Deliver Us | The First Sunday of Advent
Fra Angelico — Fiesole Altarpiece (Detail)
Deliver Us | The First Sunday of Advent
By Br. Jerome Masters, O.P.
In 1998 Dreamworks Animation came out with a cinematic masterpiece called The Prince of Egypt. This movie depicts the life of Moses and the divine mission God sent him on to free the Israelite people from the oppression of the Egyptians. This film had a star-studded cast featuring Val Kilmer, Steve Martin, and Sandra Bullock. It was a movie I grew up watching and have come to appreciate as I’ve grown and watched it more and more. In the opening scene of the movie, the song Deliver Us is played. The Israelites are pleading with God to send them someone to deliver them from the bondage of slavery. The final line of the song is, “Deliver us, send a shepherd to shepherd us, and deliver us to the promised land.”
In this first half of the season of Advent, the Church contemplates the second coming of Christ. In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus depicts what his second coming will be like saying, “And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.” These signs seem to be terrifying at first, but we have nothing to fear as our redemption is at hand. In this life, we are fighting against the bondage of sin, and pray for our redeemer to deliver us from that bondage. We pray for that deliverance every time we pray the Our Father saying, “Deliver us from evil.”
Jesus also provides us with a warning as well about the second coming. If we do not pray for the grace of perseverance in this life to not fall to sin, then the second coming of Christ will take us by surprise. Jesus here is acting as the Divine Physician, and giving us a plan for taking care of our souls so that we may live and not be wounded by sin. When we commit a certain sin habitually, then we can become enslaved to that sin which eventually leads us to either justify why we commit that sin or it becomes very hard for us to break the habit.
There is a scene from The Prince of Egypt where Moses encounters the burning bush, and God rebukes him for doubting his divine plan of going back to Egypt to free the Israelites. But God then is gentle with Moses and comforts him telling him that, “I will be with you when you go to the king of Egypt.” This is what Jesus is doing for us, warning us of the terrible signs of his second coming but also giving us the hope that this coming of our deliverer will be one of great joy and hope for us.
If we stand erect and know that our redemption is at hand, when the second coming occurs or when we meet the Lord face-to-face at our own judgment we can have the hope that he might say, “Well done good and faithful servant, enter into your master’s joy.”
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