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With apologies to the faithful Flannery O’Connor and with no apologies whatsoever to the weirdo Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Advent could be summarized as “everything that rises must converge.”
Within the rhythm of the Advent season, the 4th Sunday stands as a moment of concentration and convergence. From the beginning, the season forms the faithful by directing attention toward the Lord’s coming in glory. The Collect of the 1st Sunday, marked by the urgent, rousing imperative Excita, asks that God would stir the wills of His people so that they may be prepared through worthy works. Isaiah dominates this opening stage of Advent, giving voice to watchfulness, longing, and expectation shaped by the horizon of judgment.
The 2nd Sunday continues this movement with greater specificity. Another Excita prayer now acknowledges that human sin obstructs the Lord’s approach and entangles the path by which He comes. Isaiah’s call to readiness is taken up by John the Baptist, whose preaching of repentance translates prophetic hope into concrete moral demand. Preparation requires real conversion, an active clearing of what impedes the coming of the Lord.
The 3rd Sunday introduces a note of joy rooted in proximity. Isaiah’s promise of consolation remains present, while John continues to occupy the Gospel, situating joy within vigilance and penance. As Pius Parsch observes, the liturgy of “Gaudete Sunday” allows this restrained rejoicing to strengthen perseverance as the goal draws near. The nearness of the Lord becomes a source of confidence and encouragement within continued penitential preparation. Isaiah urges us in the Communion Antiphon with longing that righteousness would descend from Heaven:
Dicite: pusillanimes, confortamini et nolite timere: ecce, Deus noster veniet et salvabit nos…. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, fear not! Behold your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God’ (Is 35:4).
The 4th Sunday gathers Isaiah, John, and Mary into a single, intensified focus. In the Gospel the Baptist still commands readiness and straight paths. Isaiah still gives voice to yearning and promise. Yet the Blessed Virgin Mary now stands at the center through the Offertory chant Ave Maria, gratia plena.
Pius Parsch describes the 4th Sunday as a kind of liturgical summation. As Ildefonso Schuster notes, the Roman liturgy holds together the expectation of the Lord’s return and the contemplation of His historical coming. Mary’s obedient receptivity reveals the form that final Advent preparation takes. Standing at the threshold of the Nativity, the Church learns that watchfulness, repentance, and joy find their fulfillment in humble consent to the coming Lord, whose first advent already opens onto His definitive visitatio in glory.
The Gospel proclaimed on the 4th Sunday of Advent in the 1962 Missale Romanum situates the advent of God’s saving action within a dense convergence of time, authority, and expectation. St. Luke anchors the emergence of John the Baptist in history by assembling a catalogue of rulers and offices whose periods of power overlap imperfectly but decisively.
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysani-as tetrarch of Abilene, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Ca?iaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness… (Luke 3:1–2)
The Word of God entered a world governed by anxious men, some cruel, some compromised, all inadequate to satisfy the deep longing of Israel. The Gospel insists that salvation unfolded in real time, amid political oppression and religious tension, when hope for the Messiah burned fiercely in popular imagination.
Luke’s point is also historical veracity. This really happened. It is not like the pagan fables of the gods. The names of the figures he cites overlap like in a Venn Diagram to pinpoint when it occurred.
Advent’s great herald John appears not in the palaces of power but in the wilderness, preaching and baptizing at the Jordan. Luke identifies his message explicitly with Isaiah:
As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God’ (Luke 3:4–6).
Luke quotes Isaiah 40:3–5, and his audience would have heard far more than poetic imagery. In fact, modern Bibles indent the text because of its poetic quality.
John stands at the Jordan where the twelve tribes once crossed into the Promised Land. The geographical reference evokes Exodus and entry, deliverance and fulfillment. Isaiah’s language points backward and forward at once. It recalls the first Exodus and announces a new one. John’s proclamation therefore signals not only the arrival of a prophet like Elijah, whom Christ Himself identifies as the expected precursor (cf. Matthew 11:14), but also the approach of a new Moses. The imagery would have suggested to Jewish hearers the reunification of Israel, the healing of exile, and the restoration of what had been lost. This is intensified by the Book of Baruch, often described as an appendix or companion to Isaiah. Baruch declares:
For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. The woods and every fragrant tree have shaded Israel at God’s command. For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him (Baruch 5:7–9).
The imagery of shaded woods and fragrant trees reaches beyond political restoration. It gestures toward Eden, the garden lost through sin and promised again through redemption. Isaiah himself, in chapters 11 and 65, offers visions of a renewed creation where harmony replaces violence and fear. “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb” (Isaiah 11:6). These prophetic glimpses point to the one who comes as new Adam, restorer of paradise, even as He comes as new Moses leading a new Exodus into a renewed Promised Land.
The Church, however, does not confine these texts to distant horizons. From the earliest centuries, the Fathers pressed Isaiah’s road inward, reading the terrain of prophecy as the interior landscape of the soul. Origen interprets the “way” of the Lord as the disposition of the heart that must be made straight if God is to enter and reign (cf. Origen, Homiliae in Isaiam). Valleys signify attachment to lower things and timid fear that clings to the earth. Mountains signify pride and self-exaltation. Crooked paths represent duplicity and hypocrisy. Rough ways point to disordered passions and irascibility.
