The Forefathers Waited: Learning How to Rejoice Without Hurry
A Reflection on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers
Sunday of the Holy Forefathers (Penultimate Sunday before the Nativity) – (Colossians 3:4–11 / St. Luke 14:16–24)
Beloved in Christ,
Today the Church sets before us the Holy Forefathers as living teachers of faith, not as distant figures of ancient history. The hymns of this day do not praise them for cleverness, nor for strength, nor for success. Rather, they praise them by faith: “By faith didst Thou justify the Forefathers…”
The Forefathers were justified not because they saw the fulfillment of the promise, but because they trusted it. They lived their whole lives oriented toward a future they would not behold with their own eyes of flesh. Abraham never saw Bethlehem before his death. David lived his live having never heard the angels sing at the Nativity. Daniel waited in exile, and the Three Youths stood in the fire, armed only with trust in the unseen God.
And they did not demand that God conform to their understanding. They did not remake the faith in their own image. They did not insist that ancient truth bow to contemporary feeling.
The Church calls them blessed because they waited well, because they submitted to what was given, not to what they wished were given.
This is no small lesson for us today.
The Long Obedience of Faith
The Forefathers lived in the long season of preparation. They lived before fulfillment, before clarity, before certainty. And yet, they ordered their lives as though the promise were already true. This is why Saint Paul tells us today:
“When Christ, Who is your life, shall appear, then you also shall appear with Him in glory.”
Notice that Paul does not say if Christ appears but when. Faith does not require haste. Faith requires fidelity.
This is the very opposite of the spirit of our age, an age that cannot wait, cannot endure, cannot submit to anything beyond its own immediate desires. The modern world tells us that truth must evolve, that morality must progress, that what was revealed once for all must be continually revised according to the latest fashion of thought.
But the Forefathers teach us something else entirely: how to live faithfully within the time given to us, without grasping, without rushing, without demanding that God or His Church move according to our schedule or our sensibilities.
They did not “update” the faith. They kept it.
The Great Supper and the Tyranny of Distraction
In the Gospel today, our Lord speaks of a great supper prepared, and many invited. And yet, one by one, they excuse themselves. None of the excuses are wicked. A field must be tended. Oxen must be tested. A family must be cared for. Nothing here is sinful.
And yet, all together, these reasonable things become tragic because they crowd out the invitation.
Beloved, we live in an age of endless excuses, an age that has elevated distraction into a virtue and called it “authenticity.” The world speaks constantly of “my truth” and “my journey,” as though truth were simply a matter of personal preference. We are told to follow our hearts, to prioritize our feelings, to center our own narratives. And all of these things can, indeed, be good! But they are so only if our hearts are leading us to beauty, our feelings incline us to that which is good, and our narratives draw us unto truth. We must not let them become self-referential and self-absorbed.
This parable in today’s Gospel speaks quietly but sharply to our own moment. We live in a world that rushes headlong toward Christmas, celebrates it briefly, and then immediately moves on. Once December 26 arrives, the decorations come down, the songs are silenced, and the world returns to its ordinary concerns… or worse, to its manufactured controversies and its liturgy of outrage.
The problem is not that the world celebrates. The problem is that the world does not remain. It cannot remain, because it has no foundation. It builds on sand, on sentiment, on fashion, on the shifting consensus of the moment.
Preparing, Entering, and Staying
The Christian life moves in the opposite direction. We prepare slowly. We enter reverently. And then we abide.
We fast before the feast. We keep watch before the joy. And when the Nativity arrives, we do not discard it, we dwell in it.
This is a scandal to the modern mind, which cannot conceive of discipline as anything other than oppression, or of fasting as anything other than self-harm. The pseudo-therapeutic culture tells us to affirm ourselves constantly, to never deny ourselves anything, to treat every impulse as sacred and every boundary as violence.
But the Church teaches us something the world has forgotten: joy is not something to be consumed quickly and then thrown away. Joy must be received, guarded, and allowed to deepen. True joy requires preparation. It requires the death of the old man. It requires us to become something other than what we are.
This is why the Church gives us not a single day, but a season. Not a moment, but a rhythm. Not a celebration of ourselves, but a preparation to receive Another.
Still Room at the Table
At the end of the parable, the servant returns and says, “Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.” These words could be written over the doors of the Church during this season.
There is still room.
Still room for the weary. Still room for the distracted. Still room for those who arrive late. Still room for those who were too busy before. Still room for those who have been deceived by the spirit of the age. Still room for those who have bowed to the idols of self. Still room for those who have believed the lies of false progress and want to return to the ancient paths.
The Forefathers waited in faith. And because they waited well, we now know how to rejoice without hurry.
May we learn from them not merely how to keep a fast, but how to keep the faith. Not merely how to resist the world’s timeline, but how to resist the world’s gospel. Not merely how to prepare for a feast, but how to stand firm when all around us bends and breaks.
May we keep our hearts open, our joy patient, our hope alive, and our confession unwavering.
To Christ our God be glory, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
28 December 2025