The eve of Advent may seem to be one of the least propitious junctures at which to raise the likely all-time least-favorite theological issue of sin but in actuality, the timing could not be better. While most contemporary observations of Advent focus on joyous celebration, family, friends, parties and presents, the early church took a very different view of the season. Advent was more of a truncated Lent, during which the faithful prepared to receive the incarnate Christ.
Isaiah’s prophecies regarding the Messiah-to-come that are a centerpiece of the Advent readings, also contain God’s invitation, ‘let us reason together… though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow,’ which could not be a clearer invitation to reflect on one’s shortcomings. The same Advent Scripture selections also focus on John the Baptist’s invocation to prepare the way of the Lord, which again invites believers to make straight their crooked paths.
There is an abiding wisdom in the choice of readings for Advent; they reflect a deep need for meaning in the human soul which cannot be filled by cheap, seasonal consumerism coated in a religious veneer of Christmas and served as an authentic preparation for celebration of one of the seminal moments in all existence: the incarnation. While undoubtedly less festive, a sober look at sin in these days has the potential to bring the faithful to a point of incredible transformation on the path toward a deeper and more meaningful walk with God.
The beauty of the Catholic tradition in this regard are the almost innumerable facets of the prism of faith through which the truth can be viewed and understood. Perhaps two of the most helpful lenses for the purposes of trying to comprehend sin are the Augustinian and Franciscan perspectives.
Augustine (Hippo) provides an extremely sober, realistic, and yet compassionate and hopeful analysis of the human condition, especially as it relates to sin. Rather like the first Christmas ghost that visited Scrooge, Augustine almost lovingly hands the believer to the expansive and truly joyous realizations of St. Francis of Assisi. Taken together, the works of these two towering figures of the faith provide a wonderful roadmap away from a state of self-deception to one illuminated and transformed by the majesty of God’s love on the most fundamental level.
The Augustinian perspective begins with the fall of humanity and its resulting impact. For Augustine, the consequence of sin is deeply personal in terms of his own journey toward God and entirely diffuse with respect to its results for the society in which he lived. Augustine viewed sin as compacting, or contracting the true nature of humanity, which is ultimately good, having been created by God. The human soul, therefore, desires God, even if it does not know it.
In its fallen state, humanity often grasps for things that only reflect a much-diminished imitation of the truly glorious life that God desires to bestow in full communion with humanity. This very compassionate view has most of humanity striving toward a very imperfect version of a more beautiful reality that it cannot truly understand or recognize. For this reason, Augustine did not view Roman society as inherently evil, but rather as doing its best to attain the highest state of affairs that it could achieve.
Writ large, Augustine sees sin as that which separates humanity from God and itself. Sadly, the deception of sin leaves much of mankind believing that a shadow of existence is all that can be achieved and ultimately leads to final and eternal isolation.
By recognizing one’s sinful state, a transformative realization can occur. For Augustine, this realization is that of the soul’s ability to finally find its true identity again, its uncompacted and complete state in the presence of God’s love. The magnificence of this awakening is that Augustine and many of the other early Church luminaries posited that it is meant to happen in this life and not in the next.
This belief has been more embraced in the Orthodox churches, which see Theosis as the process by which the believer becomes one with God throughout the journey of life. This lifelong transformation was not an abstract concept for Augustine, but the finding of one’s true and most authentic and realistic self in God, which brings true fulfillment, real happiness and complete being. This journey begins with the waking of the soul from the stupor of sin and the consequent understanding that something so much greater is not only available but is what God desires and always meant for all of humanity.
Having realized the shabbiness of its state, the believer is brought to a world of limitless possibilities in the realms of authentic happiness and real satisfaction, which is where Augustine leaves and St. Francis joins. The Franciscan ethos is rooted in the concept of Theosis in that it strives to see and recognize the beauty of God in all things and their connectedness to one another and to the divine. The Franciscan sees expressions of God’s love in the abounding beauty of creation and from this all-encompassing embrace, there is love to share with all of humanity. Like Augustine, it was Francis’ realization of the emptiness and broken sinfulness of his life which allowed God to enter and transform him and his understanding of reality.
In the modern context, the seemingly heterodox, but authentically Catholic Franciscan friar, Richard Rohr, expounds upon the Franciscan way by explaining the near necessity of a limited, or compacted life in order to make the seeker aware of the paucity of his or her existence. The identity that humans can construct apart from God is limited and largely venal, but once completed, it has the ability to bear the seeds of its own transformation through the realization of its own limitations and the grandeur and abounding mercy of God’s love. As stated, in the Franciscan tradition, this is done in part by seeing the overwhelming and spectacular love that surrounds humanity in all of creation.
While the Franciscan prism is wider and more joyful in its view of ultimate reality, both this tradition and the Augustinian path make clear that the point of transformation starts with an awakening to sin and a largely shallow life without the real presence of God. The salient point is that this awakening does not result from a life of virtue or striving toward a state of perfection, but rather from the understanding of the real poverty of a life apart from God’s love.
