Come Lord Jesus
Fr Andrzej Skrzypiec homily, 1st Sunday of Advent, 8:30AM Mass
Fr Andrzej Skrzypiec homily, 1st Sunday of Advent, 8:30AM Mass
A NEW YEAR in the Church’s
calendar begins today. Happy new year to all!
This period is
appropriately called “Advent”. It comes
from the Latin word adventus which simply means ‘coming’. But what or whose coming are we talking
about?
Actually, at this time we can speak of three comings
of God.
· The first, is when Jesus, the Son of God came to be
born in the stable at Bethlehem.
· But today’s Mass also speaks of the final coming of
Jesus at the end of the world.
· And there is still a third kind of coming we need to
be aware of, namely, when God enters our lives every day.
Every single experience
can be an opportunity to make contact with God.
And we are reminded of that ongoing contact with God especially in the
celebration of the sacraments, including this Eucharist.
The Church is pleading
with us be vigilant to the many ways in which Jesus, through his Spirit, is
coming into our lives now, filling our hearts with grace and inviting us to a
closer union with God and to a more loving relationship with others.
Isaiah reminds us that our
God is faithful to us always and knows about the situation we are in. Our God is always moving to bring us
together.
-What is the coming
together?
Isaiah says, “that God may
instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.”
Our only real hope of coming together is to come
together in greater fidelity to our God. The
closer we come to our God, the closer we will come toward each other. It will no longer be about a winning and
losing – about victory over the other..
When this hope-filled unity comes, Isaiah says,
“They shall
beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks;
one nation
shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.”
Each of us can find a
desire in our hearts that sings, “Let us go rejoicing” to this kind of
communion and peace.
St. Paul says, it is a
time for us to “wake from sleep.” This
is a season to “throw off” many things that are all about darkness and to “put
on the armor of light,” to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
I guess there are dark
areas in all of our lives. Things we do,
things we say, things we think, the indulging of our lower and self-centered appetites; things which we would not like other people to know about because
they are quite wrong. They do no good to
me or to others.
But there is also goodness
in all of us that God with his grace can release and intensify.
Advent is about
recognizing that God is already with us and in us. All we have to do is to be awake to God’s
presence in our hearts.
How do we do that?
We do it through our personal prayer, prayer with the community at the Eucharistic table, through acts of charity and love by which we will the good of the other.
This
wonderful season is about recognizing our own weakness yet feeling how deeply
God cares for us, even in our deepest failings. Our renewed preparation to
follow Christ might start with a sense of obligation or fear. But as we grow
closer to him we begin to follow him out of love. Our fear is purified by love.
We are faithful to the gospel out of a real desire to be closer to him.
Could this
Advent season be one in which I give myself to more opportunities for
togetherness, for bridge building? We
can indeed get involved in building bridges in our divided nation or even in
the world with all its problems.
Sometimes
genuine healing and reconciliation needs to begin in our families by letting light into places
of darkness.
Concretely, can this
Advent be about continuing gestures of love for a spouse who often bugs
me?
Can this be a time to
reach out to the adult child who has disappointed me – whom I might have hurt
by my judgments?
What nice, caring,
generous things can I do that build a bridge, without recalling a hurt or
continuing my finger pointing?
Then I can move a little
further:
Is there a friend or neighbor or church
community member I have recently fought with about our differing opinions about
something? Could a coffee or tea
together be a time to let Advent come alive by spending time saying that our
relationship is more important than our differing ideas?
As we find these ways of
preparing, we can pray, with growing desire, “Come, Lord Jesus. We await your coming. Come O Lord. If we are closer to you we will
be closer to one another”
Marana Tha - Come Lord
Jesus.
