be nothing but a succession of work days, and work days alone are not enough to sustain hope, she said. She needs something more to look forward to.

Transcription

1 Advent 1 Have you heard the story about an adolescent boy praising God for His greatness? He says to God: O God, how great You are, and I am so small, and there are so many like me. Although I am young, I know that I will grow old and die in sixty or seventy years if I have good health, or sooner if I get sick. O God, what are a million years to You? And God answers him saying: To me a million years are like a minute. And then the boy continues: How small all our concerns must seem to you, O God. For instance, we think so much of money. But for You what is a million dollars? And God answers him saying: For me a million dollars is like a penny. Then the boy grows silent and begins to reflect. After awhile he begins his prayer again and says: O God, could You give me a penny? God answers: Yes, just wait a minute. We have begun the season of waiting, the season of Advent. Talking to someone recently who had just returned from a vacation trip, I said jokingly: And when is your next trip? Without missing a beat she said she was already planning one. Such planning she said was absolutely essential, for life without a vacation looming in the not too distant future would

2 2 be nothing but a succession of work days, and work days alone are not enough to sustain hope, she said. She needs something more to look forward to. I think the same kind of thinking is behind our liturgical year. The church developed a liturgical calendar to break the monotony of everyday life. We have to punctuate life. Otherwise life is a long, run-over sentence waiting for the final punctuation, the final period, death. We need something to look forward to beside that. Like life itself, our faith-life is a story that has an ending. As such it lends itself quite naturally to being broken up into different parts. And that is what the Church eventually did. It began celebrating the end of the story which is not death but resurrection from death. Therefore Easter was the first feast celebrated. Each Sunday was its commemoration and celebration. Then Lent emerged as a preparation for its celebration. Then the celebration of Pentecost to celebrate the consequences of Jesus Resurrection, namely, the pouring out of his spirit on the community so that it may lead a new life, emerged. 2

3 3 But from the first days of Christian faith believers reflected on the Lord s earthly life. So we have the writing of the four Gospels which are precisely that a reflection on his life. Notice that the oldest Gospel begins with Jesus as an adult. Only later in Matthew and Luke are there stories about his birth and early life. In short, the Church worked its way back through the adult life of Jesus to his childhood and birth. Finally, John s Gospel, the youngest of the four, reaches even behind Jesus birth to his pre-existence as the eternal Word of God: In the beginning was the Word and Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The celebration of the Lord s birth and preparation for it then became part of the church s liturgical year. And so we have the liturgical season we now begin: Advent and Christmas time. Our secular calendars begin the new year on January 1, but the church s liturgical year begins today, the first Sunday of Advent, the season which prepares for the celebration of the Lord s twofold coming to us: as a man and as our judge at the end of history. In the last weeks of the liturgical year the 3

4 4 church has been reminding us of the last days of our world and the coming of the King Jesus at its end as its judge. That theme continues during the first two weeks of Advent but will then give way to the theme of Jesus birth. Thus the liturgical year slides almost seamlessly from the end of its story, the coming of Jesus as judge, to its beginning, Jesus first coming, his birth. Our friend needs a vacation in the future to keep her hopes up. The Church gives us the Lord s twofold coming to do the same for us. Today s Gospel urges us to be on the watch for the Lord s coming lest it surprise us and catch us unprepared. Today s first reading from Third Isaiah tells us about the ancient Jews who were waiting for God to intervene drastically in their lives. They were getting tired. The words the prophet puts on their lips we might make our own: Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not? There is none who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to cling to you; for you have hidden your face from us. But then their faith comes alive and they say: You, Lord, are our father; we are the clay and You are the potter: we are all the work of your hands. 4

5 5 Our waiting must consist in putting ourselves more and more into God s hands in our daily lives, in our daily activities. All the time we must be asking ourselves: What does the Lord ask of me now? We must be open and listening to the instructions which will be given us, trusting in Paul s words to the Corinthians in our second reading today: He will keep you firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, and by him you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 5