The Psalmist teaches us that God's ways are faithfulness and love. Love frequently expresses itself in promises, and promises demand faithful fulfilment. Jeremiah speaks of God's promises to the House of Israel and the House of Judah. Those promises, however, were only further expressions of the first and basic promise that God gave us: he would send us a saviour born of a woman (Genesis 3:13). As we begin our celebration of Advent, we look back to that first promise and realise that it contains the essence of the Gospel, which gives us light and life.

A promise cannot be coerced but must be freely given. All of God's promises, particularly that first promise, were freely given: they were given through grace, and their fulfilment was also an act of grace. So "all is grace", as St. Paul says (Rom. 4:16).

Using the words of St Paul to the Thessalonians, the Church today urges us to make more and more progress in the kind of life we are meant to live the life of our baptismal promises, - the life of grace.