Homily for First Sunday of Advent – Year C
Let’s face it, it’s not always easy to be aware of God’s presence. True, God is always present to us, but we are not always present to him, not always aware of his closeness to us. The busyness of our lives, the noise in our world, the doubts and challenges we face, the knocks of life that we face, and our weaknesses and frailty, make it difficult to be continuously sensitive to God’s gentle presence to us, intent on us, loving us and guiding us.
During this season of Advent, we are invited to become more aware of the God who comes to us and is present to us in Jesus. We want to cultivate an Advent heart, that is, a heart outstretched towards the God who comes to give himself to us, a heart that is prepared to welcome our Saviour. This first part of Advent carries on the theme of the Second Coming of Jesus that we have been studying over the past few weeks as we neared the end of the liturgical year.
So, today again we are thinking about the return of Christ and the Final Judgement. Again, this Sunday the readings show us Jesus as the King, the Son of David, and the Son of God, who will come to bring human history to its conclusion. During this liturgical season we recall God’s promise of salvation to the people of Israel and the beginning of its fulfilment with the birth of Jesus, which we will celebrate at Christmas.
The longing of the people of Israel for the coming of the Messiah can be our own longing now. To foster this longing for his coming to us, is what Advent is all about. This longing for salvation and the fulfilment of the promises of God is beautifully summed up in the first reading today from the prophet Jeremiah. Through Jeremiah, God promised that with the coming of the Messiah, a king in the line of David, peace would be given to the people of God, who are referred to as Jerusalem. We, the Jerusalem of God, have been given the righteousness of God. In the “righteous branch for David,” we as Christians see Jesus as the Messiah and Lord. He is the one who saves us and makes us righteous through the forgiveness of sins.
But Advent is not just a celebration of the coming of Jesus in the past, 2000 years ago, as promised by the prophets like Jeremiah. Advent looks forward to a second coming of Jesus in the future. We are waiting for the fullness of salvation at his second coming. The Gospel reading, in typical apocalyptic language presents the second coming in dramatic images and events. The challenge of today’s Gospel is to be ready, to be vigilant, to be prepared.
These kinds of passages are not meant to paralyse us with fear. Vigilance or readiness is not the same as fear or anxiety. These Scripture passages are meant to goad us into action. They tell us that life is a beautiful, but serious matter and we have no business taking it for granted or squandering the time given to us. The vigilance that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel today means being aware of threats from outside, around us, but also aware of the weaknesses within ourselves.
Our attentiveness, preparedness and readiness will mean that we will not lose track of the meaning and purpose of our earthly lives. We will not get so immersed in the ordinary events of our human lives that we become dull to the presence of God in those ordinary things. We must learn to see rightly, to recognise the priority of God in all things. Our readiness will mean that we realise that we are made for eternity. We are not just physical beings having a spiritual experience; rather we are spiritual beings having a bodily experience.
In Advent we are invited to prepare ourselves for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ; and it is the nature of this liturgical season that as we are preparing ourselves to celebrate this feast, we are at the same time preparing ourselves for the reality of the second coming of Jesus.
How then do we prepare ourselves? One way is to reflect on our own need for the Messiah, for the Saviour.The key words which we will hear during this time and especially at Christmas, are salvation, saviour, and forgiveness. They will occur over and over again in the readings and prayers. To develop this sense of longing we need to reflect on our need for salvation, and hence a saviour. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of our Saviour. To know him as such, we need to understand ourselves in terms of needing salvation. When we have understood and reflected on our need for salvation, we will be able to look forward to our salvation as it is wrapped up in the birth of this little child at Christmas.
We human beings are not sufficient in and of ourselves. We need outside help. We cannot go it alone. There are forces and events of life that are beyond our control. We cry to God for help. We need God. A powerful image of this is when Pope St John Paul returned to visit his home country of Poland after his election as pope in 1979. In defiance of the communist government, at an outdoor Mass, the massive crowd of two to three million people began to chant, “We want God! We want God! We want God!” It was the beginning of the end of communism in Poland and the whole of eastern Europe and Russia.
A day will come when we must stand before Jesus, the Son of Man, coming in power. There will be no turning back. We will simply find ourselves standing before Jesus, face to face. We will stand before the One whose very name, Christ, we took on in baptism. It will be the Jesus in whom we profess our belief in every Sunday in the Creed. It will be the Jesus whom we have received so many times in the Eucharist.
To prepare ourselves for that meeting we would do well to take St Paul’s advice as we have it in our second reading from his First Letter to the Thessalonians. He says: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all people... may he establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.” St Paul goes on to appeal to us to make more and more progress in the kind of life that we are meant to live, the life that God wants us to live. That is a good programme of Advent preparation in itself: to live the kind of life that God wants us to live.
Today, as we start on our Advent journey, let’s take encouragement from that beautiful line in the Gospel for this Sunday, where Jesus says, “Look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” We might so easily misinterpret the meaning of Jesus’s second coming. We might be so fearful and anxious, that we fail to look up and raise our heads in hope. Think of it; what are the things that might cause us to be downcast, heads low? We might be filled with shame: shame because of our past, our mistakes, our weaknesses, our sins. Or we might be full of fear: fear of the future, fear of what might be happen to us. Or we might be downcast because of despair and hopelessness. Or we might be carrying heavy burdens of stress and worry; we might be facing impossible situations.
But Jesus tells us to look up and raise our heads, because he is coming to save us. The reason we can look up and raise our heads is that Jesus answers our shame with forgiveness and mercy. We do not have to fear; we are loved, and the Lord will never abandon us. We have cause to hope and be confident for the future. No matter what happens, the Lord loves us and will save us. Consider what God wants for us this Advent. What do we want for ourselves?
It has been said that the best way to sum up the meaning of Advent is in the word, “desire.” Consider what it is that you most deeply long for and bring that to your Advent journey. So, take courage. Look up to Jesus and keep your eyes fixed on him.
