Homily for the
1st Sunday of Advent
Nov. 27, 2022
Matt 24: 37-44
St. Francis Xavier,
Bronx
“Jesus said to his
disciples: ‘You also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come” (Matt 24: 44)
We’ve begun Advent, our 4 weeks of preparing to commemorate and re-live the birth of our Savior. We’re beginning a new church year and a new cycle of Sunday readings in which we’ll hear mostly from St. Matthew for the next 52 weeks, as we’ve just heard from St. Luke for the last year.
Despite all the
commercialism that will surround us during this season, Christmas doesn’t come
until the 1st Christmas Masses on Dec. 24.
We do well to keep the season in perspective: we’re waiting; we’re preparing.
We remember and we
celebrate the coming of God’s Son in our human flesh—a historical event that
occurred in a specific place on a specific day.
We don’t know the specific date or even the specific year, but that it
occurred is a historical certainty.
Jesus of Nazareth was born to a young woman named Mary in Bethlehem in
the Roman province of Judea toward the end of the reign of King Herod.
That was Christ’s 1st
coming. But in these early Advent days,
Jesus advises us of his 2d coming, an event that hasn’t happened yet and
therefore an event we can’t remember or celebrate, but one we anticipate with
the certainty of faith: “He will come
again in glory to judge the living and the dead” (Creed). We’re waiting; we’re preparing.
We anticipate or look
for that coming, that Last Day of human history, also with hope, hope that
Christ’s redemption will be completed in us.
It will be completed in us if we, as St. Paul urges us, “awake from
sleep” and “throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Rom
13:11-12).
In his warning about
his 2d coming, Jesus recalls the days of the great flood as recorded in Genesis
6-9, when only faithful Noah and his family stood in God’s favor and were saved
from destruction. “So it will be also at
the coming of the Son of Man” (24:37).
Then Jesus appeals to some familiar, everyday scenes: farmers in their fields, women grinding grain to make bread. How many people go about their daily business—standing on a subway platform, going to a nite club, going to Walmart, going to school—when suddenly they’re snatched away from among other commuters, other partiers, other shoppers, other students. “One will be taken, and one will be left” (24:40). We’ve seen this too many times. But these times are reminders that we must stay awake, for we don’t know on which day our Lord will come (24:42).
We can’t know when
the Lord will come in his glory and history will end. The verse immediately before today’s reading
says, “Of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the
Son, but the Father alone” (24:36). Not
even Jesus in his humanity knows when his Father will send him back to us.
But we do know
this: for every one of us, our personal
history will end—perhaps with ample warning, e.g., following a long illness;
perhaps with the suddenness of an accident, an assault, a heart attack. “You do not know on which day your Lord will
come.”
One book about the
death of Pope John Paul I, now Blessed John Paul I, is called A Thief in the
Night. Whether or not he knew the
hour of night when the thief was coming, Pope John Paul was prepared and went
home to Jesus in peace. That’s our
prayer for ourselves, and Advent is a season for us to get ready, to put our
souls in order.
In his latest column,[1]
Bp. Robert Barron makes this suggestion to us for Advent:
Wear the world lightly. The reason that we feel spiritual anguish is
that the deepest desire of our heart cannot be met by any merely worldly good. We look to something beyond our ken and
capacity precisely because we realize, consciously or unconsciously, that the
hungry soul cannot be satisfied by any amount of esteem, riches, power, or
pleasure. The attainment of any of these
goods produces a momentary bliss followed by a letdown, a disappointment. But this truth mustn’t be allowed to depress
us; rather, it should compel us to adopt the spiritual stance that the
spiritual masters call “detachment.” This means enjoying wealth and then
letting it go; using power for good but not clinging to it; taking in honor and
not caring a whit for it. It is to adopt
the attitude that St. Ignatius of Loyola
calls “indifference.” Advent is a privileged time to practice this virtue.
Above all, Advent is a time to focus our eyes and
our hearts on Christ, so that we might—as this afternoon’s Collect prayed to
God the Father—“run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his
coming” and be “gathered at his right hand” among the flock of the blessed.
[1]
“Entering the spiritual space of John the Baptist,” The Pilot online,
11/23/22: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#inbox/WhctKKXpMTlWtsBKcvcMQrDdSgcTXJXVpFJmqZSxtkqZLJMzVtpwJLJtjzGJbdffdtglWVl
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