1st Sunday of Advent
Nov. 30, 2014
Preface
Collect
St. Ursula, Mt. Vernon, N.Y.
On the last 2 Sundays, we closed out the
liturgical year with 2 of Jesus’ parables of judgment, the parable of the
talents and the parable of the separation of the sheep and the goats. Jesus was addressing us about how to prepare
for his return. We begin a new
liturgical year today with 2 readings advising us to be watchful and ready for
the Master’s return, and a 1st reading beseeching him to come quickly and
deliver us. The liturgy rolls over
smoothly from one year to the next, from one season to the next. The Collect today links today with last
Sunday’s parable (Matt 25:31-46); we prayed that God’s faithful people might be
“gathered at [Christ’s] right hand,” an obvious allusion to the sheep at the
king’s right hand in that parable.
With the new liturgical year, we also begin
a new cycle of Scripture readings. The
cycle is labeled the “B Cycle,” not that that matters. What will matter is that this year—with the
exception of the Easter season and a few weeks in mid-summer, our Sunday readings
come from St. Mark’s Gospel. You may
have noticed that a few minutes ago.
(One of the best things that came out of
all the liturgical changes after the 2d Vatican Council is the broadening of
our weekly exposure to the Bible brought by a 3-year cycle of readings instead
of a 1-year cycle, besides having distinct weekday readings for the 1st time
ever, and hearing 3 readings on Sundays and major feastdays instead of 2, as
had always been the case. Most of you,
like me, are old enuf to remember when we heard the same gospel readings year
after year, and if you went to a weekday Mass you often heard the Sunday gospel
yet again.)
In a little while you’ll hear this text
proclaimed: “Christ our Lord assumed at
his first coming the lowliness of human flesh, … that, when he comes again in
glory and majesty …, we who watch for that day may inherit the great promise in
which now we dare to hope” (Preface).
Those words come from the 1st Preface of
Advent, which we use from the 1st Sunday of Advent till Dec. 16. It speaks of the 2 comings of Christ to which
we look in this season—the season of Advent, which (most of you know) is a word
that means “coming.” One coming of Christ
we celebrate as a past, historical event that has vital meaning for us yet
today; one coming of Christ we anticipate with eagerness because it hasn’t
happened yet, and the meaning of his 1st coming will be incomplete until it
does happen.
We speak of these 2 comings of Christ every
time we profess the Creed at Mass, at the beginning of the Rosary, or whenever
else: “For us men and for our salvation,
he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin
Mary, and became man”—that of course is his 1st coming; and “He will come again
in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no
end”—that’s his 2d coming.
Thus Advent for us Christians isn’t the
season of shopping and baking and singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” It is, rather, the season for getting
ourselves ready to welcome our Savior. Until
Dec. 24, we sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” rather than “Silent Night.” We’re on a totally different wave-length than
the secular world, which celebrates the season of spending and entertainment
ratings and couldn’t care less about either Christ’s 1st coming or his 2d.
You notice that the liturgical color has
turned from green to violet. Advent’s
beginnings back in the late Roman era and the early medieval period aren’t
entirely clear, but it seems to have adopted, early on, a penitential
character, not quite as severe as Lent’s.
Hence the use of violet. At one
time there was also fasting on certain days, most notably Christmas Eve, which
was also a day of abstinence—hence the Italian custom of eating fish on Dec.
24.
A certain atmosphere of penance is in
order, of course, as we contemplate Christ’s “coming again in glory and
majesty” and “everything at last being made manifest”: our virtues and our sins will be made
manifest, as well as “the design [God the Father] formed long ago” for
redeeming us (Preface). Our 1st reading
laments that the Lord is “angry, and we are sinful; all of us have become like
unclean people” (Is 64:4-5), and it beseeches his mercy. Jesus tells a parable warning us not to be
caught napping when the master returns (Mark 13:33-37).
But the overall atmosphere of Advent is
that of a “period of devout and joyful expectation,” as one church document
puts it.[1] St. Paul assures the Corinthians, “God our
Father … will keep you firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of our Lord
Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 1:8), i.e., on the day when Christ returns he’ll find his
faithful people “irreproachable,” by God’s grace. In the Collect we prayed that we might “run
forth to meet Christ with [our hands full of] righteous deeds at his coming”
and so “be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.” That’s the great hope that we dare to have,
as the Preface says—the hope that God will indeed give us an inheritance as his
sons and daughters (the Preface again) because he has called us “to fellowship
with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1:9).
That calling to fellowship with the Son of
God began with the Son’s incarnation.
So, yes, we do well to celebrate “his first coming” in “the lowliness of
human flesh” to “fulfill the design [the Father] formed long ago.” But that 1st coming at Bethlehem in Judea has
meaning, is fulfilled, only when our redemption is completed by our being
raised up in Christ and gathered with all the saints around Christ to live with
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen!
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