Archive for November, 2008|Monthly archive page
The First Sunday of Advent: B
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Starting points can often be nadirs. Sometimes people have to hit the bottom before they can start rebuilding their lives. People who struggle with addictions have to reach that point of helplessness before they realize the strength they have in surrendering to the grace of the Higher Power to begin their recovery that will be lived one day at a time. Whether it is self or the world that is being considered, evil, the reality of sin, must be recognized before conversion and restoration can begin. The saying that became a cliché from overuse is apt as we listen to the Liturgy of the Word for the First Sunday of Advent. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. And that life is to be lived in continual conversion and steadfastness of faith.
Where are you spiritually as this Church Year begins? What is your assessment of the World’s state of affairs? How are your relationships, those with God, with those you love and with whom you are in relationship, and those with yourself? It could be that your faith has been tested, or that you wonder if you believe at all. There don’t have to be great sins in your consciousness; but there might not be any great deeds of charity either. You might be aware that you are not praying with the regularity that you used to pray. You might be going to Mass every Sunday. On the other hand you might not be that regular in practice. And when you are there, is anything happening? Or do you find yourself wanting the hour to get over so that you can get on with what really is important.
The sense of barrenness with God can be exacerbated by the reality of strained or broken relationships with those closest to you. That should not be surprising since Jesus linked the two great commandments making them one. Love God with your entire being. Love your neighbor as yourself. The lack of either one affects the other. If you do not feel loved by those closest to you, your spouse, your family, your neighbors, your brothers and sisters surrounding you in the pews, it is not a giant leap to that feeling of not being loved by God. The same will be true if you are not doing your part in those important relationships. Self-absorption closes God out too. It’s hard to experience the Eucharist as transforming if you are not fully, actively, and consciously participating, if you are not committed to being the Eucharist’s co-celebrant in the exercise of your Baptismal Priesthood. Much less can you hear the call to put the Eucharist you have celebrated into practice in the market place. Be bread broken? Be cup poured out? For what purpose if love is dead?
Then there is the World community. How long have we been at war? Long enough to be used to the horror that each day fills the nightly news? Long enough to assume that torture and the rescinding of basic constitutional rights are the presumed adjunct of strife? Does might make right? There is ample evidence that the intrinsic worth of each human being is being wholesalely denied – be that through acts of violence toward those in the first stages of life or those in final days. When capital punishment is practiced our society is brought to the level of those who commit the basest of acts of violence.
Are you tempted to despair? We need another Anne Frank who wrote in the midst of horrors, at a time when there seemed to be no limit to the exercising of people’s inhumanity to people: In spite of everything that has happened, I still believe that people are basically good at heart. That is a faith vision, faith in God and faith in those beings created in God’s image.
Isaiah decries the conditions that surround him. Horrified by the lapses of faith round him, Isaiah wants God to intervene as God did in leading the Jews from Egypt’s slavery to the Desert’s freedom. Maybe if the mountains shook and the waters parted the people would come to their senses again. Isaiah wants God to do it again and then faith might revive. We have all withered like leaves, and our guilt carries us away like the wind. There is none who calls upon your name, who rouses to cling to you; for you have hidden your face from us. On the brink of despair, Isaiah remembers. God can act even in the darkest of times. O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Bluntly put, Isaiah tells God to have at us!
At the beginning of this Advent Season, we must remember. God has called us. The Spirit has inspired us. We have died to the old and former life and been reborn in Christ through Baptism. That is our lived reality and it is time to yield to Baptism’s grace. Paul rejoices at the evidence that the Corinthians live in the faith that came to them through his preaching and the witness to Christ he bore them. That is evident among them because they lack no spiritual gift as they wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, and it was God who called you to fellowship with God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. But then, we know that the Corinthians had their faults, too. They were not a perfect community. They had to be reminded about the basics of the faith, especially of the primacy of place Love had to play in their lives, Love the greatest gift of the Spirit.
So it is that we come to the gospel, the first reading of the Good News for this Liturgical Year. What does Jesus challenge you and me to do? Watch and be ready! The journey of faith is one day at a time and lived steadfastly. More importantly, Christ has left the faithful, the Baptized, in charge. They are the continuation of Christ’s presence. We need to remember Christ’s words in his prayer to the Father from John’s Gospel: To them (the disciples) I have revealed your name, and I will continue to reveal it so that your love for me may live in them, and I may live in them. So it ought to be that the World, seeing us in action will recognize Christ acting through us. That is what Christ expects us to be doing until he comes again.
What is our starting point on this First Sunday of Advent? It should be no surprise that the starting point is Love. But that should not lead us to being dewy eyed with pulsing romanticism. The Love we are commanded to live in acknowledgment of our identity with Christ is harsh, even terrible, because it is all demanding and all consuming. Its perfect expression is Christ’s pouring out of self in service to the shedding of the last drops of blood and water flowing from his side on the cross. Like it or not, its perfect expression in us must be the same.
So, we come to The Table to Do this in memory of Christ, that is, to recognize Christ present. The Eucharistic action is one of formation and transformation. We take and eat what has been blessed and broken for us that we might be transformed and sent to be that presence in the world until Christ comes again. When? Only God knows that. What Christ says to you and me and to all: Be on guard! That is, live in the mystery and stand in awe. When will take care of itself – in due time.
Sincerely,
Didymus
