Do you ever hope that your life will have mattered; that it will amount to something important; . . . that it will be noticed?  Have you ever yearned to know that your accomplishments will be such that you will be remembered . . . and not forgotten?  . . . I have.  . . . Ever since my youth I have had a kind of quiet dread of becoming lost in the anonymous obscurity of that ever flowing stream of human existence in which we swim.  . . . And so, ever since my youth I have wanted my life to have meant something more than the simple continuance of the human species.  I have wanted to be remembered by historians and scholars as someone who made a difference; . . . I have wanted my name to be remembered with affection and respect, . . . like Saint John Chrysostom for his preaching . . . or Saint Augustine of Hippo for his piety . . . or Saint Nicholas of Myra for his charity . . . or Mark Twain for his candid humor and skill at spinning a yarn.

    And because of this desire and yearning . . . every now and then I become fretful when I read that some priest of my acquaintance or some seminary classmate has been elected bishop of a diocese, . . . when my own diocese doesn’t even remember that it thoroughly rejected me.  . . . And every now and then I become fretful when I hear of a contemporary attaining the accomplishment which eludes me; . . . when I hear that their sermons or meditations have been gathered together and published and advertised . . . while my own offerings are met by publishers with polite refusal.

    . . . Every now and then I become fretful about these things, . . . but fretfulness is not good for the soul.  And so, it is good that early in Advent, we read the counsel of Saint Peter; . . . we read that

the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up.  Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons [Saint Peter asks]; . . . what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness(?)

And Peter’s counsel reminds me, in turn, of what Jesus said to us last Sunday in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 13, at the thirty-first verse:  “Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus said; . . . “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”  Suggesting that the spiritual work of Jesus and, by extension, the spiritual work of all men and women created in Christ’s Image . . . shall endure.  . . . Early in Advent we are counseled that all of our earthly works will one day be dissolved, . . . and only our spiritual works will endure.  . . . Every word ever written or recorded by any of us -- from the most stellar to the most mundane; . . . everything made by our hands; every memorial gift and cast bronze plaque bearing our name . . . will, in the fullness of Time, . . . be dissolved.  . . . Only our spiritual works -- our spoken words and our secret thoughts, down to the smallest detail -- will survive . . . and be known to God . . . and to all of Creation.  . . . It conjures up, for me, an image of standing before God on the Last Day, . . . with my angel beside me.  And my angel, that creature of pure reason; my angel will recite to God (in the hearing of all the other angels and all of humanity); . . . my angel will recite every word I ever said or thought of saying; . . . nothing will be lost.

    Can you imagine what that will be like?  I was a soldier before I was a priest.  If every word I ever said over drinks in the officers’ club or that I muttered aloud in private to myself were known(!) . . . well, so much for respect.  And if every word I ever said in confidence about people known to me . . . or every gossipy remark I have made or every word I ever conjured up in annoyance, anger, or frustration were known(!) . . . well, so much for affection.  . . . I would be burdened with fetters of shame and humiliation for all of eternity.  . . . And all of it of my own devising.

    . . . Advent is a season to remember these things.  . . . Advent is a season to remember the eternal nature of our spiritual works.  Advent is a season to acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, and to beg God to erase from the record everything in our lives that is unworthy, since He alone has power and authority to silence that which lives forever.  . . . Advent is a time to take very seriously what we pray in the Collect for Purity; . . . that the Lord God Almighty does (or shall) know all the thoughts of our hearts and that we can have no secrets that shall not be known to Him.  And because of this, Advent is a season to work for amendment of life, being careful to utter only those things which honor God and which bless and encourage everyone around us . . . and which are expressions of charity even for those who have contempt for us.  . . . And so that we might not suffer from the strain of hypocrisy (the strain of doing and saying what we do not believe) . . . Advent is a season for us to fervently pray for God’s help to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts so that we need not try to hide anything from Him, but that every word spoken by us truly exists and is the fruit of a pure heart . . . and so that every unworthy word not spoken truly does not exist . . . because we never thought of it.

    Advent is a season to do all of this for the sake of giving joy to the heart of God, . . . Who for us and for our salvation took upon Himself our humanity and was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Christmas Day.  Advent is a season to remember what Saint Peter has counseled us:  that

according to [God’s] promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.  Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.  . . . [and] knowing this beforehand, beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability.  But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.  Amen.