The Miracle of the Advent in Salvation History

When first arriving in some new place, it is only logical to look around and get the lay of the land. Until you know that, you cannot talk sensibly about anything else in the place. For example, suppose you arrive in a new house. You can't possibly begin to plan decorations, furnishings, or room assignments until I know what the house looks like or how many rooms it has. Similarly, if we are to talk of Christ's coming among us, we must know something about why he came, who he is, who people thought he was, and the culture and tradition that he was born into. For example, what exactly is a Christ? What does a Christ do? Why is there a Christ at all? How, when, and where should this Christ be born? We will speak study all these things in detail in the next four weeks. But in order for us to have any ability to study these and other such questions about the coming of our Savior, we must first know a bit about salvation history.

What is salvation history? "Salvation history is the story of God's marvelous work, since the creation of the world, to make all men and women His children, to form from the family of mankind a family of God." (Dr. Scott Hahn, Genesis to Jesus). We find an excellent summary of salvation history within the mass itself, in the forth Eucharistic prayer. It reads,

Father, we acknowledge your greatness: all your actions show your wisdom and love. You formed man in your own likeness and set him over the whole world to serve you, his creator, and to rule over all creatures. Even when he disobeyed you and lost your friendship you did not abandon him to the power of death, but helped all men to seek and find you. Again and again you offered a covenant to man, and through the prophets taught him to hope for salvation. Father, you so loved the world that in the fullness of time you sent your only Son to be our Savior.

Please forgive me if I repeat what you already know. However, repetition is sometimes the best way to learn something, especially when that something is as deep as God's action in the world.

The first sentence of the Eucharistic prayer will form the background for our entire study of Christ's coming among us. In it, we recall that God is infinitely great, transcendent, and wise, and yet he also is a God of love. God is love, not merely in an external sense, but in himself. That is to say, God is love not merely because he happens to have made and loved creatures, but because he is love in his very being. In fact, the One God eternally exists as three persons in an unending and perfect communion of love. God, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, is "infinitely perfect and blessed in himself." (CCC 1) He was not lonely; he was not weak; he was not bored. He did not need to create anything. Nonetheless, God did choose to create something. "In a plan of sheer goodness," (CCC 1) he created a universe, and put man in that universe.

God made man, and made man in his image. Man is not only an animal, but also a spirit. Like God, man can reason, know, will, and love. And man has been created with a supernatural destiny, which is just a fancy way to say that God made man "to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next" (Baltimore Catechism No. 3, Q. 150). And originally, this came very easily for man. According to the Council of Trent, man was created in a state of "holiness and justice" (Council of Trent, Session V, Decree Concerning Original Sin, 1). St. Augustine tells us that mankind was free from any fear, that they loved God and each other freely and naturally, and that they avoided sin with ease. Paradise was a state of spiritual and physical bliss for humanity. (De Civ Dei, XIV, 10-11)

Nonetheless, as Eucharistic Prayer IV points out, man did disobey God (Gen 3 1-7). And there were consequences, serious consequences, to this (Gen 3:7-24). The bliss of Paradise was broken by the darkness of sin. The Council of Trent tells us that mankind "was changed in body and soul for the worse" (Council of Trent, Session V, Decree Concerning Original Sin, 1). Sin separated men from God and from each other. Lust, greed, envy, pride, violence, and all other kinds of sin were introduced into the world. Death was introduced into the world. And not only the death of the body, but also the death of the soul. The supernatural destiny that we spoke of earlier was turned on its head, and man was now destined for hell.

It is exactly here, at the low point of the history of the human race, that God began to bring into being his plan of salvation. The Eucharistic prayer tells us, "Even when he disobeyed you and lost your friendship you did not abandon him to the power of death, but helped all men to seek and find you." The scriptures tell us that even as he was punishing man for the fall, God already promised a Savior.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Gen 3:15)

God is speaking here to the serpent, who had successfully tempted Adam and Eve to sin. He already declares that he will have victory over the serpent, who the New Testament tells us was actually Satan (Rev. 12:9), through a descendant of the woman.

