Already But Not Yet: Our Advent Dinner

On Saturday night, Father Jeff Calia, C.O., gave a wonderful homily about what it means to be a Christian. We are the "already and not yet" people; we commemorate the resurrection of Christ and yet, we are still waiting to meet Him face to face. And this, to me, is how we should live: understanding the  Kingdom of God is here and now and also has not yet happened.  We live in the world, but are not of the world. We inhabit that paradox.

I did a little googling about this "Already but Not Yet"  idea and found a blog post by theologian Greg Boyd. I am not a theologian and I haven't explored all the ways his thoughts differ and are similar to Catholic thought. But I did like what he says here.

We’re sort of a microcosm of the cosmos. It is true that we are entangled with Christ, but we don’t yet see this truth perfectly manifested in our life. Our task, however, is to yield to the Spirit and manifest as much of this truth now as we possibly can. We are to be the “already” in the midst of the “not yet. "We’re to put on display, as much as possible, what heaven will look like when it finally comes. And we do this by first envisioning ourselves as we truly are, taking every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5) and by then living our lives in accordance with who we truly are, as much as possible. 

Tonight we welcomed a couple to our First Sunday of Advent dinner. The wife, who works with Greg, and her husband brought their month-old daughter, their family menorah and a bottle of white wine. It was the perfect way to complete this day, with their family menorah and our family Advent candles lighting our shared table.