John’s preaching opened hearts then by calling Israel to repentance. It continues to open hearts now by exposing what obstructs the Lord’s coming.
The Mass formulary of the 4th Sunday of Advent reinforces this urgency through its very composition. Historically, this Sunday did not originally possess its own set of proper texts in Rome. Ember Saturday’s vigil and ordinations extended into Sunday morning, so that the liturgical weight fell on the Ember Days themselves. When a distinct Sunday Mass was eventually assembled, it drew heavily from those Ember texts. The result is a sense of recapitulation and haste, as though the Church gathers together everything Advent has been saying and presses it upon the faithful one last time before Christmas.
The Introit gives Isaiah pride of place:
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum; aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem … Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may sprout forth (Isaiah 45:8).
The Vulgate personifies both righteousness and salvation, presenting them as the Just One and the Savior. The imagery is gentle and humble, invoking the tender shoot emerging from the soil. Yet the Psalm verse that follows lifts the gaze dramatically:
Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei, et opera manuum eius annuntiat firmamentum… The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork (Psalm 18:1).
The following verses of Ps 18, which we are meant by the Church to consider when we receive the “shorthand” of an antiphon, speak of a wordless proclamation that reaches to the ends of the earth and liken the sun to a bridegroom running his course with joy (Psalm 18:1–6). Advent thus holds together humility and majesty, dew and fire, first coming and final manifestation.
The Gospel voice of John the Baptist booms at the center of this convergence. His command, “Parate viam Domini,” is an invitation as well as a warning. When the Lord comes, He will come by the straight path. If that path has not been prepared, He will prepare it Himself.
Isaiah 11, read two days before on Ember Friday, leaves no doubt about the character of the final advent: “Et percutiet terram virga oris sui, et spiritu labiorum suorum interficiet impium … He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4).
Advent joy is therefore penitential joy. Joy rejoices because salvation draws near. Joy trembles because nearness means judgment.
The Offertory this Sunday introduces the third great Advent figure with the words of the Archangel Gabriel:
Ave Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tecum; benedicta tu in mulieribus… Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women (Luke 1:28).
By the Offertory, the faithful have been led from longing to repentance to receptive obedience. Mary’s “Fiat” is not sung, but – by design, because antiphons are pointers not stop signs – we cannot help but hear it resounds interiorly: our hearts complete the incomplete scene:
Ecce ancilla Domini; fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum … Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word (Luke 1:38).
The dialogue between annunciating angel and the annunciate Virgin of the Mass’s Offertory Antiphon recounts the “offertory” before of the coming down of the Son to the ark-altar, the seat of God’s Presence, in the holy temple of Mary’s womb. The Communion Antiphon completes what the Offertory began, the conception of the Lord by the Holy Spirit like the descent to the altar of your church at the consecration in the Mass: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and a bear a son…” (Is 7:14).
The Collect, another stirring “Excita, quaesumus, Domine” gathers all these themes into a single, urgent plea.
Excita, quaesumus, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni;
et magna nobis virtute succurre;
ut, per auxilium gratiae tuae,
quod nostra peccata praepediunt,
indulgentia tuae propitiationis acceleret.
The verb praepediunt is vivid. It means to entangle the feet, to place an obstacle before the step. Advent is filled with verbs of movement, coming, running, hastening. Sin obstructs that movement.
The paratactic construction, with its repeated et … et, reinforces the sense of speed and compression. The prayer moves rapidly, almost breathlessly, mirroring the Church’s awareness that time is short and the advent of the Lord is close at hand.
LITERAL VERSION:
Rouse up your power, O Lord, we beseech you, and come;
and with your great might hasten to help us,
so that, through the help of your grace,
what our sins hinder
the indulgence of your merciful favor may hasten.
The apodosis (the “result, outcome” part) of this Collect is particularly striking, since it contains more than the expected response to the protasis (the “intro, proposal” part). Alongside the initial petition, a third imperative – succurre – is introduced, so that the prayer unfolds through three commands rather than two. Nowhere else among the Sunday Collects does this accumulation of imperatives occur! On the final Sunday before the celebration of the Lord’s Coming, the Church intensifies her appeal, conscious of the danger that the fullness of grace might pass us by. She therefore multiplies her petitions, giving voice to urgency through deliberate variation. The petition succurre clarifies the intention of excita and veni. The stirring of divine power and the coming of the Lord are directed toward concrete assistance for those who call upon Him.
The prayer refuses abstraction. Preparation requires action. Examination of conscience, confession, penance, works of mercy. Gardeners prepare soil, athletes clear their field, war fighters prepare their gear and drill, even golfers flick flecks before they putt. Christians remove obstacles from the Lord’s path.
Remember Isaiah: the Lord will come by the straightest path whether we have straightened it or not. The difference lies in whether His coming is received as peace or as correction.
The 4th Sunday of Advent thus stands us up as at a threshold. Behind us lie weeks of exhortation and promise. Before us stands the altar and the approaching feast that already contains the fire of judgment within its light. Isaiah’s longing, John’s summons, Mary’s fiat, Paul’s warning, and the Church’s prayer are rising and converging. The sentimental dimension of our Advent preparation, as prized and as legitimate as it is, must not ultimately obscure our summons to readiness, to be bright, clean, and unencumbered for the Lord who is near.