Revealing What is Hidden

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Recently the fifth season of the western-drama, “Yellowstone” finished up.  Like most TV shows, the audience is given a divine-like view, where they know what is going on, while the characters in the show have to figure things out for themselves.  This fifths season begins with the death of one of the major characters, and while the death is initially ruled a suicide, the TV audience knows that, quoting Shakespeare, “there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”
    I think that many television shows, especially, but not only, dramas, rely on the human desire to play God.  We don’t want to wait for God to bring to light those things hidden in the darkness.  We want to know now all that is going on, even the things that don’t seem to make sense or those that confound us.  
    St. Paul promises that God will reveal all hidden things when the Lord returns.  And in some sense, we might enjoy this.  When many people talk about heaven, they talk about an eternal Q & A session with God, asking questions as profound as why this person had to die, or why that person got to live, to the more mundane and silly questions like whether Adam and Eve had belly buttons, or who killed JR (you might have to be a little older to get that reference).  
    It’s also something to which we look forward because often there are serious questions to which we could never know the answer for sure.  We sense a lack of justice when we don’t know if the guilty party received punishment or not.  Think about how much ink has been spilled about whether Lee Harvey Oswald truly killed President Kennedy, and whether he acted alone or was part of a grander conspiracy, whether with the Mafia or perhaps even with our own government.  When those who, ostensibly, do not get punished for the wrong they do, especially prominent people like actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians, our desire for justice seems unfulfilled, like there’s no resolution that satisfies.
    However, bringing to light what has remained hidden in darkness cuts both ways.  It doesn’t only apply to actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians.  It applies to us as well.  The things that we work so hard to hide from others, whether simply out of embarrassment or perhaps out of true shame and contrition, Christ will also manifest as He judges us.  That, I imagine, delights us a bit less than the idea of knowing where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.  I imagine we would like to know the secrets of others, but we probably don’t want them to know our own secrets.
    Of course, the Lord knows it all.  He is omniscient.  He sees all time as at once, and knows the causes and the effects of every action and reaction.  Nothing we could do could ever be hidden from him.  And yet, God chooses to forgive us for those wrong actions, and, when we are truly sorry and confess our sins, He no longer holds those things against us, no matter how secret they may be.  Yes, those sinful actions still happened, and yes, they still echo through their consequences, but God does not hold them against us at our judgment if we are contrite and confess.  Those sins going from being things of shame to being opportunities to grow in the grace of God, who transforms our sins into healing, just as God healed the death of sin through taking death upon Himself, though He had no sin Himself.  

    But, as we approach the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord, we also have another aspect of revealing what was hidden.  And that is God Himself.  True, God had revealed Himself, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews states, in various and sundry ways.  But the birth of our Savior was a true revelation, the revelation, of who God is.  When Christ came in the flesh, even though the flesh sometimes hid his divinity, it also revealed it.  One of the Christmas songs I hate, and I consider it at least partially heretical, is “Mary, Did You Know?”  And one of the lines I think is heretical is, “Mary, did you know / […] when you kiss your little baby / You’ve kissed the face of God?”  First of all, yes, she did know, because the Archangel Gabriel told her.  But more importantly, in the Incarnation, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who was pure spirit, took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and after He was born, we all saw God any time we saw Christ.  Throughout His life, the Savior revealed God as the one who loves sinners, but hates sin; as the one who welcomes those who wander away, but condemns those who make obstacles to repentance; as the one who heals the sick with tenderness, but casts out vendors from the Temple; as the one who dies for our sins, but rises on the third day because death cannot cancel out life.  God does not hide himself, but reveals Himself, so that we can access salvation.
    Though not my favorite season of “Yellowstone,” this, what I believe to be, final season draws people in by allowing them to know what remains hidden from the characters in the show, at least at first.  Through our upcoming celebration of our Lord’s birth, may we rejoice at the revelation that had remained hidden, only suggested and pointed to from afar by the prophets, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.