Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for someone else? Ask John’s disciples of Jesus. What a strange question: we might as well say are you what has not yet happened, or should we wait for something else? Which is perhaps why Jesus responds by point to what is happening now. Don’t look to some other time or place, instead, look around you.

The Collect of this Sunday’s Mass is about the same thing. It starts with God seeing us patiently waiting to celebrate the feast of the Nativity. Note that it’s the feast we are waiting for, the Nativity happen long ago and happens all around us. We are waiting to celebrate it and in the prayer we ask that we can gain the joys that come with marking such a moment, immersing ourselves in it, joys that are in our world now and which we ask may always be with us. With us in our heats and with us in our solemn worship.

That’s what liturgy does; we are brought together so that we can outwardly express and experience in solemn prayer the joy that is in our hearts because we know that the Nativity has happened. That celebration is still a couple of weeks away, so we mark having got half way through Advent, our time of getting ready, both within and without, to celebrate what God has already done.

Not much of this is noticed in our pond. The carp have slipped into their winter slow down, patiently waiting until their next meal comes along, in April. And God sees them too and the glory he has given them, just as he sees us and our glory in responding to him.