1ST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
This Sunday we begin the church’s new year as we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent. At the beginning of the Liturgy we bless the Advent Wreath and light the first purple candle we also place the first symbols on the Jesse Tree. In the secular world Advent seems to begin the season of Christmas and the measuring of Christmas-time profits in the business sections of our newspapers. We will hear happy, silly jingles in stores and malls. While at church, this season’s sounds will be different sober hymns and Scriptures, that help us “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Though the vestments are purple and there is a certain penitential feel running through the next few weeks there is also a sense of joyful expectation as we await the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. The main theme for our readings this Sunday is waiting and watching in hope. Hope is the basis for a watchful and vigilant spirit.
In our anticipation for the Lord’s coming, we hope that our faith will help reveal the Kingdom and prepare others as well as ourselves for eternity. Our efforts alone will not bring about the Kingdom, but, God, acting through us, will reveal the Kingdom. Blessed John Henry Newman reminds us in a homily for the Advent Season: “Advent is a time of waiting, it is a time of joy because the coming of Christ is not only a gift of grace and salvation but it is also a time of commitment because it motivates us to live the present as a time of responsibility and vigilance. This ‘vigilance’ means the urgency of an industrious, living ‘wait’. To make all this happen, then we need to wake up, as we are warned in the Gospel reading to stay awake for we do not know when the master will return. Advent poses some basic questions to us today: do we still trust that God is in charge, is faithful to us and will finally draw us into a loving and lasting embrace?
The Advent liturgies and scriptural texts encourage us to trust in God. They keep our hope alive, despite national and international headlines of gloom and doom and closer to home reports of family arguments and break ups and many other things. Advent doesn’t look back to a former time when things seemed better. Advent really is the time to look forward. What do we have to look forward to? We look forward to the birth of Jesus the son of God, the child in the Manger who is the light in the darkness of our world and our lives. I hope that at the end of this Advent when Jesus arrives at Christmas he wont be the stranger in the Manger but a welcome friend for all of us.
Fullerton T 