Sermon by Father Alex McAllister SDS     Index

First Sunday of Advent, Year A—2004 Homily

Today we begin Advent and the new liturgical year. It seems a little ironic that the words of Jesus addressed to us are Stay awake!

It makes it sound as if right here at the very start of the year we are already beginning to fall asleep! But there again I suppose one mustn’t take anything for granted!

The Advent Season is about waiting—waiting in expectation for the coming of the Lord. There are two sorts of waiting here; waiting for the celebration of Christ’s birth and waiting for his second coming at the end of time.

At this point perhaps it would be appropriate here to say something about the concept of time in the sacred liturgy. We are preparing for Christmas, that great feast in which we celebrate Christ’s birth in Bethlehem 2000 years ago.

You could say is like us keeping a birthday or an anniversary, a celebration which marks the passing of years. But it is much more than this, because in the liturgy, in a certain sense, we step outside time and actually relive the event of Christ’s birth. That is why there is no baby in the crib until the start of midnight mass.

Through the liturgy we are really there. We unite ourselves with those who were waiting for the coming of the Messiah. We accompany Mary and Joseph on their journey to Bethlehem and their search for a suitable place for Jesus to be born. We find ourselves out on the hillside with the shepherds. We kneel at our Saviour’s birth in the stable. And we are there to observe the three kings present their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The liturgy is not merely the commemoration of an anniversary, it does not simply mark the passing of time since that great event; it actually takes us there and makes us part of what it is we celebrate.

And this is never more so than when we are celebrating the Eucharist. We do not re-enact the Last Supper, no what happens at mass is that the Last Supper is made present to us.

As we gather around the table of the Lord we are completely at one with those disciples there in the Upper Room. The priest does not merely say the words of Christ to us; he becomes Christ’s representative for us.

The bread and wine are not merely figurative representations of Christ’s body and blood but Christ actually becomes present in his body and blood under the appearance of the bread and wine. This is why we receive Holy Communion so reverently; we are fully aware it is Christ whom we receive.

In the Eucharist time collapses, so to speak, we are present at the Last Supper and at the same time also present at the Banquet of Heaven.

The same goes for the various celebrations during the liturgical year. In the liturgy we are taken to Bethlehem, to the Cross on Calvary, to the Empty Tomb and to the Room where the Holy Spirit came down on the Apostles at Pentecost.

In this season of Advent we spend time preparing and waiting, just as the Chosen People did through so many centuries as they hoped and prayed and longed for the coming of the Messiah.

In these few weeks through the liturgy we become conscious of the need for a Saviour, we acknowledge our need for repentance and we accompany Mary and Joseph and John the Baptist through the mysterious events that immediately preceded Christ’s birth.

In the Gospel Jesus stresses that the Son of Man will come at a time we will not expect. That’s the point of the reference to Noah. The people did not believe that there would be a great flood and thought that Noah was foolish to build an Ark. They wrote him off and dismissed him as a madman.

Christ will come suddenly and unexpectedly. It was the same at his first coming; Christ came quietly and to most people quite unexpectedly. There were however some people who were aware of who he was Mary, of course, and Joseph and John the Baptist even while in the womb. There were others to whom his significance was revealed: the shepherds in the hills and the Wise Men from the East. But to the majority his coming was unheralded and unknown.

The great difference is that his second coming cannot be ignored because it will mark the end of the world, the end of the universe, the end of time itself.

The words of Christ in our Gospel today make it clear that he wants his followers to be awake and attentive. He wants them to be fully ready when that day comes. Although it will come suddenly and without warning, it should be no surprise to us Christians, it should not find us unprepared.

But even more than being ready, we Disciples of Christ should be actively longing for the coming of the Kingdom. We should have an earnest yearning in our hearts for Christ to come again in glory, a sort of nostalgia for heaven.

We know that this world is but a preparation for the life to come; it has no meaning other than this. Those who put their trust in the things of this world are making a false choice; they have allowed themselves to be deceived.

This difference between us and such people should be patently obvious to those around us. They ought to be able to recognise from our life style, from our conversation, from our personal priorities that we are looking forward to the Kingdom. Indeed they should be able to recognise us as people who are already living and acting as citizens of heaven.

We should be as different to non-believers as Noah was to those who scoffed at him.

In St Paul’s Letter to the Romans he goes even one stage further. He says that “the time” has already come, that we are now living in what we can only call the end-times. He views this period between Pentecost and Christ’s Second Coming as a time when the Kingdom of Heaven is already breaking in on this world.

This is why we shouldn’t be surprised to see miracles and other wonders that we ordinarily connect with the end-times.

For us the Second Coming and the time of judgement and the drawing together of all things in Christ are just around the corner. And this belief gives us a totally different view of the world. Yes we enjoy the world we live in and all it has to offer but there is a restlessness about us because we are waiting anxiously for its completion.

And the prayer that is on our lips is that very word Advent: Come.

Come Lord Jesus come. Come into our hearts right now. Come and raise us up to glory. Come into this world right now and bring everything that exists to its completion in Christ.