Homily for 1st Sunday of Advent

Homily for the
1st Sunday of Advent

Dec. 3, 2023
Communion Rite
Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

I once heard a preacher proclaim on this Sunday, the 1st Sunday of Advent, “Welcome to the year of Mark!”  We begin a new church year in which most of our Sunday gospels will come from the 1st of the 4 evangelists, chronologically speaking, who is, after the Holy Spirit, the major inspiration for Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels.

But I’m going to preach this morning on a text from what we call the Ordinary of the Mass, the texts that make up our celebration of the Eucharist all the time:  “By the help of your mercy, may we be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

How many times have you heard that prayer?  If you’re a regular Mass-goer, more than you can count.  We pray it after the Our Father at every Mass.

This prayer could be prayed as a sort of expansion on the Our Father, in which we pray that God’s kingdom might come.  The coming of that kingdom is our “blessed hope,” so that we look eagerly toward its coming, i.e., its fulfillment when OLJC comes again.  The coming of that kingdom, the 2d coming of Christ, is in fact the 1st theme of this Advent season, as you can tell from the readings of last Sunday, which segue us into Advent, and from today’s readings.

Yet another possibility for our waiting expectantly for the blessed coming of our Savior is right here in the liturgy.  We make this prayer as part of our preparation for Holy Communion, for the sacramental coming of our Savior.  We pray to be kept free from sin and thus to be worthy to receive the Lord.  Then we’ll pray that the Lamb of God have mercy on us and take away our sins.  Finally, we’ll confess our unworthiness to receive the Lord:  “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,” the faith statement of the Roman centurion who came to Jesus to seek healing for his slave (Matt 8:5-13); and we’ll follow our confession of unworthiness with a plea for the healing of our souls so that our sacramental Savior might come to us:  “only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

In the context of this Advent season which the Church began last nite, however, “the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior” that we’re watching for is his return, Christ’s return, which we remember in the 3d Eucharistic Prayer:  “We celebrate the memorial of the saving passion of your Son [and] his wondrous resurrection and ascension into heaven, and we look forward to his second coming….”  Likewise, the 1st of the acclamations we may use after the consecration of the bread and wine into Christ’s sacred body and precious blood states, “We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection until you come again.”

That Jesus will come again is as certain as sunrise and sunset.  Or, if you’d like to quote Ben Franklin, as certain as death and taxes.  The certainty is enshrined in our Creed:  “He will come again in glory to judge the living the dead.”  Last Sunday’s gospel pictured that coming and that judgment (Matt 25:31-46).  Our sins may make us nervous, even fearful, about his coming and his judgment.  Certainly, our sins ought to concern us.  On the other hand, Jesus’ public ministry offers abundant hope to repentant sinners, and in today’s 2d reading St. Paul comforts us:  by grace God “will keep you firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of OLJC” (1 Cor 1:8).

If we repent and do our best to live irreproachably, as Paul says, then we’ll do as the Collect prayed we will:  “run forth to meet Christ with righteous deeds at his coming” and then be “gathered at his right hand”—like the sheep in last week’s parable—and “be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom,” that kingdom for whose coming we pray in the Our Father.

In today’s gospel, Jesus addresses a word of caution to us about his return:  “Be watchful!  Be alert!  You don’t know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33).  We don’t want to be caught sleeping (13:36) – in unrepented sin.  Our watchfulness, then, leads us to turn to Jesus now for forgiveness, and to turn to him for daily strength and courage to stay away from sin and practice virtue:  “By the help of your mercy may we be free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”