‘I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 1:8)
In Sunday’s second reading, St Paul expresses his love for the Philippians in an extraordinary way: he says that he loves them not with his own affection, but with the affection of Christ. St Paul let his heart be penetrated by the love of Christ to the point that Christ loved others through him, not with a cool, theoretical love, but with passion. The verb St Paul uses for this love is ‘yearn’ and the literal translation of ‘affection’ is ‘intestines’: it is a visceral, emotional love that Paul has received from Jesus and passes on to others.
But perhaps even more striking is the scope of this love: it is for ‘all’. We usually experience affection for certain people and not others, but Christ loves each one of us in this way, and empowers Paul to do the same. Sometimes we may notice that our affections have favourites among our friends or family, which is only natural. But we are called to what is supernatural: to enfuse our love for each person with this divine yearning of Christ. We should not, through fear, try to love our favourites less; let’s ask Jesus to transfigure our love for those who prompt no natural affection in us, even those whom old wounds have made hard to love.
We can only yearn for others if we become more aware of how much Jesus yearns for us. In this season of Advent, we are waiting for him to appear again; but he is waiting for us much more passionately. He is longing for us to ‘prepare the way of the Lord’ so he can return. He leaves us free to remove or not the spiritual valleys, hills and crooked paths that block his approach to our hearts: our pride, envy and fear. God will help us prepare that way, as prophesied in the first reading: ‘the woods and every fragrant tree’ (Baruch 5:8) give shade, just as all the Crosses we experience become shade-giving ‘fragrant trees’, stepping stones instead of obstacles, if we accept our sufferings with faith and hope. Jesus himself turned the tree of the cross into a ladder to heaven, and he wants to work the same miracle in each of us.
The start of Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 3:1-2) looks forward to his death and resurrection. First, we hear of Pilate, who will condemn Jesus, and of Annas and Caiaphas, who will hand him over for judgement: our thoughts are directed to Jesus’ saving death, the purpose of his birth.
But we also see the boundless impact that his resurrection will have. Here we descend from the global to the local, from Tiberius Caesar, emperor of Rome, down to the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. Yet at the end of this Gospel, Jesus promises that he will be preached in the opposite direction: ‘to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’ (24:47)
Jesus comes to the concrete circumstances of our lives today, wherever we live, whatever political leaders we have, and wants to transform us by his death and resurrection into his witnesses and preachers for everyone we meet.
Mary our mother yearns for us to follow her Son with a mother’s affection, and this Sunday falls on the usual date for celebrating her Immaculate Conception. We can apply to her the prophecy of the first reading as she waits for us in heaven:
‘Stand upon the height
and look towards the east
and see your children gathered from west and east,
at the word of the Holy One,
rejoicing that God has remembered them.
For they went forth from you on foot,
led away by their enemies;
but God will bring them back to you,
carried in glory, as on a royal throne.’ (Baruch 5:5-6)
