First Sunday of Advent

Dominica I Adventus B
3 December 2023

 The season of Advent calls us to prepare for the Lord.  It calls us to prepare to observe the Lord’s first arrival at Christmas.  Advent also insists that we do not take our focus off of the arrival we still await: the Lord’s return in glory.  This season calls us to prepare space in our lives and to prepare time each day to be with the Lord.  Advent gives us the opportunity in alert, quiet prayer and in repentance from sin to be prepared to meet the Lord.   The type of preparation that disciples do is not narrowly focused only on arriving at some important event, like Christmas Day or Judgement Day.  Rather, the preparation of disciples has a broader focus.  It is a focus on living the faith now consistently; it is a focus on being prepared so as to be ready for some future event; and it is a focus on living beyond that event.  This broader focus may explain in part why at this time of year Catholics celebrate our Christmas joy only after Advent preparations, and why we continue to celebrate our Christmas joy well beyond Christmas Day; whereas, the world has mostly focused on the date of December 25th and has in large part already thrown out the Christmas Tree on December 26th.

This broader focus of Catholic preparation should be familiar to us.  We observe this broader focus all the time, so that we live beyond the event we are preparing for.  We have a time of preparation before baptism so that baptism is understood not merely as a cultural marker or as a static moment, but as a dynamic change of life that requires one to live baptismal commitments long after the wet hair has dried.  When children are preparing for their First Confession and First Holy Communion, it should be clear they are preparing to live those sacraments well beyond the first reception.  A catholic comes again and again to confession so that a catholic can more worthily receive again and again the great gift of the Holy Eucharist in Holy Communion.  Confirmation is not a graduation from living the faith.  It comes as the culmination of first living the faith.  And it is a gift of grace to be strong in being a witness to the Lord as a disciple more united to the mission of the Church.  The final example I’ll offer to demonstrate that a disciple is called to a broad view of preparation is the example of marriage.  I hope I can state with 100 percent agreement that no one would approach marriage with that more narrow view of preparation that focuses only on the wedding day.  Couples engage in marriage preparation for an extended period of time ahead of marriage such that they are strengthened to make their commitments, such that they arrive at the joyful event of the wedding day maximally prepared, and so that they live beyond the event, beyond just the day.  Disciples prepare in such a way to be focused to live a life of commitment in holy matrimony until death do they part.

In fact, as of now I can’t think of any important preparation we do as disciples that is really only about a narrow focus on a moment or an event, or a date on the calendar.  It is all about preparing in advance for an event that we are called to live beyond one solitary moment.  My examples of the type of broad preparation that a disciple must undertake have all been on the sacraments.  I chose that because I think it is familiar and easily understood.  But the point of this is to accept this template of broad preparation and to refer it back to the Gospel and the warnings we hear from the Lord about preparing for his arrival.  Our preparation to be ready to meet the Lord when he comes again must begin now.  Preparing now means we grow in our commitments as a disciple in the present.  In so doing, we gradually and increasingly become the type of disciple who is prepared for that unknown day and hour of the Lord’s return.  By taking up this broader view of preparation as regards the coming judgment, we are then living in a way that has us alert, watchful, and ready for the Lord.  And if that is the case, then we have hope to live beyond the event of his return, for our focus must also be the life to come after judgment.

The gift of Advent comes perhaps when we most need it.  It comes at a time of year that tends to be very hectic.  The advent call to a robust and broad preparation for the Lord comes when stores have us focusing on Christmas since September, with the risk that a focus on the return of the Lord in glory is almost totally eclipsed, so inundated are we about December 25th.  The gift of Advent comes to us in a culture marked heavily by Protestantism, some popular forms of which like to calculate the end times in a narrow focus given mostly to the event of the Lord’s return.  But our focus needs to be broadly on living now and living well our life in the Lord so that we are alert when the event happens, and ready to live beyond it as the Lord ushers in his kingdom.  I always find it curious when a well-meaning Christian spends a good amount of time figuring out the signs of the times and seeming to calculate them.  That is curious because it is directly contrary to God’s Word.  In fact, the very verse before today’s Gospel passage has Jesus indicate that “of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”.  Not even the Son knows!  It is the Father’s secret.  In view of preparing for that arrival of the Lord we still await, the Lord does not want calculation but… “vigilation” – you know, to be vigilant!  In the brief Gospel passage we heard it several times: Be watchful!  Be alert!  Don’t be found sleeping.  Watch!  Only a broadly viewed preparation that begins now adequately addresses that call of the Lord.  The call of the Gospel can serve as an examination of conscience for us.  Are there areas where I am not accepting the teaching of Christ and his Church?  Areas where I am holding onto some opinion or popular thought that is not consistent with authentic Catholicism?  If so, then I am asleep.  Are there areas where my moral choices are not consistent with living well my life in the Lord here and now?  If so, then I am asleep.  Are there areas where I do not practice the sacramental life as I should, leaving myself void of the grace that is the Lord’s gift for my preparation?  If so, then I am asleep.  Is there always time for so many things except a meaningful and vibrant daily prayer life?  If so, then I am asleep.  “May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.  What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch’!”