Man, as the Eucharistic prayer points out, was trying to seek and find God. Through his own efforts, he was not terribly successful. St. Paul tells us that all men can know God through the use of reason (Rom 1:18-23, Compendium of the CCC, Q. 3). Nonetheless, man cannot know God fully or adequately by reason alone (Compendium of the CCC, Q. 4). The history of the human race has been filled with misguided attempts at religion: idolatry, polytheism, human sacrifice, ritual prostitution, and many other horrible perversions of truth and justice. And, if this were not enough, men made up all kinds of terrible and ungodly philosophies and deceptions: atheism, communism, and relativism just toname a few. Yet, even these attempts showed that man was searching for something that he was missing. The Eucharistic prayer tells us that God "helped all men to seek and find" him. He did this by offering mankind a series of covenants. A covenant is not simply a contract. A contract involves the making of promises and the giving of properties. In a covenant, you give your very self to the other by a solemn oath (Dr. Scott Hahn, Covenant: The Master Key that Unlocks the Bible). A covenant has conditions which both parties must abide by. If they are abided by, there will be blessings, but if they are broken the guilty party comes under a curse.

First God offered a covenant to Noah. After the flood, God promised that he would never again destroy the earth by water. In response, Noah and his descendants were to respect life (Gen 8:1-9:17). Then, God made a covenant with Abraham. He promised Abraham innumerably many descendants. Furthermore, he promised Abraham that "by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves." (Gen 22:18).

A new stage in God's plan came with the covenant he offered to Moses and the Israelites. It was to Israel that God said, "I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people." (Lev 26:12). The Israelites, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were in slavery in Egypt (Ex 1). God took pity on them and sent Moses to lead them (Ex 2-4). By many miracles, and especially the miracle of Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea, he rescued the Israelites from their slavery (Ex 5-12, 14). Then, having saved Israel from Egypt, he made a covenant with them (Ex 19:1-8, Ex 24:1-8). He adopted them as his own people, and they adopted him as their God (Ex 19:5). And he promised to lead them into a land of their own, the land of Canaan (in modern day Israel) (Deut 6:3). As a condition of this covenant, the Israelites had to obey the law that he gave them through Moses. As was the case with all covenants in the ancient Near East, there were blessings if the Israelites kept the covenant, and curses if they did not keep it (Deut 28).

God did in fact bring his people into the land he promised them (Josh 3-4). And, eventually he gave them a king, Saul (1 Sam 9-10). Saul, the first King of Israel, was disobedient to God, and so God took away his throne and gave it to David, "a man after his own heart." (1 Sam 13:1-15, 2 Sam 2:4, 2 Sam 5:1-5). David, though he was hardly perfect (2 Sam 11, 1 Chr 21), was dear to God and loved God. David had a plan to build God a temple (1 Chr 17:1-2). God did not permit this, but he made a covenant with David that he would give David's offspring an eternal throne, and that David's offspring would build for God a temple (1 Chr 17:3-27).

In each of these covenants God drew men successively closer to him, and revealed more and more of himself. Nonetheless, throughout all of these covenants, men continually failed to be faithful and sinned. The Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are some of the most complex characters in the Bible, and had many foibles. The Israelites, throughout their history, both while they were in the desert and while they were in the Promised Land, went though cycles of being faithful and unfaithful. David, "man after God's own heart" though he was, committed adultery and murder. It was into this situation that God brought the prophets. As our Eucharistic prayer tells us, "through the prophets" God "taught [man] to hope for salvation." The prophets accused Israel of infidelity to God. They urged the Israelites to repent of their sins, lest the curses of the covenant come upon them. They also predicted that God would forgive Israel of her infidelities and save her from her sins. God would punish his people, but he would not remain angry with them forever. The people, if the did not repent, would go into exile, but God would bring them back to the Promised Land. Israel, which had all this time been unable to keep the Law, would be renewed. For God would establish a new covenant with his people. As the prophet Jeremiah said

Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, `Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer 31:31-34)

Now we come to the apex of salvation history, The scriptures tell us

In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. (Heb 1:1-2) But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Gal 4:4-5) In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. (1 Jn 4:10) For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (Jn 3:16-17)

Christ fulfills all the former covenants. In Christ's death, God uses man's disrespect for life to save man from himself. In Christ, all the nations of the earth are blessed. By the grace of Christ, which he gives us through his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, men are able to keep the law, which before they were not able to keep. It is Christ, the descendant of David, who will build the temple of God and reign on the throne of David forever. Christ establishes the new covenant, and writes the laws upon the hearts of God's people. Christ undoes the damage done by sinful Adam (Rom 5:12-21, 1 Cor 15, 21-22), and definitively defeats both death and hell (Rev 20:14), restoring man to his supernatural destiny.

May the Eternal Father, who loves us so, bless us as we continue to study his Word. Amen!