Climbing the Lord’s Mountain, First Sunday of Advent (A), November 27, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
First Sunday of Advent, Year A
November 27, 2022
Is 2:1-5, Ps 122, Rom 13:11-14, Mt 24:37-44

The homily wasn’t able to be recorded. The following points were attempted: 

• We begin today, on this first Sunday of Advent, a new liturgical year, which is meant to give us a new spiritual start. The liturgical year — in which we retrace all of the events of salvation history from the long wait for a Messiah to the crowning of that crucified and risen long-awaited One as the King of the Universe — is not meant to be a liturgical cycle but a liturgical spiral, not a “same old, same old,” but something that helps us to enter into the mysteries we celebrate far more profoundly than the last time. Like re-reading a great book or watching anew a classic movie, each pass along the liturgical spiral is supposed to reveal to us elements we haven’t seen before and remind us of important things that we once knew but have forgotten about the mystery of God, his love for us, and his hopes and plans for us. And so, on this first Sunday of the new year, we begin again!
• The proper attitude God wants us to have as we begin with this season of Advent the new liturgical year is given to us by St. Paul in today’s second reading. “What time is it?,” we can ask, and St. Paul replies today: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”
• Advent, he tells us, is first meant to be a time of spiritual reawakening, as we return anew to what should be the proper foundation of our life — Christ himself — and build our life on him. In one classic hymn about Advent awakening, set to music by Bach himself, we sing, “Wake, O wake, and sleep no longer, for he who calls you is no stranger: awake, God’s own Jerusalem! Hear, the midnight bells are chiming the signal for his royal coming: let voice to voice announce his name! We feel his footstep near, the Bridegroom at the door Alleluia! The lamps will shine with light divine as Christ the savior comes to reign. … Zion hears the sound of singing; her heart is thrilled with sudden longing: she stirs, and wakes, and stands prepared. Christ her friend, and lord, and lover, her star and sun and strong redeemer at last his mighty voice is heard. The Son of God has come to make with us his home: sing Hosanna! The fight is won, the feast begun; we fix our eyes on Christ alone.” So the theme is that we have to get up to go meet Christ. Sometimes many of us spiritually are like slumbering teenage boys against whom you need a bucket of ice water to get them out of bed! We hit the snooze button on the Lord’s calling us to become fully alive. We know ways we should make God more and more our priority, but we put it off to later. Advent is like a set of spiritual defibrillating pads meant to jolt us out of the spiritual comas into which out of weakness we can fall.
• Second, it’s a time of excitement. Salvation, St. Paul says, is nearer to us that when we became believers. It’s nearer to us because we’re a full-year closer to meeting Christ face-to-face at the end of our life. Advent is a time when we not only look to the past, to Jesus’ coming in Bethlehem. It’s not merely a time when we look toward Jesus in the present, as he comes to us to teach us by his Word, feed us with his body and blood, forgive us in the Sacrament of Penance, and guide us each day through prayer. It’s also a time when we look ahead, not with anti-Christian dread, but with truly Christian joy and hope, to Christ’s second coming. Salvation is nearer to us now than last first Sunday of Advent, than two years ago, than the day of our confirmation and first communion, that the day of our baptism, than the day when we first became believers! That’s something that should get us more excited than the most energetic sports fan for a World Cup, or Super Bowl or World Series championship. We get excited by stoking our love for God, for his promises, for heaven, for holiness, for happiness. This requires a choice to start placing our heart more where our true treasure ought to be. The excitement we’re supposed to have is portrayed very well by the great philosopher, theologian and apologist Peter Kreeft, who wrote recently in a new book — in words we can use because no young children are present here in the Convent! — that many “think of Advent primarily in terms of Christmas, as an anticipation of Christmas, which is Christ’s first coming into the world. Okay, but when we do, perhaps we can learn something from our kids. They are happy and excited because they think Santa Claus is coming. Well, he isn’t, but the real Santa, the real saint, is coming, and his name is Jesus. So why aren’t we as happy about his coming as our kids are about Santa Claus coming? Santa Claus only comes from the North Pole, but Jesus comes from heaven. Santa Claus only comes with eight flying reindeer, but Jesus comes with legions of angels. Santa Claus comes for kids, but Jesus comes for everybody. Santa Claus comes down your chimney and into your living room, but Jesus comes down your faith and into your living. Santa Claus’ gifts are earthly toys, but Jesus’ gifts are heavenly joys. Santa Claus’ gifts last for a few months or years, but Jesus’ gifts last for eternity. Santa Claus doesn’t take you back up to his home at the North Pole, but Jesus takes you back up to his home in heaven. And Santa Claus isn’t really coming, but Jesus is. So why aren’t we more happy about Jesus coming than our kids are about Santa Claus coming?” We should be more excited for Jesus’ second coming than the most eager kids for Santa.
