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Joy of Every Longing Heart

Joy of Every Longing Heart

Last updated on: March 9, 2017 at 4:21 pm by Scott Eric Alt

Joy of Every Longing Heart 2017-03-09T16:21:27-04:00 Scott Eric Alt

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Mariotto Albertinelli, “The Visitation,” 1503

Come, thou long-expected Jesus! It is hard, and seems more than impossible, to be Advent people in a culture of instant gratification. We rush to the Christmas music before it’s even Advent, let alone Christmas; and I want to scream every time I hear “What Child is This” when it’s still Ordinary Time. (“What Child is This” is for Epiphany!) But all this is more than just a deficient understanding of liturgical time. It is a deficient understanding of time itself—that is, an inability to rest in the instant. Those who want the next thing instantly can’t even enjoy the things of this instant. We leap seven furlongs ahead of where we are. Even now, as I type these words, I curse at my slow computer. (Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.)

But Charles Wesley, who wrote the hymn and lived in a slower time, and who, despite his schism from a schism, at least was still liturgical, understood—as no doubt you do too, as I pile clause on clause before arriving at the point of the sentence—that waiting can and should be joy.

But waiting does imply the eventual arrival of the “long-expected Jesus”; waiting is a subject in search of an object, and the real joy of Advent lies in this tension: between the quiet stillness and peace of waiting in anticipation, and the longing for Christ alone and above all else.

I confess I do not much understand what Wesley meant when he described Jesus as “dear desire of every nation.” It seems to me that the “dear[est] desire of every nation” is to beat the swiftest path away from Jesus. The words are strange. But that Christ is the “joy of every longing heart,” I understand. I understand longing; and Advent is about longing, and the hymn is about the promise that the day will come and we will at last arrive at the end of all our longings.

LET US FIND OUR REST IN THEE

It is fitting that, in the midst of all the longing and waiting and preparing that takes place during Advent, the Church reminds us to be joyful: forasmuch as God will not leave us watching and longing forever. The Messiah has been promised, and He will come. And it is fitting—and most important—that the Church calls to our mind the object of our only true longing. We think it is for earthly love, but earthly love is a figure. We think it is for riches, but only the riches of heaven will not become corrupt. Whatever else we think we lack, ultimately we will only be satisfied by the Beatific Vision: Christ in the manger or Christ in His glory. The arc of history is long but it bends toward Christmas and Easter and the new Jerusalem.

Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. (James 5:7-8)

We wait because we expect. Our hearts must be established, and therefore we need to be foretold of a promised day; that we may wait, and rise, make ourselves ready. Who is not joyful even in the mere anticipation of a long-awaited guest; who does not establish the home a fitting place to welcome that guest? When Christ comes, He comes to dwell in our longing hearts. So we establish our hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

We wait because we have a missing spot. It is created by sin—both our own, and the sins of the world in our midst. Few sin out of love of evil. Sin is twisted good; it is always and everywhere the illusion of longings fulfilled. Sin replaces Christ with something else as the object of our longing; and to the extent that there is sin in our midst, we are in Satan’s kingdom and not Christ’s. The world will always leave us unfulfilled. And so we wait. The world is not our home.

But so we also rejoice, because we know that Christ came once before, as promised; and He has promised to come again. He comes when we are most lost and abandoned, when we are most miserable; He comes to free us from our sins and fears; He comes to share our sadness, and in sharing makes us glad. He is the joy of every longing heart that has found itself unsatisfied by every promise the mere world gives.

Gaudete.

BORN THY PEOPLE TO DELIVER

Once I heard the earthly life of a Christian described as a perpetual Saturday—after crucifixion, but before Resurrection. I suppose you could also describe it as a perpetual Lent—always in repentance, and always waiting for Easter. And in like manner, you could describe it as an 80-year-long Advent. Unless Christ comes again in our lifetimes (which may God permit), we will finally rest in the Beatific Vision only after a long and difficult wait.

But it is precisely in waiting that we must rejoice. C.S. Lewis, who held to a very sophisticated theology of joy, talked about how he had at last come to understand joy as only a road-sign to “something other and outer.” At the end of Surprised by Joy he writes:

When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, “Look!” The whole party gathers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we will not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we will be grateful for the authority that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much, not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold. “We would be at Jerusalem.”

In waiting and expectation are joy. But the way C.S. Lewis understood it, the Beatific Vision is greater than joy. We are Advent people, but that does not mean we are to be impatient or glum as we watch and fast and pray. That is why all of Advent depends on Gaudete Sunday. Advent is joy; and Christmas is greater than joy. The unsatisfying world is longing; and the Beatific Vision fulfills all our longing and exceeds all our joy.

Come, thou long-expected Jesus!

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