Advent begins on Sunday. Here is a sermon by Blessed Eduard Profittlich for Advent 1938, which in its content is very relevant today and helps greatly to prepare for the birth of the Saviour. Let us take time during Advent to reflect a little on Blessed Eduard Profittlich’s words and to come to know Christ better through his texts. A collection of his texts is on sale at St. Peter and St. Paul’s Cathedral of Tallinn.
On the Coming of Christ
‘Let us for a moment close our eyes, ears and heart to everything in the world that is hostile to Christ, which also seeks to come against us and into us. Let this time be for us a true self-examination and a serious inward recollection, so that we may celebrate Christmas with Christ more richly and joyfully.’ Eduard Profittlich.
Heavens, rain down from above; let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open and bring forth the Saviour. (Isa. 45:8.)
Advent has come. Advent means the coming. Advent is a time of remembrance — a time to recall those millennia when humanity was still unredeemed. Past millennia rise up — millennia full of darkness. Again the silenced voices awake, voices that spoke of the coming redemption, that cried toward heaven in a burning prayer: ‘Send forth, O Lord, the one whom you desire to send!’
It is good to let that era of unredeemed humanity come alive in our hearts. About that time the prophet spoke the sad word: ‘Darkness covers the earth and thick darkness the peoples!’ But is that really true? Were those centuries truly such a dark age? Oh yes — even in those centuries there was high culture. The wise social and astronomical laws of the Babylonian state, Egypt’s admirable architecture and excellent agriculture, the Greeks’ unrivaled fine arts, Rome’s military discipline — even now they command respect and admiration. The human spirit had made great advances in many directions.
One might suppose that God could rejoice in the progress of humanity, in the lofty flight of the human spirit across all fields of culture. And yet, reading Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we find that God’s verdict about the world is quite different. There the apostle writes that God’s wrath is fixed upon this world. Why so? The Letter to the Romans (1:18–32) gives us a clear answer to this question: "The world had renounced its God, had refused to believe in and to honor him, had shaken off his laws, yes, had hidden him away!"
The yoke of God was shaken off; people set about determining for themselves what was good and what was evil. The sacred moral order established by God was broken — until every kind of injustice was reached. And this active transgression of God’s command was not merely an error, but a fault, a great fault. It was not that God had left himself unknown to people. No! He had revealed himself to us. He had revealed his beauty in the shining of the sun and the brilliance of the countless stars, his power in the fullness of life resting upon the earth, his might in the mighty events of creation — and he revealed his heart as holy, who wills the good and hates evil.
And yet man did not acknowledge God; in his pride of knowledge he rose above God’s wisdom; his laziness shook off God’s yoke like a heavy burden — his passions would not allow him to bend under any command. He did not acknowledge God because he did not want to.
Then God’s wrath came upon people. The more a person forsook God, the more he transgressed God’s commands in public and private life, the more God withdrew from humanity. The world became dim. The light that shone from above grew ever darker, the night deepened. But not in the sense that wars came or that God sent diseases that mowed down peoples. Those were consequences. The greatest scourge, the primal scourge, was that God withdrew from humankind!
And then the whole abyss into which a person falls when God leaves him to his own care was revealed. The Apostle describes with striking words the abysses into which man fell, forsaken by God. He who, in the pride of knowledge, exalted himself above God fell in his blindness so low that he served false gods, fashioned images of birds, four‑footed animals and reptiles and worshiped them as gods. Thus the peoples of old fell into the filth of idolatry — the Egyptians with their cult of animals, the Romans and Greeks through the worship of works of art, pictures and statues. Worse still: the man who scorned God’s command became a slave to his basest passions, fell into the snares of carnal desires and used his reason to live more depravedly than any beast.
Yes, God’s light had left creation, night had fallen, and in that night all human passions surged like predatory creatures into a frenzy!
And this longing joined with the yearning that lived among the people whom God had chosen for himself, in whom, despite all outward temptation, faith in the one God had to be preserved, and in whom he had now and then again awakened and revived that faith and longing for redemption. And the greater the distress, the deeper human misery, the greater the darkness in the world, the stronger the longing became, the more fervently people’s prayers pressed toward God: “Send whom you will send… Heavens, grant the baptism, let the Redeemer fall like rain, let the earth open and let the Blesser arise.”
