Spiritual Awakening, 1st Sunday of Advent (A), November 28, 2010

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA
First Sunday of Advent, Year A
November 28, 2010
Is 2:1-5; Rom 13:11-14; Mt 24:37-44

The following text guided today’s homily:

• We begin today, on this first Sunday of Advent, a new liturgical year. The proper sentiments are given to us by St. Paul in today’s second reading: “You know what time it is, it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”
  • Advent is, first, meant to be a time of spiritual reawakening, a time of spiritual rebirth, as we return to what should be the proper foundation of our life — Christ himself — and build our life on him.
  • It’s, second, a time of journey. 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. Isaiah in today’s first reading, looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, said: “Come, let us go up to 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 hiking up a mountain to meet the Lord, to learn his ways and begin to walk in them.
  • And as the Gospel teaches us today, there are great stakes in whether we wake up and make that journey. Jesus describes how at the time of Noah, there were only a few alert to what was really going on and the rest perished. He said two will be in the field, one will be taken, the other left; two grinding meal, one will be taken, the other left. The ones who will go with the Lord will be those who are not asleep, dead to what really matters, but alive. He 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 may be a burglar and hopefully scares off not only the burglar but also makes us attentive to the treasure of our soul that we don’t want to lose or have stolen.
• Advent is a time of spiritual reawakening, of rebirth, of renewal, of returning to the foundations, of recovering who we are, of setting our proper direction anew after perhaps having gotten off track.
• So we need to be focused on that renewal, on that alertness, on that direction. I’d like to concentrate on what philosophers have called the three great transcendentals or Christian theology has determined are three of the greatest attributes of God — the Good, the True and the Beautiful — to look at three ways we’re supposed to have a spiritual awakening.
• We begin with the beautiful
  • God is beautiful and he wants to share that beauty with us. He begins that transfusion of beauty in prayer and the greatest prayer of all is the liturgy. Our liturgies are meant to be beautiful because God is beautiful, he wants us to enter that beauty and do something beautiful for God.
  • We begin today a year long process of preparation for the new translation of the English Mass and a new concentration on the way that the Roman Rite should be celebrated. As I mentioned to you two weeks ago, we’re going to start reawakening to the beauty that we’re supposed to see and seek as we worship God together, by the new Gregorian chants for the Mass in English based on the old Latin forms, including the Creed. The intention is to help us all awaken more and more to the sense of the Sacred at Mass. Please do all you can to seek and contribute that beauty.
• The second is the true.
  • One spiritual reawakening the Lord wants of us is with respect to our knowledge of the faith. Most of us know our professions or our school subjects far better than we know our faith, even though all of us know that our faith is really the most important thing of all.
  • A year ago, our parish started putting up these faith brochures around the Church and I asked every parishioner to make a commitment to take at least one a week, to read it and to learn the faith better. I’m very happy that many parishioners did. If you haven’t yet, please do so.
  • On Tuesday night, there’s a great opportunity to grow in faith. Pope Benedict ten days ago wrote an apostolic exhortation on the Word of God that he hopes every Catholic will read. We’re going to be having a presentation on it on Tuesday night at 6:30 pm in the hall. Please come to learn about ways in which all of us are called to make the Bible more a part of our daily life.
  • Just this past week, the relevance of knowing the truth of our faith became apparent as so many Catholics were confused about the words Pope Benedict said in a new book about whether a prostitute with AIDS can use a condom. They were confused because so few really know the Church’s teachings that they can perceive the errors transmitted by the media and even by a few so-called experts who are on journalists’ speed dials. I wrote about it in the editorial of the Anchor on Friday and I’ll reprint it in the bulletin next week. But the media is constantly distorting Church teaching and many of us don’t know the faith well enough to know what’s the truth and what’s falsity. This year is a year to prioritize our getting to know the faith.
