Homily for First Sunday of Advent, Year A

I am sure we can all relate to the experience of having waited for something with eager longing. Perhaps it was a wedding day, a graduation day, or the birth of a baby. Think how children might look forward to their birthday or some big celebration. I remember years ago counting the 'sleeps' with my niece before her birthday. When we look forward to something and have to wait for it, typically, there is an excitement and growing expectation as the day gets nearer. Now, 'waiting expectantly,' 'hoping for something,' 'looking forward to something' are key attitudes for getting in touch with the spirit of Advent.

We are at a time when our secular year is winding down to an end. School holidays begin in a few days. Many people will be taking long leave within the next week or so. It is a time of office parties, Christmas shopping and holiday plans. Some of us may be pretty exhausted at this stage. And yet at a time when most people are hoping to close down, to get to the end of it all, to have a break, the Church says: "Let's start again". That's because today we begin a new Church year, and we are called to make a fresh beginning, a beginning with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

If you recognised yourself in this description of those longing for a break, for things to close down, because you are exhausted, you may wonder how it can be possible for you to start again at this stage. Even more you might be wondering where the renewed energy and enthusiasm is going to come from.

Get Your Heart and Your Soul Into Gear

Well, the key to finding this necessary enthusiasm and energy for a new beginning is built into the season of Advent which we start today by way of beginning the new liturgical year. We could sum up the meaning of Advent by saying: Get your mind into gear. Even better: Get your heart and your soul into gear. Get back to basics. Focus on what is essential. Live the way God intends and wants you to live.

The first reading from the prophet Isaiah contains one of the great messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. Isaiah foresees a time when all peoples from all nations will be gathered together in worship of the one God. It will be a time of peace when the usual weapons of warfare will be re-fashioned into farming implements.

We Christians believe that this messianic age has already begun with the first coming of the Messiah in humility. Jesus came to gather the nations in the peace of God's Kingdom. The complete fulfilment of this prophecy will be at the close of the age with the second coming of Christ in glory. We can enter into the hope and expectancy that Isaiah creates in this prophecy. Along with the ancient Jews we can long for peace: peace in our lives and families, peace in our nations and in the world. We can recognise the gift of peace from the Prince of Peace, and we seek to be peacemakers.

The Joy We Can Experience When We Gather

This communal worship of God spoken of by Isaiah, is picked up in the responsorial psalm, a song that was sung by pilgrims as they reached the gates of Jerusalem. "I rejoiced when they said to me, 'Let us go up to the house of the Lord.' And now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. Bringing it closer to home, we can consider the joy of welcoming people into our parish church. There is something profound about the joy we can experience when we gather in this place of worship; it comes from a connectedness to God and to one another.

The joyful and hopeful expectation that the first reading and psalm speak about, is balanced by the serious call for preparedness and vigilance in the second reading and the Gospel. Over the next few weeks there will be significant material preparations, like shopping and cooking, for the celebration of Christmas, but Advent calls us through the liturgies of these coming weeks to prepare ourselves spiritually for the coming of Jesus.

The Urgency of Time

In the second reading from the Letter of St Paul to the Romans, we hear St Paul stressing the urgency of time. He and the early Church expected the Second Coming at any moment, and so there was an urgency about living ready for it to happen. The danger for us living all these centuries later is that we could become complacent. We might become apathetic and have poor priorities. In the words of the Gospel we might be caught off guard, like a thief coming in the night.

We could take a leaf out of St Augustine's book. The second reading we heard is the same one that was pivotal in his conversion. The story that he tells in his spiritual autobiography is that he was walking in the garden, distressed because of his failure to fully live a life in Christ. Suddenly he heard a child's voice singing, "Take and read, take and read." He hurried over to where he had left a volume of St Paul's writings and opened it at the passage we have just heard: 'Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh.'

Of what he read, he later wrote, I neither wished nor needed to read further. With the end of that sentence, as though the light of assurance had poured into my heart, all the shades of doubt were scattered." Just imagine if the Word of God would have such a powerful effect on our lives!

In the Gospel passage for this Sunday, although Matthew is writing his Gospel for a Christian community who expected Christ's return during their lifetime, this Gospel passage can also be read as Jesus teaching us about the reality of our own deaths and being ready at every moment to meet the Lord.

Preparing for the Christmas That Will Never End

Jesus warns us that his coming will be similar to Noah's day. The people of Noah's time had no concern about the future and were living lives that ignored God and his will for them, until it was too late, and the flood came and washed them away. Noah and his family on the other hand, because they listened to God's warning, were saved from destruction.

The kinds of activities that the people of Noah's time were engaging in are the ordinary everyday activities that we could get so caught up in that we might fail to be prepared for the coming of Christ, whether it be in the circumstances of our lives today, or in our bodily death, or when he comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

So, today's readings focus not only on the future coming of Jesus but also on the necessity of preparing for it in the present. In Advent we are invited to prepare ourselves for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ; and it is the nature of this liturgical season that as we are preparing ourselves to celebrate this feast, we are at the same time preparing ourselves for the reality of the second coming of Jesus.

Remember, we are preparing ourselves for the Christmas that will never end. We can start living as if Jesus' return were today.