Late Rain

A Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Advent (Gaudete)

“See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.”

Dry season after dry season, you watch, you wait, you wonder. You remember the early rain. A nostalgia stirs your heart. You recall how it came in torrents which flooded your life with possibility and potential. The rains that came and convinced you that this life was somehow endless, stretching out like an ocean against a horizon that seemed so far away, so untouchable.

But now, suddenly, that once-seemingly distant horizon confronts you. Now you can touch it. The distance has shrunk. The early rain has waned and now you wait. Now you wait for the Late Rain.

It comes. It comes unbidden. It comes perhaps unforeseen. It seems nothing like the early rain with its bombast and its invitation to self-assertion, self-assurance, maybe even self-centeredness? The Late Rain comes as a good gentle joy, with a fierceness of love that will even pierce through death. It awakens a generativity in you that generates a fire in you that doesn’t scorch but simplifies, warms and enlivens. it turns you outward. If the early rain came in soaking sheets the Late Rain comes as a gentle, relentless shower. Nurturing, but it does not erode the ground on which you stand. Waters, but doesn’t wash out the man or woman you’ve become.

Dry season after dry season we watch, we wait, we wonder. And then comes the Late Rain and what was complicated becomes simple; what was fractured becomes healed; what was fragmented becomes whole. You are still you (“warts and all” as they say) but you are you as you were always meant to be, relentlessly remaining beyond the vicissitudes of life and the undeniable reality of death. Standing fast amid the vitriol of violent voices revealing (reveling in) a more vapid way of life.

“What did you go out to see?” What did you go out to see? Grass and flowers blowing in the wind? Or did you go out to see how the least has always been the greater?

We all know the early rain. It comes to ramp up a life, but by its nature it dissipates. The grass it watered, that grew so lush, lightly lingers then withers into straw. The flower it bloomed droops its head and wilts. So much beauty that had its place but must be replaced. The Late Rain roots and raises a more bountiful if not heart-breaking beauty that remains.

“Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

The Late Rain comes now. Not as a deluge but as a satiating source of the insatiable longing at the depths of our hearts. We begin to see: this flesh… in this flesh… the Glory of the Lord is revealed. That grass carpeted a life with a seemingly endless promise. Those flowers blooming so brilliant and fragrant made a promise they could never keep. But rather here now, in this one-time-place-of-shame now revealed as a place of honor: Flesh, fragile, frail, and utterly lit up by divine light is transformed by the Late Rain into a Life bigger than we’ll ever fully be able to live; into a beauty that was always ours. The beauty that saves us. The Beauty that saves the world. (Dostoevsky)

Dry season after dry season we watch, we wait, we wonder. The Late Rain comes. Living becomes dwelling. Aliveness becomes abiding… and we realize we are something that can never be lost. We are the Glory of the Lord!

“See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the LATE RAIN!”