Advent 2020: December 4

ALONE, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.

Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?

The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

--W.H. Auden

Where is that Law for which we broke our own? "How could the Eternal do a temporal act,/ the Infinite become a finite fact?" I would put that against Richard Rorty and the legion of on-line atheists who seem to firmly believe that through science and technology, as I originally put it, "that the Eternal [which is science, having replaced "God"] can do a temporal act, and we, through our military power and hubris, can rearrange nations [and cultures] and usher in a "new world order," a secular "kingdom of heaven," if you like. Seems to me we have all agreed that "the Infinite [can] become a finite fact." We are going it again.  We do it over and over and over again.

And as ever, we pay the price for it.  The Day of the Lord is always here.  Covid is not a sign from God, or a punishment from on high.  But it reveals again our societal weaknesses, our failures to care for one another, our unwillingness to put others before ourselves, on a societal level, if not a personal one (medical personnel cannot be honored enough, IMHO).  We are always suffering the day of the Lord, and we are always blaming others for our suffering. All because we refuse the reality of justice.

Woe betide those who long for the day of the Lord!
What will the day of the Lord mean to you?
It will be darkness, not light;
it will be as when someone runs from a lion,
only to be confronted by a bear,
or as when he enters his house
and leans with his hand on the wall,
only to be bitten by a snake.
The day of the Lord is indeed a day of darkness, not light
a day of gloom without a ray of brightness.

I spurn with loathing your pilgrim feasts;
I take no pleasure in your sacred ceremonies;
When you bring me your grain-offerings I shall not accept them,
nor pay heed to your shared-offerings of stall-fed beasts.
Spare me the sound of your songs;
I shall not listen to the strumming of your lutes.
Instead let justice flow on like a river and righteousness like a never-failing torrent.

--Amos 5:18-24, REB

This is the first week of Advent. Keep awake! Watch!