But why go back today to the time before Christ? Shouldn’t we, people of today, be singing an eternal song of thanks that those times are over? Do we not know that he has come whom the peoples awaited? Why then still a time of coming, a time of waiting?
Of course, Christ has come as the Redeemer, and his people, the people of redemption, are joyful in possessing their blessing and Christ’s truth, grace — and love.
But is it not true today that humanity still needs Advent? I do not even want to speak of those who live by the millions abroad, in Africa and Asia. Is there not now again in the so-called Christian countries a new paganism! Unfortunately this is true of many whose fathers were once Christians, the truth that Nietzsche once said: God is dead for them! Dead not for the whole, but still for a great, perhaps the greater part of the spiritual strata of Europe and America!
Have they not become godless as in former times! Have they not refused to give God faith and reverence; have they not shaken off his yoke, denied his existence!
Is there not beside us an entire country from which God has been removed, where masters have been deified? Is there not on almost all civilized lands an alliance of the godless, whose aim is to dethrone God throughout the world!
Yes, so it is. In the false pride of science man held himself wiser than God. Not that God had left the world. His works still speak clearly of him today. They are — let us say with Faust — splendid, as they were on the first day. The proud man does not want to hear God. The lustful man does not want to please him; he scorns all restraints from above.
Thus it has come to pass that God once again leaves man in the care of his own weakness. People who want to be cultured have the audacity to lift old pagan false gods to the altar in place of the true God. And they fall into all the depths of blind superstition and unbelief. And behold, the man left to his own care is again bound by the chains of carnal desire, bears the yoke of his passions, has become the servant of his impulses, and, with all modern insanities and abominations, has once again fallen below the animal! Is this not the dreadful picture that the apostle paints in the Letter to the Romans, which has become a likeness of our age? And yet it also holds true here that the deeper man falls, the more the primordial sense of the divine within him cries out for redemption.
God still reigns all the more in Russia. One can even sense that something else is moving as well! There, where murder and suicide and every kind of decay seemed to be wiping humanity from the face of the earth, a new world slowly grows out of doubt and despair. People still walk by nowadays, uncovering their heads before Lenin’s embalmed corpse, but whoever has ears to hear will hear amid all that distress the cry of longing for something new, different and better. Our time is still an unhappy night! Yet already above this human darkness and confusion the bright star of an eternal longing rises. And with the hopeful Church we may greet him: “The Lord is near — Come, let us adore him.” The coming of God into the world has come again in Advent. A time of awaiting and longing for the Redeemer. Let us pray that he may soon come to this world so far from God.
But we must all know that Advent has come to each one of us. Advent is for all the half-hearted, the weak, the undecided, who still waver between God and Satan, whose eyes are still veiled by the gloom of darkness. To them the Church cries with the words of the Epistle: “Brothers, it is time to awake from sleep,” from sleep and halfness, cowardice and hesitation; it is time to watch in the Christian faith, so that eternal night may not overtake us either. For them too let us pray that heaven may open to them, that they may see the light again, that they may once more begin to believe in their God; that in his kingdom each may work in his proper place, so that Christmas may become for them joyful, a holy Christmas in which Christ comes into their hearts.
But Advent must come to each one of us. Yes, we believe in Christ, yes we have a Redeemer, but he must become even more ours, must come to us more fully, receive us more completely. Advent is the time to prepare our hearts for him; it is the time to drive out all that is hostile to Christ, to give ever more room in our soul to him and to his mercy, and to come to know his truth more and more.
There is a deep meaning in this when each year we once again celebrate Advent. Let us celebrate it properly. Let us, for a moment, close our eyes, ears and heart to everything hostile to Christ in the world, which also seeks to come against us and insinuate itself into us. Let this time become for us a true examination of conscience and a serious inward reflection, so that we may celebrate Christmas with Christ more richly and more joyfully.
Eduard Profittlich
Church Life: The Voice of Estonian Catholics; 1938, no. 12, pp. 81-82