“The Lord is nigh”: sermon on Gaudete Sunday

By a Dominican Friar   |   10 December 2025

“Let your modesty be known to all men. The Lord is nigh.”

How are we to interpret these words of St Paul, that “the Lord is nigh”, or as they are also sometimes translated, “the Lord is close”, or, “at hand”? St Bernard of Clairvaux famously spoke of “the three comings of Jesus Christ”. These are His coming as a child, His coming by grace, and His coming as judge at the end of time. To each of these three comings, St Paul’s words, “the Lord is nigh”, may be applied.

First of all, our Lord’s coming as a child, when He was born in Bethlehem of the Virgin. This coming is nigh, or close, because we are already at the third Sunday of Advent. It is called Gaudete Sunday, that is, “Rejoice” Sunday, from the first word of today’s introit. It is a good thing that each year we set aside a season to think especially of this stupendous fact that the eternal Word of God, through whom all things were made, became a child for us. But remember, as Blessed Columba Marmion used to say, when the liturgy recalls the mysteries of Christ, one after another, it does not simply cause us to remember past events. No, the different graces that Jesus merited for us in the different mysteries of His life are made available to us more abundantly, precisely as we honour these mysteries in their proper time. What was the particular grace that Christ merited for us by being born as a child in Bethlehem, and that we should seek during Advent? I think it is the grace for us ourselves “to be converted and become as little children — without doing which, as He once told the twelve apostles, no one ever enters the kingdom of heaven.

That is the first of the three comings of which St Bernard spoke, Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, twenty centuries and more ago. What is the second one? It is Christ’s birth in our soul. This is what we call His coming by grace. In this way, too, “the Lord is nigh”. In fact in this way, He is not only close but, I hope, already here. For by sanctifying grace, the three divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, really come and dwell in our soul. We sometimes forget that just as our Lord’s body is present in the Sacrament of the altar, so too the Blessed Trinity, albeit in a different way, is truly present in every faithful soul. 

How is this miracle brought about, by which the three divine Persons come and dwell within us? By baptism. Not the baptism of St John the Baptist, of which we hear today. That was important, but it was only a preparation for Christ’s baptism; it was more like a sacramental than a sacrament. That is why St John humbles himself so profoundly when questioned by the priests and Levites from Jerusalem, and says to them about our Lord, “I am not worthy to loose the latchet of His shoe”. St John could prophesy, but he knew that unlike Christ, he could not put the Holy Spirit into the hearts of those whom he baptised.

Those, then, are two of Christ’s comings: His birth in Bethlehem, and His coming by grace into our soul, through baptism. What is the third one? It is His return in glory at the end of time. “He will come again to judge the living and the dead”. A young woman asked me recently whether I thought that the return of Christ was near. I answered that I thought it was closer today than it had ever been. It took her only a moment or two to protest that that has always been true, ever since the Ascension … She was right, of course, but as well as parrying her question I was also making a serious point. Since in comparison to eternity, all time is brief, and so, although we “do not know the day or the hour”, we do well to think of Christ’s return as something very close.

So, finally, that also is a grace that we can ask for during Advent: to realise vividly that the day is coming when the world as we know it will be turned upside down, when no earthly status or accomplishment will count for anything. All that will matter on that day is whether we loved God and tried to do His will. That is why we need “be nothing solicitous; the Lord is nigh”.