Rorate: Dew, Desert, and the Return of the Judge

Fourth Sunday of Advent: when God answers the Church’s long delay with a Quiet Coming that changes everything

Chris Jackson Dec 21, 2025

“Let the Just One descend, O heavens, like dew from above.”

That line lands differently when you have lived long enough to watch men replace thunder with press releases, altars with stages, doctrine with “journeys,” and apostolic gravity with a perpetual pastoral smile.

We are not the first Catholics to feel the sky has turned to brass. Advent itself presumes the experience of delay. It trains the soul to keep begging Heaven to open, even when the earth looks sealed.

Christian impatience, you know.

Today’s Mass does something bracing: it refuses to flatter our impatience. . . . gives us dew, not fireworks.

A voice in the desert, not a committee statement. A steward who fears the Lord’s judgment, not a “synodal” manager who fears headlines. It gives us the Church’s true hope, which is never “things will probably improve,” but rather: the Lord is coming, and He will set things right.

Oh yes. We are convinced of that.

The Introit is juridical and royal. “Rorate caeli desuper… Let the Just One descend.”

Neither therapist nor facilitator. The Just One. The One who does not negotiate with reality and cannot be bribed by modernity. The One whose justice is not cruelty, because it is married to truth.

The way things are. Relax, fellow. Buy into it, OK?

But notice the manner. Dew. Gentle rain. A quiet descent that still breaks the hardest ground.

That is already a correction to our age, which has trained Catholics to look for the kingdom in volume: the bigger event, the bigger platform, the bigger “moment.”

God enters history like dew. He does not need the Church’s marketing department to accomplish His Incarnation.

Again. Buy this. Make it your own. It’s you and God, yes. You can count on it. He knows all about you. Believe Him. Trust Him. Respect Him. Faith, Hope, Charity.

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