Come, Lord Jesus!
The Three Comings of Christ
by Timothy M. Dolan

His Coming in Mystery

Let me share with you an incident from my life that maybe will help us appreciate this coming of Christ in mystery. I really love — I confess — I really love getting Christmas cards. I enjoy sending them. During the Season of Advent, I spend a lot of time doing it. It just provides what I think is a providential opportunity to keep in touch with cherished friends, and I sure look forward to getting them.

Well, a couple of years ago I got a Christmas card with a letter inside that really moved me. I’ve kept it to this day, and I usually reread it every Advent. It was from a young fellow that I had really gotten to know well in one of the parishes where I had been assigned. He was at that time in his early years of college, and he used to often come by to visit me in the rectory. I was so impressed with his thirst for religion, with his hunger for the faith, with his desire to just find the Lord and discover what the Lord was asking him to do. He was a man on a real religious odyssey.

I left the parish, was reassigned to another place, and lost contact with him. So some years later, was I ever happy when I got this Christmas card from him, because it allowed me to rekindle our friendship.

In the letter inside his Christmas card to me he wrote:

Dear Fr. Tim,
I know it’s been years since I’ve caught up with you, but let me tell you what’s happened. You knew me well and you knew how I was always on this religious quest. Not too long after you left the parish I went out to California. I heard there was a Carthusian monastery there, one of the strictest orders of monks, and I thought, “I’m going to go there because that is really going to quench my thirst for religion, faith, and for God.”

Well, I spent a couple of months there and it didn’t work. They were sure helpful, but it didn’t work. The Carthusians recommended that maybe I ought to go with the Jesuits and make a 30-day retreat. So I did that. That helped, but it really didn’t quench my thirst. I didn’t think so, anyway.

Then I got into intense spiritual direction; it helped a little but I was still restless. Then I started to dabble in Eastern mystical religions; I thought this was the be all and end all, and that this was going to satisfy my religious hunger. I got so involved that I ended up actually going to Tibet and spending some time at a shrine, with other people who were into Eastern mystical religions, as an attempt to find and discover God’s will. But after a while that didn’t seem to help either. So then what I did was, I went back to California.

Father, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that then I really got into promiscuity, drugs, and alcohol. It was just all a mess. So finally I came to my senses and I hitchhiked home. Was I ever so scared when I walked up the sidewalk, wondering, you know, I hadn’t seen Mom and Dad for years. I hadn’t written them. They didn’t know where I was. I knocked on the door. Dad comes to the door. He looks at me. He says my name. He starts crying. He gives me a big hug. Mom runs out from the kitchen. She sees me. She starts crying. She gives me a big hug. My sister — I didn’t even know she was married — she’s there with my little nephew that I didn’t even know I had. I’m so happy to be home.

We go sit at the table. Mom has made a great meal, probably the best I’ve eaten in two or three years. We’re sitting there talking, conversing. I’m at home. I’m feeling at peace.

After supper I walked down the block to the parish church where I used to meet you — remember, Father? I kneel down in church and I’m starting to pray and I look up and I see the sanctuary lamp and I know that Our Lord is present in the tabernacle. I hear the door open in the back and I look and it’s Monsignor, the pastor that I grew up with. He greets me. I say to him, “Monsignor, would you mind hearing my confession?”

I go to confession, I make a thanksgiving, and then it dawns on me while I’m saying my prayers there in the parish church: “Lord, I’ve been searching all over the world for You, and You’ve been here the whole time. I’ve been looking for You in every exotic, faraway place in the whole world, and here You are, right at home. You’ve been here all the time, Lord, coming to me, and I didn’t recognize You.”

Now, what I propose to you is that — for this young man, my friend — that was the coming of Christ in mystery. That day — back home in his home parish, kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament after confessing his sins to the pastor — was Christmas Day for him! Christ was reborn in his heart.

You know that we believe that Christ comes to us daily. Jesus is reborn in our lives every single day in a myriad of ways if we but recognize Him with the eyes of faith.

You also know the great tragedy of that first Christmas. The Messiah’s birth went largely unnoticed. Nobody recognized Him. The world missed Him. The world passed Him by. The world ignored Him, so much so that He was actually born in a manger, in a stable. You know what? That’s not just a tragedy in history. That tragedy continues now, because Christ comes to us in mystery every day and we usually miss Him!

One of the reasons for this is that Christ comes to us in a very soft, gentle, unassuming, and everyday kind of way. He comes in a prayer whispered or a smile exchanged. He comes in bread and wine changed into His very Body and Blood at Mass. He comes in His Word in the Scripture. He comes in the cry of a baby and the countless other helpless individuals who cry out for help. He comes in the meal shared or in a tear dried. He comes in worn rosary beads and in those sacred words of absolution. He comes in forgiveness exchanged and a second chance given. He comes in water poured in baptism or vows exchanged in marriage. He comes in an imperfect Church in a struggling world.