1st Sunday of Advent – November 28, 2010
(Luke 21: 25-33)
Advent means a coming, and today we begin preparing for the celebration of the coming of the Lord on Christmas. We prepare for the birth of Jesus Christ by prayer and fasting, like we do during Lent in preparation for His Death and Resurrection. This month we fast on every Friday, as we always do, but we also have partial fasts on the Ember Days of December 15th and 18th. Fasting causes personal discomfort like dieting, but in a religious fast we offer our discomfort up to God for our personal intentions. These intentions vary widely and could be for the health of a friend or family member, for the conversion of sinners, literally any special intention we have in our lives at the time. During Advent we also celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary on December 8th. This is a Holy Day of Obligation, which means we are required to attend Mass that day just as on any Sunday. The Immaculate Conception of Mary is not a reference to the birth of Christ, but means that Mary’s soul is Immaculate and did not bear the stain of the original sin of Adam and Eve.
St. Bernard wrote of three comings of Christ. The first was in the flesh at His birth. The second was in His soul and in power, at the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. The third coming will be in judgment at the end of time. This last coming the Church calls “a day of wrath on which . . . the world will be reduced to ashes; a day of weeping and of fear.” This is the reason why the Church, in the liturgy of Advent . . . “selects from Scriptures passages which are calculated to awaken fear in the mind of those of her children who may be sleeping the sleep of sin. Fear, when not accompanied with love, is slavery. However, when fear is accompanied by love it fills the hearts of we, His children, who have offended our Father and seek His pardon.
During this time of Advent we can note three classes of people. The first, and smallest in number, are those who live to the full the life of Jesus Who is within them. The second class is more numerous, and they are living because Jesus is within them, but they are sick and weak because they do not wish to grow in this divine life. Their charity has become cold. (Apocalypse 2: 4) The rest of mankind make up the third class. They have no part of this Life within them and are dead, because Christ has said, “I am the Life,” (John 14: 6) and “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life.” (John 6: 54, 55)
In order for us to appreciate all that Advent means we must remember that we can be pleasing to our Father in heaven only so much as He sees in us His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ wishes to come into each one of us and transform us into Himself. If we consent to this we will live, not we ourselves, but He in us. “This is the one grand aim of the Christian religion, to make man divine through Jesus Christ: it is the task which God has given to His Church to do, and she [in turn] says to the faithful what St. Paul said to his Galatians; ‘My little children, of whom I am in labour again, until
Christ be formed within you.’ (Galatians 4: 19)
Christ be formed within you.’ (Galatians 4: 19)
Jesus, the Messiah, repeats His visit to His children every year at the Feast of Christmas. Receive Him this year with more care and love than perhaps you have done in the past. Go to the Confessional, confess all your sins, perform the penance you are given by the priest and receive absolution for your sins. He forgives sins because He makes all things new (Apocalypse 21: 5) Make room in your soul for the Divine Infant. He desires to grow within you.
The time of His coming is close at hand. Let your heart be on the watch so that He does not find you sleeping. Watch and pray. The words of the Advent liturgy speak of darkness, which only God can enlighten; of wounds, which only His mercy can heal; of weakness, which can be strengthened only by His divine energy. He desires not the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live. (Ezechiel 18: 31, 32) The great feast of Christ’s birth will be a day of mercy for all who will give Him admission into their hearts: they will rise to life again in Him, their past life will be destroyed, and where sin abounded, there grace will more abound. (Romans 5: 20)
But if the attractiveness of this mystery of the coming of the Messiah makes no impression on you because for so long you have drunk sin like it was water, or worshipped the false gods of self, or of reason or humanism, and you do not know what it is to long with love for the caress of your Father whom you have sinned against. If that is your situation then turn your attention to that other coming in judgment which is full of terror and which follows the silent night of grace which is offered to us this Christmas.
St. Paul tells us in today’s Epistle to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Savior is the clothing we are to put on over our spiritual nakedness. God, remembering how man hid himself in the Garden of Eden after his original sin, has agreed to become man’s clothing and to cover with the robe of His divinity the misery of human nature. The least we can do is to keep no affection for our past sins. The last words of this Epistle are what caught the eye of St. Augustine, who had long resisted the grace offered to him to give himself over to God. He resolved to obey the voice which said to him “Take and read,” Those words decided his conversion and he abandoned the worldly life he had been leading and “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Let us imitate Augustine rather than Voltaire, who slandered and ridiculed the Church so often during his life, and who died screaming for a priest. A priest responded to give him last rites, but Voltaire’s so-called friends refused to admit him.
The Savior comes to each of us in proportion to the earnestness of our longing for Him. So let us resolve to go no farther in our journey through life without Him. The things that our Lord speaks about in today’s Gospel reading are terrible indeed. So let us also pray that the end of the world will be for another generation to see and not for us. +++
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