This is the message and point of the incarnation. It is God coming to humanity to create a way back to Himself. As the prophets, saints and Christ himself warn, this path is often impeded by a shallow fullness or pursuit of unseen idols that give the unknowing devotees a false sense of meaning while robbing them of much of the love that God seeks to lavish upon them. These idols and the demands that they make upon their adherents mar and warp the understanding of reality and ultimately leave the devotee empty and alone. For this reason, this kind of sin is in many ways the most insidious, in that it often convinces the sinner that he or she is actually serving a greater good, or divine will.
Returning for a moment to Augustine, there is a tacit concurrence with Francis that isolation is the result of sin. According to Augustine, hell is complete and ultimate isolation from God and creation, which in the Franciscan tradition are inseparable. In this way, hell as such, is not punishment by God, but rather God respecting the free will of the individual to choose to be ultimately alone rather than connected to God and creation. Given this understanding of damnation, it is rather interesting that so many people feel isolated and depressed during the Christmas season. It would seem that for many, at this time of year, there is an inherent realization of the compacted state of the soul in Augustine’s terms, or a sense of apartness from God and creation in the Franciscan ethos that the shallowness of much of the Christmastide commercial and material cheer.
Yet this very despair can create the opportunity for the beginning of a transformation. This is the very state that Augustine and Francis reached and that began their metamorphoses. Realizing the emptiness of the materialism and cheap sentimentalism that largely marks contemporary Advent observations provides the opening for something so much greater to enter, which effectively is the point of the Nativity. It is God expressing in the most profound way ultimate love for humanity.
Effectively, the Augustinian and Franciscan paths point to a connection with God as the only real way to genuine fulfillment and happiness, which ultimately lies in finding one’s true self as reflecting the transforming love of God. In the modern context, this can often be a challenge given the abounding noise and distractions, especially during Advent when the overwhelming emphasis is on material consumption as the way in which to honor and celebrate the Incarnation.
Yet in the shortened days and the quiet of winter darkness, the Franciscan approach provides a simple way to begin to widen one’s gaze to start to realize the love of a God who comes in all humility and gentleness to heal and uncompact the human condition. Francis found God in all of creation, the birdbath saint became so because he saw Christ everywhere, in the beauty of the morning light, the color of a flower, or, indeed in a bird’s song, but perhaps most importantly in humanity. Further, Francis was able to love God’s creation for the beauty of the Creator that it inherently reflected; not for anything that it could do for him as a person. He was able to truly love God by loving his creation and in a virtuous cycle, he also was able to feel and truly know God’s love for him, not as a saint, but as a flawed and sinful person.
Augustine and Francis found themselves in God, uncompacted and real. This did not happen because they reached a perfect state, or as a result of their virtue but because they were able to truly believe and know God’s love for them. There can hardly be anything more empowering and strengthening than discovering one’s identity in God, in ultimate reality and love. Equally, there can hardly be anything more joyful than to see God everywhere and to feel the love of the Creator for oneself in every encounter. It was this realization of love that gave Francis the ability to forgive, to let go of past hurt and to find a new life in the embrace of a very human, humble Christ.
The Franciscan call, then, follows a humble Lord’s invitation, whose ‘yoke is easy and burden light.’ It is not to strive under one’s own strength to become a pillar of virtue but to accept that this humble God comes to love and heal humanity just as it is, in all of its brokenness, loneliness and pain. This gentle Savior asks that we let go of the pain which we carry so that he can embrace and heal us. This letting go often feels like a falling, but on the Franciscan and Christian path, it is actually the way up. Chesterton elegantly analogized this phenomenon by stating that if one begins tunneling into the earth, it will seem as if one is going further and further down, but there will come a point when one is actually rising again toward a new plane.
Like tunneling through the Earth, the process of conversion and transformation to the full realization of the love of God, or Theosis, is one that is ongoing each day and will take a lifetime in the Franciscan tradition. The incomplete Franciscan Tau cross symbolizes and reminds the wearer of this journey toward God. There is something reassuring about the length of this journey in that it does not require a core of virtue and selflessness to suddenly form in the believer, but just an openness to see the true reality of one’s own flaws and that God loves us in spite of them and that this is the road to transformation and union with God.
No amount of presents or holiday cheer and Christmas music can cover the hard reality of life for most adults. The banality of such expressions seems to become clearer and clearer and Christmas and Christmastime are observed more and more as a cultural holiday. But Advent, marked by the Church for preparation, can also be one of transformation, for a true incarnation of God’s love in the lives of his people, not because of their strength or virtue, but through their openness to allow his love to enter. This is the Christmas story, this is the reality and beauty of the faith. It is the realization that God came in human form to show us that, in the words of Fr. Rohr, he is more on our side than we are on our own.