    • Answer to question: HV was about marriage. All other sexual activity is evil. It’s about lessening evil consequences. Bank robbery analogy. Pope is praising concern for others, not the prostitution, and not the use of a condom as if it’s a “real or moral solution,” either individually or for the AIDS crisis in general.
    • Reawakening, St. Paul tells us in the second reading, must lead to our “throwing off the deeds of darkness, conducting ourselves not in orgies, not in promiscuity and lust” but by “putting on — not condoms! — but the Lord Jesus Christ, and making no provision for the desires of the flesh.”
• The third aspect of our spiritual reawakening is about the good, and how we’re supposed to enter into and imitate God’s moral goodness.
  • Today the universal Church is doing something unprecedented in the Church’s 2000 year history, a Vigil for All Nascent Human Life. Last night at the Vatican, Pope Benedict celebrated a special vigil of prayer and he asked every bishop in every diocese of the world, and every pastor of every parish, to join him. Bishop Coleman led a holy hour last night at St. Julie’s. We’re praying at every Mass here this weekend.
  • Pope Benedict’s homily focused on this connection between Advent and our annual preparation for the birth of Jesus and how we’re supposed to focus on every human life that begins and grows in maternal wombs just like Jesus spent nine months in Mary’s. I’d like to share some of Pope Benedict’s beautiful homily tonight, to help reawaken us all to this connection, appreciation, and service of all life made in the image and likeness of Jesus.
    • With this evening’s celebration, the Lord gives us the grace and joy of opening the new liturgical year beginning with its first stage: Advent, the period that commemorates the coming of God among us. Every beginning brings a special grace, because it is blessed by the Lord. In this Advent period we will once again experience the closeness of the One who created the world, who guides history and cared for us to the point of becoming a man. This great and fascinating mystery of God with us, moreover of God who becomes one of us, is what we celebrate in the coming weeks journeying towards holy Christmas. …
    • Dear brothers and sisters, our coming together this evening to begin the Advent journey is enriched by another important reason: with the entire Church, we want to solemnly celebrate a prayer vigil for unborn life. I wish to express my thanks to all who have taken up this invitation and those who are specifically dedicated to welcoming and safeguarding human life in different situations of fragility, especially in its early days and in its early stages. The beginning of the liturgical year helps us to relive the expectation of God made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, God who makes himself small, He becomes a child, it speaks to us of the coming of a God who is near, who wanted to experience the life of man, from the very beginning, to save it completely, fully. And so the mystery of the Incarnation of the Lord and the beginning of human life are intimately connected and in harmony with each other within the one saving plan of God, the Lord of life, of each and every one of us. The Incarnation reveals to us, with intense light and in an amazing way, that every human life has an incomparable, a most elevated dignity.
    • After focusing on how St. Paul in today’s second reading focuses on man — spirit, soul, and body — he says that “there is no reason not to consider him a person from conception” and says that we must guard unborn life: “from the moment of its conception.”
    • He adds that “there are cultural tendencies that seek to anesthetize consciences with misleading motivations.” People are asleep. The word for sleep in Greek is “hypnotized.” They’re hypnotized by the slogans, etc. We need to wake up and recognize these are people just like we were at their age.
  • Pope Benedict finishes by turning to Mary in prayer.
    • To the Virgin Mary, who welcomed the Son of God made man with faith, with her maternal womb, with loving care, with nurturing support and vibrant with love, we entrust our commitment and prayer in favour of unborn life. We do this in the liturgy – which is the place where we live the truth and where truth lives with us – worshiping the divine Eucharist, we contemplate Christ’s body, that body who took flesh from Mary by the Holy Spirit, and from her was born in Bethlehem for our salvation. Ave, verum Corpus, natum de Maria Virgine!
• As we, this Advent, focus on our spiritual reawakening, on our being alert so that like so many others we will not be sleeping or hypnotized to the need to grow in faith, to pray better and more beautifully for the Lord who comes to meet us here, and to recognize the image of God in all human life, just as we perceive the presence of God miraculously underneath the appearances of bread and wine here at Mass. Christ is coming. Let us embrace him and let him lead us more deeply into the good, the true and the beautiful.

The readings for today’s Mass were: