Building Our Lives Wisely On God And His Advent Promises, First Thursday of Advent, December 5, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the First Week of Advent
December 5, 2024
Is 26:1-6, Ps 118, Mt 7:21.24-27

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Throughout the Advent Season, we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” “O Come, Divine Messiah!,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” and these are all good aspirations, but the Church, which selects the Gospel passages throughout this first week of Advent very well to help us learn the proper dispositions to enter into the meaning of this season and get off to a good start in this new liturgical year, helps us to grasp that it’s by no means enough for us to stop there. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to us very clearly, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” It’s not enough for us to bid the Lord to come, but we need to build our life on him as he comes. As we run out to meet him who’s coming to us, he wants to transform us so that we build our whole life on him, as we seek to live totally together with him. “The Lord is an eternal Rock,” Isaiah tells us today. The Psalm adds, “The Lord is God and he has given us light.” The Lord is the solid, stable, unchanging foundation for life, the God who not only is “Light from Light,” but shares that light with us so that we may walk as children of light. Isaiah will tell us on Christmas night that the “people walking in darkness have seen a great light,” and that light is the Lord. Our Advent construction project is to build our life on that rock.
• Jesus gives us an image today, taken from his conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, about how we’re supposed to live what he teaches. “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house.  But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.” That’s what our response is supposed to be to Jesus’ triple coming: to build our life on his taking on our humanity so that we may share in his divinity; to construct our existence on Him in the present, in his Word and in especially in the Word-made-flesh as the source and summit, the root and center of Christian life; and to ground our hopes, aspirations and daily choices in the guarantee of his second coming and to live, as we’re reminded to live each Advent, vigilant and alert each day for his return. Not everyone lives this way. Many are foolish. Many of us are foolish, because we hear his Word, we may even be able to cite chapter and verse, but we don’t always act on it. Jesus says, “Everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.” The true Advent response is Mary’s, which, as we will hear on Monday on the Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception, in response to the Archangel Gabriel’s words said, “Behold I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be done to me according to your Word!” She shows us how to build long for God’s word, to build our life on God’s word and to share God’s word.
• To build our whole existence on Jesus requires great trust, because Jesus’ words are different than the world’s. It’s challenging to build our life on the word of forgiving seventy times seven times, to love our enemies, to love others as God infinitely loves us. It’s hard to build our life on the commandments, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and especially the Beatitudes which began the Sermon on the Mount. Whereas the world thinks we need to be rich to be fulfilled, Jesus says we need to be poor; whereas the world says we have to be popular and congenial, Jesus says we need to be persecuted for his sake; whereas the world says we need to be powerful, Jesus says we need to be meek peacemakers; whereas the world says we need to have all our sexual fantasies fulfilled, Jesus responds we need to be pure of heart; whereas the world says we need to have all our appetites satiated, Jesus says we need to hunger and thirst for holiness. We’re tempted to construct our life on what everyone else is doing, or on our whims, or to maximize our pleasure and minimize our pain. It’s hard to build on Jesus when he challenges us to trust. But hard is not impossible. And God gives us himself to make the difficulty lighter and sweeter. God encourages us to do so today. “Trust in the Lord forever!,” God calls us through Isaiah. “A strong city have we; he sets up walls and ramparts to protect us.” The Psalm says, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.” This is true and Advent is a season for us to act on it.
• God gives us a daily opportunity to build ourselves on him at the Mass. In the Liturgy of the Word, God wants us to ground ourselves anew on the rock of God’s word, provided that we try to live the word we hear rather than merely say in response to it “Thanks be to God” and “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” We’re called, like Mary, to respond, “Let it be done to me according to your word!” Then we come to the Liturgy of the Eucharist and have the chance to construct our life on this gift, on Christ himself. Then we have the chance, in communion with him, to build our life on the words of his great commission, to go in peace, glorifying the Lord with our life. May we respond to this great privilege and build ourselves firmly on Christ with trust so that no matter what storms come, we will be set firmly on Christ and come to experience eternal tranquility in the house that God has built in heaven for all his beloved children.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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