Advent warnings

The collect for today, the second Sunday of Advent, speaks of warnings:

"Give us grace to heed their [the prophets] warnings ..." (BCP, Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent)

We (all of us?) are not very good at heeding these kinds of warnings.  For many people, I suspect, the word "warning" does not mean anything at all; it does not even register.  For some others, it causes a slight twinge of embarrassment, for even fewer, a vague feeling of guilt.

Thomas Cranmer from Wikimedia Commons

I am reminded of some striking words from the Homilies of Thomas Cranmer:

"But when he withdraweth from vs his Word, the right doctrine of Christ, his gracious assistance and ayde (which is euer ioyned to his word) and leauth vs to our own wit, our owne will and strength: he declareth then, that he beginneth to forsake vs." from the "Homily on the Declining from God," from Homilies by Thomas Cranmer, Oxford City Press, 2010 with preface from 1562.

First the wrath; then the turning away, the hiding of the face.  I have underlined a rather significant phrase from Archbishop Cranmer.  How deaf to warnings are we now that we consider these things (our own wit, will, and strength) to be virtues and not vain, and even damning illusions.