you with water; He will baptise you with the Holy Ghost.”
Gospel of S. Mark, 1: 4-8 [link]
John was the joyful messenger of Isaiah that announced to all who would listen, ‘Here is your God.’ When he gestured towards Christ and said to his own disciples, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world,’ many of them left him to join Christ, some of them entered the number of the Twelve Apostles. Behold the Lamb, coming with power, subduing all before Him, victory won over sin and death, His trophies before Him (His Cross, the nails that held Him, the crown of suffering that made Him King of all things). The King of Love my Shepherd is, in the words of that excellent hymn form of Psalm 22(23). For the God Who had long ago promised to arrive as the Shepherd of the people is a suffering Shepherd. He has a solution to our weakness and attachment to sin. Sin brings the punishment of death. The Shepherd proposes to take that punishment upon Himself and so buy our freedom from death. As Isaiah says, He is like a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms. And they had to wait hundreds of years for the intervention of God, for the arrival of the Shepherd King. And we have waited twenty centuries for His return, and we may have to wait twenty more. But, as S. Peter says in the second reading, it’s all in a day for the Holy One Who lives without time.
“But one thing, beloved, you must keep in mind, that with the Lord a day counts as a thousand years, and a thousand years count as a day. The Lord is not being dilatory over His promise, as some think; He is only giving you more time, because His will is that all of you should attain repentance, not that some should be lost. But the day of the Lord is coming, and when it comes, it will be upon you like a thief. The heavens will vanish in a whirlwind, the elements will be scorched up and dissolve, earth, and all earth’s achievements, will burn away.”
Second letter of S. Peter, 3: 8-10
But God living outside of time doesn’t mean that He is careless of time. Time is His gift to us. Time allows men and women to change. Change can only occur within time, and so God proposes to purify us within time, drawing us towards perfection before we enter eternity, eternal life, so that nobody may be lost, everybody allowed to change their ways. So, let us live holy and saintly lives, as S. Peter says, following the Way to Perfection, the Imitation of Christ, before the great Day of the Lord, the Day of Judgement, when we hope that the Shepherd King coming as Judge will find us at peace.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 