Homily for 1st Sunday of Advent

Homily for the
1st Sunday of Advent

Dec. 1, 2024
Luke 21: 25-28, 34-36
1 Thes 3: 12—4: 2
Ps 25: 4-5, 8-10, 14
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

“People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers the heavens will be shaken ” (Luke 21: 26).

Vesuvius from Portici (by Joseph Wright)

It may have seemed like the end of the world at Pompei in 79 A.D., when Vesuvius erupted and in Pompei  and nearby towns an estimated 16,000 people died; or in Lisbon and the surrounding area in 1755, when up to 40,000 were killed by an earthquake and tsunami; or in Messina, Italy, where a 1908 earthquake killed about 80,000; or at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, when atomic bombings killed 150,000 to 250,000 people (estimates vary widely); or across the span of the Indian Ocean, where an estimated 228,000 people in 14 countries were wiped out by the 2004 tsunami; or in Haiti, where 100,000 to 160,000 died in the 2010 earthquake. 

All that was nothing compared to the Black Death, a bubonic plague, which in the 14th century caused as many as 30 million deaths in Europe—one-third of the whole population.

Certainly, there are natural, as well as human-caused, disasters that scare the bejeebers out of people.  For centuries, they’ve been associated with the end of the world.  The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke also link them with the end.  That has led to various Christian cults’ predicting that the end is at hand—all the signs are there.

So far, obviously, all those predictions have been wrong.

There’s one prediction you can count on:  “the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones” (1 Thes 3:13).  His 2d coming is in the Creed we profess every Sunday:  “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”

Is that scary?  Only if “your hearts become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap” (Luke 21:34).  If our focus is on shopping, sports, making money, pursuing pleasure, destroying our adversaries, then, yes, we’ll be in trouble when the Lord comes and calls us to account.

St. Paul, however, urges us to prepare for the Lord’s coming by our “love for one another and for all,” by striving to live “blamelessly in holiness before our God and Father,” conducting ourselves to please God (1 Thes 3:12-13; 4:1).

Now, maybe your sins and your weaknesses cause you to tremble at the thought of Christ’s return.  If you’re here this morning/afternoon, obviously you’re seeking some comfort from Christ.  He wants to comfort and encourage you!  “Good and upright is the Lord; thus he shows sinners the way.  The friendship of the Lord is with those who fear him” (Ps 25:9,14), which means those who reverence him, come to him, seek his pardon, and praise him.

The Advent season is to prepare us for the Lord’s coming.  He came once at Bethlehem, and we’re preparing to celebrate that central event of human history.  When he comes the 2d time, we hope “to run forth to meet” him, as we prayed moments ago, bringing him the good deeds of our lives (Collect), good we did in his grace and for love of him—even the good deed of repentance, of being sorry for our sins, of asking his forgiveness, of striving to walk with him.  He ardently desires that we come to him and stay with him.

Then we have nothing to fear from earthquakes, tsunamis, even atomic terror, nor from the stresses of daily life.  No matter what, we can “stand erect and raise [our] heads because [our] redemption is at hand” (Luke 21:28).  Our Lord Jesus is at our side.