ADVENT ONE
from The Crown of the Year: Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament
by Austin Farrer
"Our journey sets out from God in our creation, and returns to God at the final judgement. As the bird rises from the earth to fly, and must some time return to the earth from which it rose; so God sends us forth to fly, and we must fall back into the hands of God at last. But God does not wait for the failure of our power and the expiry of our days to drop us back into his lap. He goes himself to meet us and everywhere confronts us. Where is the countenance which we must finally look in the eyes, and not be able to turn away our head?
[That countenance] smiles up at Mary from the cradle, it calls Peter from the nets, it looks on him with grief when he has denied his Master. Our judge meets us at every step of our way, with forgivenness on his lips and succour in his hands. He offers us these things while there is yet time. Every day opportunity shortens, our scope for learning our Redeemer's love is narrowed by twenty-four hours, and we come nearer to the end of our journey, when we shall fall into the hands of the living God, and touch the heart of the devouring fire."
Austin Farrer
ADVENT TWO
from The Crown of the Year: Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament
by Austin Farrer
"ADVENT brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy. For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God. We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God. What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day? Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return ; how, when we came (as now) before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills? But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does. Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity."
Austin Farrer
ADVENT THREE
from The Crown of the Year: Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament
by Austin Farrer
"JESUS gave his body and blood to his disciples in bread and wine. Amazed at such a token, and little understanding what they did, Peter, John, and the rest reached out their hands and took their master and their God. Whatever else they knew or did not know, they knew they were committed to him, body and soul; they were consenting that he should die for them, and that they, somehow, should live it out. The cock had not crowed twice that night before Peter thrice denied, but still he knew he was committed to Christ, for Christ had given him his body and his blood. Christ's body and blood lived in him, and Christ forgave him; there was no breaking of the sacramental tie. We are not worthy of Christ, but we are bound to Christ. With all the sincerity of our minds let us renew the bond, and pray to live for him who has died for us."
Austin Farrer
ADVENT FOUR
from The Crown of the Year: Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament
by Austin Farrer
"ADVENT is a coming, not our coming to God, but his to us. We cannot come to God, he is beyond our reach; but he can come to us, for we are not beneath his mercy. Even in another life, as St John sees it in his vision, we do not rise to God, but he descends to us, and dwells humanly among human creatures, in the glorious man, Jesus Christ. And that will be his last coming; so we shall be his people, and he everlastingly our God, our God-with-us, our Emmanuel. He will so come, but he is come already, he comes always: in our fellow Christian (even in a child, says Christ), in his word, invisibly in our souls, more visibly in this Sacrament. Opening ourselves to him, we call him in: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; O come, Emmanuel."
Austin Farrer
CHRISTMAS
from The Crown of the Year: Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament
by Austin Farrer
"WHEN Mary laid Jesus Christ upon her knees, when she searched him with her eyes, when she fed him at the breast, she did not study to love him because she ought, she loved him because he was dear: he was her Son. His conception had been supernatural, perplexing, affrighting; it had called for faith in the incomprehensible, and obedience beyond the limit of human power. His nativity was human and sweet, and the love with which she embraced it was a natural growth, inseparable from the thing she loved. She was blessed above all creatures, because she loved her Maker inevitably and by simple nature; even though it needed the sword-wounds of the Passion to teach her fully that it was her Maker whom she loved. The Son of Mary is the Son of all human kind, that we may be ledup with Mary to a love beyond kind, a selfless love for the supreme Goodness, when we too shall have climbed the ladder of the Cross."
Austin Farrer
