(Homily for the 1st Sunday of
Advent Yr. A)
Today marks the beginning of the
liturgical period of Advent and the beginning of a new liturgical year (Year A).
The word advent is from the Latin word “Adventus” which means “coming”, and
it is a translation from the Greek word “parousia”. Therefore, it connotes
expectancy and hope and at the same time points to the second coming of Christ.
Hence, in our context, the time of advent is a time of great expectation of the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ among men, unlike in the ancient Greece it
meant the coming of their god, on a fixed day of the year they expose its
statue. However, the coming of Jesus can be understood in three senses: First Advent, that is, his Incarnation,
that which inaugurated the messianic time of Salvation. Last Advent, His final and glorious coming at the end of time, when
he will come as a Judge (the Parousia),
and thirdly, between His first coming and the final coming there is the Intermediary Advent, His immanent and
continuous coming into our lives, the
Christian life is an on-going advent, a constant personal encounter with
Jesus who has come, who is to come and who is already in our midst.
In the Advent spirituality Christ is
always the One who is to come, the One who is always expected. Advent
therefore, is not just a remembrance of a historical figure linked to a
particular time and geographical location. It is not even an anticipated vision
of the coming of the Just Judge. Rather the spirituality of Advent draws our
attention to the urgency for the Lord to come into our lives with His grace and
message of salvation. For Christ is the Living Lord, il Veniente, the One who
comes. Be that as it may, we may begin our reflection with some fundamental questions:
First, between the first and the final coming what sense has this our Advent?
Second, if Christ is the One who always has to come, what then should be our
attitude in view of His coming? In that bid, the readings of today are
furnished with some insights and responses. In the readings of this first
Sunday of Advent, the dominant themes
are: the coming of the Lord and vigilance. More than just two themes, it has to do with two movements: the Lord
comes and then let us go and meet Him. God comes towards man, and those
that can find Him, are only those who are already journeying towards Him.
Interestingly, we see this double movement in the parable of the ten virgins:
“Look! The bridegroom! Go out and meet him” (Mt. 25:6). The first
movement is always that of God, he is by definition the “One who comes”, not
just in the context of Advent, but always. Behold, the history of salvation
is the history of God’s initiative, a memorial of His many comings towards
mankind, beginning from the great event of Creation to the Parousia.
This idea of a movement is seen in
the passage of the first reading (Is. 2:
1-5) from Isaiah’s prophecy, the second movement of humanity walking
towards God. Isaiah invites thus: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of
Yahweh, to the house of the God of Jacob that he may teach us his ways so that
we may walk in his paths” (v.3),
once again in verse 5: “House of
Jacob, come, let us walk in Yahweh’s light”.
The Psalmist in the responsorial psalm takes up the theme of movement,
going towards God: “I rejoiced when I heard them say, let us go to God’s house”
(Ps. 122:1). Beyond that, Isaiah talks
about the mountain of the Lord that shall be established as the highest of the
mountains, an indication therefore, that there are other mountains. Isaiah was
promising three things: first, the
mountain of Jerusalem is going to be above other mountains; second, many people will come to Jerusalem to
listen, to search for the word of the Lord and to listen to his teaching;
third, he describes the realization of a
universal peace, whereby, nations will no longer fight against nations. Therefore,
at the heart of the spirituality of Advent is hope-realization and the promise
of peace.
Furthermore, Isaiah in his prophecy
invites us to consider and to live the Advent in and with the attitude of hope
and trust. In addressing the afflicted community of the Jews that were
repatriated from slavery in Babylon to find comfort and encouragement in his
words, for he assures them that God will intervene in favour of His people,
such that later Jerusalem will become a center of spirituality, where people
from all walks of life shall flow to. Isaiah invites us to walk in the light of
the Lord. The Christian life is a journey/walk in the light of His presence,
not in darkness. The Spirituality of
Advent brings to the fore, the antithesis of Light and darkness. It entails
a walk in the Light, who is Christ himself, in his words: “I am the light of
the world; anyone who follows me will not be walking in the dark, but will have
the light of life” (Jn. 8:12). Christ is both the Terminus a quo and the Terminus
ad quem of this journey.
The Gospel passage (Mt. 24: 37-44) begins with reference
to the time and the days of Noah. What is this time of Noah? It is a time that
people were lost in the things of this world within the ordinary temporal
process, without entering into the favourable time, the moment of grace, God’s
own time. The days of Noah are the days
of superficiality. The days of Noah
become my days when I forget that the secret of my existence is beyond me. Instead
Advent is a time to live with attention in and towards God’s own time and
project. Again, Jesus makes a more appealing description with regards to being
awake and being aware of his second coming. He spoke about a “setting aside”
that will take place, which means a distinction between those who are aware and
awake and those who are not. Jesus gave instances: Two men in the field one
taken the other left, two women will be grinding meal together, one taken the
other left. The ones taken are the ones both awake and aware. The gospel gives
us therefore indications on the right attitude for the coming of the Lord:
- To watch (v.42), watch ordinarily signifies
being awake, not to sleep. But symbolically, sleep represents all that
distracts from focusing on the Lord’s coming. All that render our spirit
insensible to His grace, it represents a refusal to be with Jesus and to
give ourselves completely to Him.
