Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Agnes Church, Manhattan
First Sunday of Advent, Extraordinary Form
December 2, 2018
Rom 13:11-14, Lk 21:25-33
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
Awaking from Spiritual Somnolence and What Causes It
Whenever I read the passage we have from today’s epistle from the 13th Chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, I think of the powerful role they had in the life of St. Augustine. He had been internally debating for a while by this point whether to give up a life of sin full of unchastity and become a Christian, but his will was too weak. He knew he was miserable. He knew he needed God. But he couldn’t give up the life of the flesh. He would pray, “Give me chastity, but not yet.” One day when he couldn’t take it any more, he went out into a garden to weep over his situation, to pray, “How long, O Lord, how long?,” and responding, “Why not now? Why not this hour to end my uncleanness?” He heard the voice seemingly of a child from a neighboring house begin to sing something that sounded really strange, “Tolle et legge,” “Take and read.” He arose and opened up the Scriptures and read the first chapter he found. He was well aware of the life of St. Anthony of the Desert who upon hearing the words of the Gospel to go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and then come follow me, converted and did just that. So by Divine Providence, Augustine opened to today’s passage and read in silence St. Paul’s words, “Let us then throw off the works of darkness [and] put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day,not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.” He felt a light of serenity immediately enter into his heart, all darkness of doubt vanish away, and that’s precisely what he did. By God’s grace, he converted totally. And the rest, as Scott Hahn likes to say, is salvation history.
It’s so powerful to begin the liturgical season of Advent, the new liturgical year, with St. Paul’s words. If we are wondering what is the purpose of this season, St. Paul tells us with characteristic directness, “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.” So many of our contemporaries, like so many of us, are very much like St. Augustine, spiritually asleep, not living in the real, real world of God’s kingdom, but somnambulating through life following the crowds more than following Jesus, living according to the flesh rather than according to the Holy Spirit, indulging the lust of the eyes, the flesh and the pride of life (1 John 2:16) than denying ourselves, picking up our Cross and following Jesus’ footsteps, living more, as Pope Francis says, like pagans than disciples. In Advent, God seeks to give us a spiritual reset, to help us get back to the fundamental orientation of the gift of life he’s given us, and to prepare us inwardly to live in the light, to come fully alive, and to embrace the reality of Christ’s incarnation that we mark in history at Christmas, his ongoing presence that we celebrate in mystery with the Eucharist and the Sacraments, and the judgment that we await at his Second Coming.
Getting up
Advent, St. Paul tells us, is first meant to be a time of spiritual reawakening, of spiritual rebirth, as we return to what should be the proper foundation of our life and “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” St. Paul tells us that we have to get up. Sometimes many of us spiritually are like slumbering teenage boys against whom you need to take out defibrillating pads in order to get them out of bed! Many of us routinely hit the snooze button on the Lord’s calling us to become fully alive. We know we should make our faith a priority, but we put it off to later. Advent is like a set of spiritual defibrillators meant to jolt us out of the spiritual comas into which out of weakness we can fall. Jesus alludes to this in the Gospel when talks about his second coming and how we can learn to stand erect and raise our heads to embrace the redemption he brings. “Beware,” he tells us, “that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life and that day catch you by surprise like a trap [but] be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.” Pope Francis said this morning in his Angelus meditation that many of us are in fact spiritually drowsy and this “inner sleep arises from always revolving around ourselves and being stuck within our own life with its problems, joys and sorrows. … And this type of life tires us, bores us and closes us to hope.” He says that Advent “invites us to a vigilant commitment to look outside of ourselves,” to God and to others. And so the questions for us as we begin this new year are: Are we going to be drowsy or vigilant? Are we going to be drunk with spirits, like the pre-converted Augustine, or filled with the Holy Spirit like the Saint? Are we going to be overwhelmed with the anxieties of life or are we going to throw our cares on the Lord in prayer? Vigilance and prayer are standard Christian attitudes.
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 know 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 drunkenness and anxieties, to recognize the Source of his authority. The inn-keepers were not ready, too caught up 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 learn from the Divine Legislator. The vast majority of the Jewish people, who had been awaiting the advent of their Messiah for centuries, were simply and sadly not prepared when at last he came. To use Jesus’ words from today’s Gospel, they had allowed their hearts to “become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life.” They weren’t ready for the love he was bringing into the world. Jesus wants us to learn from their mistakes. It’s a new start. This advent is a second chance, or third, or ninetieth. But it’s an opportunity Jesus wants to seize, not squander. He wants this new Church year to become the best spiritual year of our life, and he will give us all the graces necessary for it to become so, but we have to hunger for, receive and respond to this gift.
Getting Excited
That leads us to the second point. It’s a time of excitement, because as St. Paul says, salvation 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 that will happen when we die and are judged by him, the day, we pray, that we will be able to say with the Prophet Isaiah, “Behold the God to whom we looked to save us! This is the Lord for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!” Advent is a time when we not only look to the past, to Jesus’ coming in Bethlehem, or gaze 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 are helped to look ahead to Christ’s coming at the end of our or at the end of time, whichever comes first. And we look forward not with anti-Christian, spiritually-worldly dread, but with truly Christian hope. Salvation is nearer to us now than last first Sunday of Advent, than the day of our Confirmation and first Holy Communion, than the day of our Baptism, than the day when we consciously first became believers! That’s something that should get us more excited than the most energetic football fan for the Super Bowl. How do we do this? 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. It means wanting to make more time for prayer than shopping, more time for reading Sacred Scripture or good spiritual books than watching television, more time for loving our neighbor — especially those in greater need of love — than we give to our hobbies and diversions. The advent wreath that is blessed at the beginning of this season is a symbol of that holy longing. The most important part, 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. By means of the Advent wreath, we spiritually unite ourselves to the Jews in their anticipation of the Messiah and the mercy he brought into the world. The Advent wreath, both here in Church and at home, is meant to help us to remain always ready for Christ’s light to irradiate our entire lives. It’s a sign of vigilance, of not falling asleep, of not letting our faith in his love and our longing for him expire.
Getting Moving
The third point is that Advent is a time of journeying. After getting our excitement and desires right, then we need to act on those desires, and get moving to Christ where he awaits us. Christ is coming — that is what the term Advent means — and we are called not to stay where we are, but to journey toward him and journey with him. Advent, like the life of faith as a whole, is fundamentally dynamic. There’s movement. We pray, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” “O Come, Divine Messiah!” and at the same time we prepare to go out to meet and embrace him. We say with the wise bridesmaids in the Gospel parable, “The Bridegroom is here. Let us go out to meet him” (Mt 25:6). Advent is the season in which we make straight the paths for that encounter and then go to meet him in prayer; go encounter him in Confession; go receive him in the Eucharist; go worship him in adoration; go find him in the disguise of those who are in need; and continue to walk in his ways.
So Advent is a time when we get up, get excited, and get moving. It’s a time to throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, to conduct ourselves properly in the day and living each day and night putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s like the gun at the start of a race that gets us to begin a spiritual sprint, to go with haste, to meet Christ as he comes. And insofar as this year’s Advent is one of the shortest possible, three weeks and a day, it’s a time to hear not to linger at the starting line but to get off to a great start, reprioritizing and making more and more space for Christ. Advent is a gift of the Lord, a time 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 truly Christian love, a true year of the Lord!
O Come, O Come Emmanuel!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans
You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness [and] put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day,not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.
The continuation of the Gospel according to St. Luke
Jesus said to the crowd, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavenswill be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.” He taught them a lesson. “Consider the fig tree and all the other trees. When their buds burst open, you see for yourselves and know that summer is now near; in the same way, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near. Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
