First Sunday of Advent (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 27, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the First Sunday of Advent (C), Vigil
November 27, 2021

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily:

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which he gives us the orientations he would like us to have as we begin the Season of Advent and a new liturgical year.
• Advent is about preparing for Christ’s second coming by reliving the preparation of the Jewish people for his first coming and by embracing him in the present in the various ways he comes to us, most especially in prayer and the Sacraments.
• Jesus begins this Sunday’s passage by talking about the end times, which he says will feature changes in the sun, moon and stars, the shaking of the heavens and the roaring of the seas and the waves. He was describing how the things by which people at his time would get their bearings — like the sun during the day and the moon and the stars at night — would be dramatically altered and people would be like mariners on convulsing seas. Things in which people formerly took their security would be no more. At that time, he said, we would see the Son of Man, Jesus our incarnate Lord, coming in a cloud with power and great glory. We celebrated last week the Solemnity of Christ the King and this is a divine image taken from the Book of the Prophet Daniel. Jesus was saying that we would now find our bearings in him, in his divinity shining through our humanity.
• To this coming, Jesus says, we should respond in four ways.
• First, we should stand erect and raise our heads because our redemption is at hand. We shouldn’t try to hide. We shouldn’t run away. We should lift up our heads, our hearts, our whole existence to our Redeemer. It’s common for us to be weighed down by the things of this world. Like the woman in St. Luke’s Gospel who for 18 years was bent over and incapable of standing up straight, whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath in a synagogue, we often don’t take our eyes off the ground. We focus on our worries; we obsess about what weighs us down. As we begin this new liturgical year, Jesus tells us to get up and raise our minds to him, our hearts to him, and souls to him, with all our strength. Our redemption is at hand and he wants us to seize it. He comes precisely to redeem us and that should make us eager not alarmed.
• Second, he tell us to be vigilant. Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus gave a parable about his second coming in which he contrasted the faithful and prudent steward who awaited his Master’s return and faithfully fed himself and others with the nourishment the Master provided versus the unfaithful and stupid servant who said “My Master is long delayed” and began to get smashed and to abuse the servants under his care. We remember that when Jesus came into the world the first time, some people were vigilant, prayerful and ready, but most people were not. Mary Immaculate was ready and said a hearty “yes” to God’s will. St. Joseph was ready and therefore capable of adapting quickly to God’s mysterious plans. The shepherds were ready, vigilant at night, and ran to Bethlehem as soon as they heard the good news of great joy. The Magi were ready, so ready in fact that they were able to discern the newborn king’s presence through the presence of a star. On the other hand, Herod was not ready, too caught up in his own pride and sensuality, in his own fears and anxieties, to recognize the Source of his authority. The inn keepers were not ready, too ensconced in their business and in their need for order that they didn’t have room to house their Creator. The scholars of the law were not ready to make even the short six mile journey downhill from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to discover and learn from the Divine Legislator. The vast majority of the Jewish people, who had been awaiting the coming of the Messiah for centuries, were simply and sadly not prepared when at last he came. Jesus does not want us to be caught off guard like them. He wants us to learn from their mistakes. He wants us to be alert for every way he comes to us, to recognize his presence, to faithfully feed ourselves and others with the gifts he provides. He wants this new Church year we begin this Sunday to be the best spiritual year of our life.
• Third, he tells us to pray, and specifically to pray that we have the strength to escape the imminent tribulations and to stand before him. He is quite realistic about temptations and our need for strength in the face of them. We remember what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus took Peter, James and John apart from the others to pray with him. He instructed them, “Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test, for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Their weak flesh, however, won out. They didn’t stay awake and pray but fell asleep. And when the soldiers came for Jesus, they all failed the test. To remain strong under trial, we must remain with God, and we remain with God in prayer. Prayer wakes us up to see that God is alive and is with us. It helps us to escape caving into tribulations but to convert them into opportunities to give witness and glorify God.
• Lastly, Jesus tells us to make sure that our hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life. This is the opposite of standing erect and raising our heads, the contrary to vigilance and prayer. The way Jesus does not want to live is to let our hearts fall asleep by seeking worldly pleasures, or being eaten alive by worries, or by anaesthetizing our existence through drunkenness or other addictive escapes. This obsession about pleasure and pain and on escaping keeps us from concentrating on Jesus. We can’t lift our hearts up to the Lord if the heart is asleep.
• So as we begin this new liturgical year, it’s a time for us to make some resolutions based on Jesus’ imperatives. GK Chesterton once said, “The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions.” If we don’t make resolutions now, we may never make them. It’s a time for us to make a concrete resolution to pray more and better each day. It’s an occasion to make the choice to come to daily Mass, seeking to meet with eagerness the same Jesus in the Eucharist we would help to meet when he comes on the clouds. It’s an opportunity for us to make straight the paths of the Lord through not just a good confession but the best confession of our life. It’s another chance for us to become Good Samaritans, to care for those in need, to sacrifice lovingly for our neighbor in imitation of the way Jesus lovingly sacrificed for us. It’s the moment to stand erect, raise our heads, defibrillate our hearts, stay alert and enter into communion with him.
• One means by which Catholics in various places throughout the centuries have sought to turn this Advent summons into devotion is through the use of the Advent wreath, which we will bless in our Churches and many of us will use in our homes. The most important part of the Advent wreath, we know, is not the color of the candles, which symbolize the hopeful spirit of the weeks, or the evergreens, which symbolize God’s eternal love. The most important part is the flame, which symbolizes our prayerful vigilance for Christ’s coming. Just like the five wise bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable whose lamps were always burning in anticipation for the return of the Bridegroom, so the flame of these candles symbolize and remind us of the flame of desire we are called to have for Jesus’ return. The Advent wreath is meant to help us to remain always ready for Christ’s light to irradiate our entire life. It’s a sign of vigilance, of not falling asleep, of not letting our faith in his love and our longing for him taper off. It’s an external sign of how week by week, not just throughout Advent but through our year and life, our flame of love for God is supposed to be growing until our entire existence is a living flame of love, burning for the coming of Christ.
• Advent is ultimately a gift of the Lord to bring us back to what is most important in life, God’s love for us and our response to him in faith and love. On this first day of this new liturgical year, let us ask the Lord for the grace to make this a truly holy year, a year of prayer, a year of faith, a year of increased love, a true year of the Lord! O Come, O Come Emmanuel!

The Gospel on which today’s homily was based is: 

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