• Third, Advent is a time of journeying. Christ is coming — the term Advent means as you know “coming” — and we are called not to stay where we are, but to journey toward him and journey with him. In today’s opening prayer, we turned to God the Father and asked him to grant us “the resolve to run forth to meet” Christ “with righteous deeds at his coming.” Advent is the gun at the beginning of a race that gets us to begin a spiritual sprint, to go with haste, to meet Christ as he comes. Isaiah in today’s first reading, looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, compared Advent to a hike: “Come, let us climb the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and we may walk in his paths.” Advent is a time for climbing up a mountain to meet the Lord, to learn his ways more deeply and begin to walk in them faithfully. Isaiah says the “the mountain of the Lord shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills,” which is an indication that the Lord should be our highest priority, something that towers over other goods. And as we climb with Christ to the summit of the Christian life, the Church summons us, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” And so at a practical level, Advent is a time when we make the effort to go meet Christ, to meet him at daily Mass, to receive him within, to be forgiven by him in Confession, to spend time with him in adoration, to embrace him in the disguise of our neighbor, and to follow in his footsteps by walking with him on the holy, exciting adventure of faith.
• So Advent is a time when we get up, get excited, and get moving. We know that none of these things just happen to us. They require our will. They demand our free choice. Advent is the time God helps us recalibrate our whole life and make resolutions to give him his proper place.
• As Jesus teaches us today in the Gospel, there are great stakes in whether we wake up, get excited and make that journey. Jesus describes how at the time of Noah and the great flood, there were only a few alert to what was really going on and the rest perished. So he says, unfortunately, it will happen at his second coming. Two, he noted, will be in the field, one will be taken, the other left; two will be grinding meal, one will be taken, the other left. In St. Luke’s account, Jesus adds, “There will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left.” Jesus describes that two people doing the same thing at the same time will have two totally different outcomes. This doesn’t mean that the decision is going to be arbitrary, as if God is just going to flip a coin and determine who gets taken by him to eternal happiness and who gets left alienated from him forever. The ones who will go with the Lord will be those who are not asleep, not dead to what really matters, but alive. They’ll be the ones who are excited for the things of God rather than treat what God asks of us as burdens and the drama of life with him a boring imposition. They will be those seeking God, striving to grow spiritually, rather than being content with doing the minimum or even less. The will be those journeying, seeking to change in the way Christ wants to change them, making the effort to come to meet him, and who even when they’re working the fields, or grinding meal in the kitchen, or resting in bed are seeking to unite their whole life to God.
• Jesus uses an analogy of the owner of a house who stays awake and alert so that his house doesn’t get broken into. Advent is like a burglar alarm that goes off to reawaken us to the reality that there is a burglar (the devil) and makes us attentive to the treasure of our soul that we don’t want to lose or have stolen. Perhaps even better, Advent is like an alarm clock that helps us wake up from our dream world and seize the gift of the day and whole near year God has given us during which he wants to love us and strengthen us to use the talents he’s lent us to help him redeem the world. Advent is a dynamic season meant to feature a double-desire — Christ’s thirst for us and our thirst for him — and a double movement, Christ’s journeying toward us and our going out of ourselves, out of comfort zones, out of our old habits, to meet him. St. Paul tells us in the second reading, it’s a time for us to cast off the deeds of darkness and put on God’s armor of light. When St. Augustine read these words, they led to his conversion. They helped him go from a vague desire, “Give me chastity, but not yet,” to a resolution to conduct himself not in “promiscuity and lust” but to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no desire for the desires of the flesh.” Msgr. Ronald Knox said that most of us approach Advent in the same way the pre-converted Augustine did the virtue of chastity. “We want our Lord to come,” he says, “But not just yet.” And the reason is because we don’t yet love him enough to want what he wants with the passion he wants it. We don’t want our life to change that fully. We want to remain in control. Advent is a time to hit the reset button on our spiritual life so that we can with renewed help from God complete Jesus’ mission. He wants to protect us with the armor of light and help us clothe ourselves with his virtues, his thoughts, his desires. The spiritual New Year we begin today is a time of setting “New Year’s Resolutions” and responding to God’s help to keep them so that we might in fact stay alert, excited and moving. That way, no matter when the Lord comes, we’ll never find him a thief but a Friend. That way he’ll never catch us off-guard but find us ready to continue with him the journey we have been seeking to walk with him each day.
• For Catholics, every Mass is meant to be a little Advent. More than any place, this is where we are supposed to wake up and become alive and alert for the presence of God in our life and world. This is where the Holy Spirit comes to try to help us and our brothers and sisters to become genuinely excited about our faith. This is where we go out to encounter the Lord Jesus who comes to meet us. Today we rejoice that we have come to the house of the Lord where he teaches us his ways and helps us to walk in his paths. The new spiritual year that begins today is meant to be the greatest year in our spiritual life, a true Year of the Lord. It’s meant to a year of spiritual growth as we become more vibrant, more luminous, prompt and ready to go wherever the Lord leads. We want the Lord to come — and not a little later but now! Maranatha! What time is it? It’s time to get up, get excited, and get moving. Emmanuel is coming. Let us go out, and encourage others to go out, to meet him with all the love and excitement we’ve got.

The readings for the Mass were: