First Sunday of Advent
This weekend we begin Advent as we journey to Christmas and the birth of Jesus the Prince of Peace in Bethlehem. We bless the Advent wreath and light the first purple candle as we remember all the places where there is war and continue our prayers for peace in the world. It seems no time since we began the church year that ended last weekend with the feast of Christ the King. In the secular world out there Advent seems to begin the season of Christmas and ends with the measuring of profits in the business sections of our newspapers on Christmas eve. In churches and faith communities throughout the world this season’s sounds will be contradict all this is going on outside the with the Scriptures, liturgical banners and purple colors that tell us that we should “Prepare the way of the Lord.”
Amongst all the razzmatazz of the Christmas preparations and the madness of the shoppers on our town and city streets we stop and ask ourselves what or who are we waiting for this Advent ? Jesus the master, is coming to help us put aside all that is false in our lives and our world and rebuild our house on rock, that is the rock of faith. We remember Paul’s words “God is faithful” and he will accompany us through any change or adjustment we need to make in our lives. This is the God Isaiah evokes as he imagines us as clay to be formed by our God, “the potter,” and reminds us, “we are all the work of gods hands.” Hope is the basis for a watchful and vigilant spirit in Advent. The Lord will come. And in the blink of an eye, God will renew us, he will also renew the world. In our anticipation for the Lord’s coming, our faith will help us to reveal the Kingdom and prepare ourselves as well as others for eternity.
Our efforts alone will not bring about the Kingdom. But, God, will reveal the Kingdom through us and what we do and say. Blessed John Henry Newman reminded 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 necessity, the urgency of an industrious, living ‘wait’. To make all this happen, then we need to wake up, as we are warned by the apostle to the Gentiles, in the reading to the Romans: ‘Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed” (Rm 13:11). As we begin this advent we ask ourselves what are we waiting for? Are we waiting for the presents and razzmatazz of Christmas Day or are we preparing for the greatest gift of God, Jesus his Son, Christ the prince of peace and the light in the darkness for a broken world .
Fullerton T 