1st. Sunday of Advent (A)
(Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44)
I ask you as disciples of Jesus to do this because it is so
easy for people to live through their whole life and, when it comes to an end,
find themselves not only surprised -- the years having passed like a dream, as
the poet puts it – but also quite unprepared for what awaits them. That is why, in God’s Providence, the
Church’s liturgy has periods of preparation – Advent and Lent -- that recur
annually and thereby remind us: “Look, another year has gone by! How many more do you think you have? You need to prepare yourself for what might
soon be coming.”
Today’s readings serve that purpose by reminding us of the
ultimate significance of our life here on earth and how supremely important it
is for us to make good use of the time at our disposal. These readings have two main themes: first of
all, they evoke the joy of pilgrims going up to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer
sacrifice and praise in the hope and expectation of messianic times to
come.
Come, and let us go up to
the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us
His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.
In those words from the prophet Isaiah we can sense the excitement and anticipation of those pilgrims journeying to meet Him Who, they believed would guide them and their people along the way of salvation.
And then, in our Gospel reading, Our blessed Lord tells us
of the need to be well and truly prepared for that final, solemn, meeting with
the Himself when He comes, as Son of Man in heavenly glory, to judge the
nations and reward His faithful servants:
Two men will be out in the
field; one will be taken one will be left.
Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will
be left. Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know (when) the Lord will
come.
Surely our Christian faith and expectation should stir up
in us -- who today are living in a war-besmirched and fear-oppressed world -- a
similar confidence and determination as that which filled the hearts and minds
of those ancient pilgrims in Israel who, as they walked along, encouraged each other with those words of exhortation:
Come,
house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.
As Christians, and above all as Catholics, we are, as St.
Peter said, a privileged People: for we have already -- in a far truer sense
than those pilgrims could ever have imagined for themselves -- reached Jerusalem,
the dwelling-place of the Most-High, because we have the privilege of being
children of Mother Church, and in her, the letter to the Hebrews (12:22-24)
tells us:
You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.
Therefore, being so privileged, we should come -- each and
every Sunday -- with even greater joy and expectation to the house of the Lord,
(Who) will
teach us His ways, (that we may) walk in His paths.
The Jerusalem which Isaiah foresaw was a figure of Mother
Church, where the faithful disciples of Jesus already enjoy a share in heavenly
life, and are being continually guided, by her liturgy and sacraments, towards
the fullness of Christian maturity that will ultimately enable them to attain
the celestial Jerusalem and there join the
assembly gathered there -- the Church of the righteous made perfect -- as fully living members of the Body
of Christ, children of God in the only-begotten Son, able to be presented to,
and stand in the presence of, Him Who is
the God and Father of us all.
Let us then pray wholeheartedly that we may learn the ways
of the Lord and come to walk in His paths in accordance with the second theme
of our readings today:
Stay awake! For you do not know on what day your Lord
will come;
for, not only do we not know the day of the Lord’s coming,
but we have even been warned, quite explicitly, that it will take place when we
least expect it:
The Son of Man is coming
at an hour you do not expect.
That final advent of the Lord will, indeed, be the supreme
moment of faith, with no further time to pretend!!
St. Paul, that most faithful apostle of the Lord Jesus, explains what this means and how we should set about doing what Jesus requires of us in preparation for that meeting:
Our salvation is nearer
than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.
Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour
of light. Let us walk properly, as in
the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in
strife and envy. But put on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil its lusts.
We human beings are creatures of habit: we can do something
one way, and then, by repetition, allow it to become first of all a tendency
for us, and then finally develop into a firmly fixed habit that we do almost
instinctively. Now, in God’s Providence,
the liturgy of Mother Church each year invites, indeed, urges us, to observe
Advent as preparation for the celebration of Christmas, the birth of Christ;
just as she also gives us Lent to prepare for the Passion, Death and Resurrection
of Our Lord. And she does this because,
without repeated observance of such seasons of preparation, we might easily
drift into a habit of unthinking observance of feasts of great moment
for the Spirit at work in our lives, instead of establishing a truly Christian habit
of preparation that will enable us to appreciate, celebrate, and profit from,
the enduring goodness of the Lord.
Consequently, People of God, I urge you to use this Advent well: try to form a habit of welcoming the Lord into your life. We have a month in which to start a new habit, or in which to strengthen a habit we have already been trying to build up over several, perhaps many, years. The whole point is that if we do not have a habit of recognizing, welcoming, and gratefully responding to Jesus, a habit diligently practised and firmly established over years of observing the Advent preparation for Christmas, then when He comes, unexpectedly, at the end of our days, we might find ourselves unable to welcome Him. Be sure, People of God, one cannot live a forgetful life and then, when suddenly challenged, come out with the right response or show the right attitude. His coming at the end will be quite unexpected, there will be no time to collect our thoughts and weigh up what should be our attitude; we will find ourselves responding instinctively, at that unprepared moment, either in accordance with the character we have carefully built up by faithful devotion over the years, or with an attitude thoughtlessly allowed to develop over years of selfish, careless, and faithless living. And that response will, for better or for worse, prove to be our final response and our last opportunity: a violent person, under pressure, will always react violently; a weak-willed person, under threat, will always be craven; a faithless disciple will always prove himself a hypocrite. No wonder Jesus said:
Blessed is that servant
whom his master finds doing (right) when he comes.
Recognize yourselves, People of God: sudden trials, sudden
and unexpected threats, leave us neither the time nor the ability to act in an
unaccustomed manner: to be found doing the Master's will when He comes, we need
to have seriously formed good habits and the right instinctive attitudes. Advent is an opportunity given us by Mother
Church to try to establish the supremely good habit of recognizing and welcoming
the Lord into our lives this Christmas.
Therefore, the way we prepare during the course of this Advent could be
the mirror image of our state of preparedness when He comes – suddenly -- to
settle accounts with each of us personally at the end of our time of
preparation and formation in Mother Church.
God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God;
the Psalmist tells us (53:3); and, most deliberately, the
same Psalmist (53:4), immediately assures us that God found none:
Every one of them has
turned aside; there is none who does good, no, not one. They do not call upon God.
That was the situation, even in Israel, before Jesus, Our
Lord and Saviour, came to redeem us; and that is still the situation of so very
many today who turn away from, reject, Jesus.
They will not acknowledge a
transcendent God; but yet, as weak men – and of course women – they indeed need
a ‘god’ of their own making: a ‘god’ who condones power and pleasure-that-‘harms
no one’; who lauds good works redounding to doer’s praise and self-approval; a ‘god’
who delights in our moral indifference, and most generously offers and
recommends to men the option of suicide, an escape which is ever-available and
never to be questioned. Thus, deniers of Jesus and the true God, find pride
and take pleasure in their sins, while the only law they support – based on no
moral convictions other than popular approval -- inevitably fails, repeatedly, both
to give justice to the suffering and abused, and timely protection for the weak
and needy.
Those who thus rejoice in the world they have made, have
not understood the probationary nature of our life experience on earth, where
both the wonder of God’s creation – so beautiful with all its natural powers
and sublime human potential -- and the nature and depth of mankind’s spiritual needs,
seem irreconcilable for them.
So, dear People of God, use Advent to prepare to welcome Jesus fittingly: try to recognize all those occasions, both great and small, clear and only glimpsed, where truth and beauty, goodness and love, sympathy and help, power and fragility, fear and wonder, impinge on your consciousness and invite you to respond to God somehow present there, and may your Advent character of awareness, gratitude, trust, peace, and joy further Jesus’ Kingdom of faith, hope, and charity in your souls.