- To be ready (v.44), comports promptness of
heart and spirit, internal and external disposition, avoiding all that
rubs man of his self-mastery, all that distracts his attention from the
awareness and consciousness of the Lord’s coming.
Being awake and aware will help us go
to the mountain of the Lord without wasting time at other mountains, because
the Lord’s mountain is a place of encounter and a place of transition. Lastly,
as we prepare for His coming, let us pay particular attention to the last verse
of the gospel, where Jesus admonishes us not to allow ourselves the joke of
being taken unaware like the master of the house who did not know when the
thief would break into the house. The message still revolves around being not
just awake but also aware.
In the second reading St. Paul (Rm. 13:11-14) starts with the phrase
“you know ‘the time’ has come, ‘the moment’ is here for you to stop sleeping
and wake up” (v.11). In Greek
language two words are used to denote time: chronos (ordinary flow of
time) and kairos (a special moment of grace). And in this passage St.
Paul used kairos in the original text. Kairos is appointed time,
the time when something important happens. Little wonder, St Paul invites us to
sleep not, to be awake and aware, for something great is about to happen. St.
Paul in more concrete terms suggests what vigilance and awareness entail, he gave
us three guidelines: ●To cast off the works of darkness and put on the amour of
light (once again we see the antithesis
between light and darkness in our journey of advent). ●To live as in the
day (in openness of mind and heart) not in revelling and drunkenness. ●To avoid
debauchery and licentiousness (avoid promiscuity and lust, ndu nke anu ahu). ●To avoid rivalry and jealousy. ●And above all,
to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be your armour (v.14a), armour here is a divine protective coverage (yiri Kristi ka uwe).
St. Paul concretely indicates the
steps in the movement towards God who comes. First he says “wake up from sleep”,
which invariably entails to be converted. Elsewhere Paul said: “Wake up,
sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph. 5:14). Therefore, the
keyword in the Gospel and the epistle reading is: “Wake up!” In the optics
of being awake St. Paul exhorted the Romans: “Let your armour be the Lord Jesus
Christ” (v.14a). The armour of light
par excellence is the Spirit of the Risen Lord, he only can help us to conquer
the works of darkness. For this St. Paul affirmed: “If by the Spirit you put to
death the habits originating in the body, you will have life” (Rm. 8:13). The
first advent and the future advent are interconnected little wonder St. Paul
invites us not only to leave the darkness of sin, but to walk in the light and
to put on Christ in other to be found worthy when he comes again. Truly, faith in the second coming of Christ is the
heart of Christian ethics.
Indeed, this passage is of special importance for the conversion of St.
Augustine, while in Milan St. Augustine heard St. Ambrose preaching but he was
not yet ready to give himself fully to the Lord. Finally, one day he was
captured by a line in the bible, it struck him deeply that he decided to give
his life totally to God, and that is the passage we read today (Rm. 13:13-14), as he recounts in his Confessions (8:12). Therefore, advent
is a time to pause and think about our life in Christ (in his continuous
coming, for He said in Mt. 28, 20:
“I will be with you, yes, till the end of time”).
In order to make this advent a
journey of encounter with the Lord we have to pay attention to: ►Listening to the Word of God: for through
his W(w)ord the Lord reveals himself. ►Prayer:
finding a moment to be with the “Anticipated One”, more especially in the
silence of our hearts. ►Charity/Love:
to share what we have with those that have not. By so doing we will be in tone
with the spirituality of Advent. For us in deed, the celebration of Advent is a
memorial, a remembrance of the past (of all that Christ has done for us); of
the present (of what He is doing for us) therefore, living today in syntony
with the Living Lord, living presently in harmony with Him; is also geared
towards the future (of what He is going to do for us), Advent therefore raises our gaze to the future, not just a future in
the temporal process, but a future of grace.
Above all, as we await the Savior who
comes, it behoves us to reaffirm that our expectation is not like that of the people
of Old Testament, because it is not only
an expectation, but it is also memorial and presence. It is a memorial
because the One we are awaiting has already come (this we remember at
Christmas). It is presence because he is with us. His word we have heard is
Himself with us, the Eucharist we celebrate is Himself with us. Interestingly, the most beautiful image of the Christian
Advent is that of walking with joy to meet the One who is walking with us, who walks
at our side. As
suggestive of the theme of our reflection today, the time of Advent is not a time to wallow in idleness or to wait in
inertia, rather the itinerary is waiting and walking. It comports a good
dose of preparedness for the Coming and the Presence of the Lord. In Advent the search for God changes into
the expectation of God, we live in anticipation of Him. And as we expect His
coming into our lives, may we put our voices together with that of John in
saying: “The one who attests these things says I am coming soon. Amen. Come
Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20). May our
Blessed Mother Mary the perfect Icon of Advent intercede for us in our journey
to encounter JESUS, The SAVIOR who is to COME. Happy Advent Season Friends!!!
(Fr. Vitus M.C. Unegbu, SC)
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