When He Comes Again

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

Malachi 3:1-4

If there is one sin that I struggle with the most it is pride. To a certain extent we all struggle with this sin as it is the sin from which all other sins stem from, but for me it has been ingrained into my way of thinking and so has infiltrated my words and deeds. The moment I realized my pride was like a blind person regaining their sight. It was a beautiful gift from the Lord, and yet shocking at the same time. In the Lord’s tender mercy, He has led me from that moment to continue to remove the layers upon layers of pride that I have covered myself with over the years. As each layer is peeled away, it is incredibly painful and yet completely freeing.

The first reading today, part of which is quoted above, is from the Prophet Malachi. It speaks of the coming of the Lord. This passage can be read as the coming of Jesus at the Incarnation, but it also looks forward to the second coming of Jesus at the end of the age. If you didn’t think of the second coming of Jesus when reading this passage, I invite you to read it again in this light.

The unspoken depth of this passage speaks of what pleases the Lord most, a humble heart. It is the humble heart that is open to being refined, open to allowing the Lord to purify it, and in turn this heart is offering a due sacrifice to the Lord. This sacrifice being offered is hidden; it is not for the world to see lest it would boast about making such a lofty sacrifice. It is a contrite heart, open and willing to allow the Lord access to it, so that it may be fashioned into whatever the Lord desires.

A contrite heart is willing to be continually converted. In essence, humility is accepting that life is one long process of refining. The heart that is humble willingly undergoes this process of refinement because it trusts in the Lord who is doing the refining. The Lord is trustworthy. He is loving, tender and merciful. Jesus Christ himself made a sacrifice of His own self upon the cross. He is the perpetual sacrifice upon the altar at every moment. He continues to offer Himself to us through this sacrifice at every Mass.

Jesus Himself was sacrificed so that we would follow Him in making our own lives a sacrifice to the Father. This isn’t done purely as a means of following behind Jesus and imitating Him, it is so much more than that. We take up our own cross and enter into Jesus’ sacrifice upon the cross and in that we are “completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Colossians 1:24). Through this offering, we invite Jesus into the whole of our lives, the good and the bad, and we consent to the fulfillment of the sacrifice of all humanity in and through our union with Him. As we offer more and more of our life to Jesus, we are purified. Jesus gives us this gift of clarity through our ever deeper surrender to His will, which brings about the refinement of our own will. This process of refinement is necessary. It is hard, but it is good and necessary.

A life lived in this way will be readied for when Jesus comes again, which is described by the prophets as a great and terrible day. Great because we will be going home to the Father, but also terrible because we will be instantly purified. Being purified in this life, as painful as it may be, will be pale in comparison to the purification to come when we see Jesus in all His Glory. The truth is that we cannot be fully united to Him without first being stripped away of all our attachments to this world. In the refiners fire of this life, these things are stripped away to the extent that we humbly allow them to be. And without the weight of the world in our arms, we will rise to new life with our Father in Heaven. We cannot take anything of this world with us into eternity. The more we are attached to the things of this world, the harder it will be to let go of them when Jesus comes again.

This beautiful description of the coming of the Lord from the Prophet Malachi is one of hope, not despair. We are given forewarning of the way to union. While the path is not easy, it is the path of Jesus, our Lord and Savior who came into this world to be glorified in His sacrifice to the Father. We too are glorified in our sacrifice to God. Our lives are filled with opportunities for the Lord to refine us. The humble heart recognizes this, accepts it, and eventually comes to rejoicing in it.

As we sit in the refiners fire, our hearts expand, growing in love and mercy. The refiners fire is not where our lives are destroyed, but is where the Lord fashions and readies us to live lives which bring Glory to His name. The refiners fire is where we learn to accept God’s will and it is our call to holiness.

As we remember the coming of the Lord this Christmas, we also await the coming of the Lord at the end of the age. Both of these comings require our preparation, which is not a boasting of all that we can do to lift ourselves up on high, but is a humble recognition of our powerlessness, and our need for God to come and save us. In these final days of Advent, may we not miss it, this time of refinement. May we open wide our hearts to God’s tender mercy as we allow Him to purify us and lead us into closer union with Him this year.