A homily from the first week in Advent based on readings from
Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122, Romans 13:11-14, and Matthew 24:37-44.
These readings are available at the USCCB website
.
Watch! Be vigilant! That’s the homily for today. Three words – Watch! Be vigilant. Three words that contain a lot of importance.
Advent Overview
Watch! Be vigilant! That is the theme for the first week in Advent, the season in which we prepare ourselves spiritually for Christmas. It also coincides with all of the physical and secular preparations for the holidays. There is good and bad in that, isn’t there? After all, it is great to see the entire world celebrating the birth of Christ our Savior – even if they don’t all fully understand how important that is. The downside is that all the activity can take away from our spiritual preparation. After all, it is hard to meditate on the wonder of the Incarnation of Christ when the goo from the turkey thawing out in your refrigerator has dripped down over the yogurt leaving you a nasty cleanup in the utility room. Don’t ask me how I know about this.
Ok, I heard it from my wife Pat. I think it was my job to put something under the turkey.
The first week of Advent is about becoming vigilant. We are not looking for the physical coming of the Lord, but rather we look for all those moments in our day to day life where the Lord is moving – and there are a lot of them, if we watch and are vigilant. Next week we’ll listen the message of John the Baptist as he cries to us in our own wildernesses to repent, to put aside anything that does not lead us to our Lord. The third week of Advent, we’ll light the pink candle on the Advent wreath as sign of our hope and our joy in the coming of Christ. We’ll hear at Mass how great a messiah we are coming to expect. On the fourth Sunday in Advent we consider the Incarnation, the Word of God made flesh, Mary’s child “from the Holy Spirit.”[1]
Advent in the Present Tense
It would be relatively easy to just “follow along in the book” so to speak. We can come to Mass and recall fondly the Word of God as a history lesson of sorts. We can, but we could strive for more. We can watch, we can be vigilant, and better still, we can live Advent in the present tense. We can make the preparation for Jesus central in our lives!
None of us here in the church is perfect just yet. Any disagreement? I thought not. We are only human after all. Yet, we are all called to “be perfect as [our] heavenly father is perfect”.[2] How do we bridge that gap? We don’t. We rely on Christ to do that; we rely on a Savior.
So here we are, watching, vigilant, for every hint of God moving in our lives. We watch for him in the big events in our lives, and we are vigilant in the everyday. We wait in need of a Savior. The first week of Advent, the readings that we heard today can become a part of our life this next week. We know there are things that we need to do – or do better. We know there are things that we need to do less of, or not all. These changes form the basis of a small repentance. We don’t necessarily need to beat ourselves up over them, just acknowledge them and begin to make the changes that our Lord is asking us to make. This watchfulness, vigilance, and repentance give us hope as we begin to see the blessings that they will bring in our lives, even if they are hard to do. Jesus – God Incarnate can become more than just an idea to us. We can see Jesus as Lord of our lives and we can see in the Eucharist an intimate sharing of God with each of us. We can see the Eucharist for what it really is – Jesus Christ body, blood, soul, and divinity. We can see ourselves as joined to Jesus and each other.
Welcome the Distraction
Watch! Be vigilant – even through the distractions. You know they are coming. There is too much food to be cooked, a house too messy to be cleaned, not enough food to go around, “that relative” – you know who that is. It might be the goo that the melts off of the turkey onto the yogurt. “Turkey goo” comes in many sizes and descriptions. Look, we all know they are coming. Welcome them. What? Yes, welcome them as chance to grow in virtue. This may be a way to grow in patience, in perseverance, and if nothing else we know that since Christ suffered and whenever we suffer, we become more Christlike. Don’t worry about a perfect holiday season, focus on finding God in the “turkey goo”. Perhaps a better way of phrasing this is to seek God, even in the imperfections of life.
Watch! Be vigilant! Let’s live out Advent in the present tense. Let’s experience salvation history in our own lives and let it bring us closer to union with Christ. Let us prepare ourselves along with our homes for Christ’s arrival in our lives.
[1] Matthew 1:18
[2] Matthew 5:48.