The Advent Dynamism of Getting Up, Getting Excited and Getting Moving, First Sunday of Advent (A), December 1, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan
First Sunday of Advent, Year A
December 1, 2019
Is 2:1-5, Ps 122, Rom 13:11-14, Mt 24:37-44

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

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• We begin today, on this first Sunday of Advent, a new liturgical year, which is meant to give us a totally 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.
• 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 could 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 to what should be the proper foundation of our life — Christ himself — and build our life on him. We have to get up. 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! 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 just hit the snooze and 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 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 with joy 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 two years ago, than the day of our confirmation and first communion, that the day of our 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 new 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. 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.
  • Third, Advent is a time of journeying. Christ is coming — The term Advent means “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 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 climbing up a mountain to meet the Lord, to learn his ways and begin to walk in them. And so at a practical level, Advent is a time when we make the effort to go meet Christ at daily Mass to receive him and in Adoration to spend time with him. We go encounter him in Confession. We run to find him in the disguise of those who are in need. And we seek to follow in his footsteps by walking with him and continuing that holy, exciting adventure of faith.
• So Advent is a time when we get up, get excited, and get moving. We know that none of those 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, 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. 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. The ones who are taken will be those who are seeking God, striving to grow spiritually, rather than being content with doing the minimum or even less. The ones who are taken will be those who are journeying, seeking to change in the way Christ wants to change them, who are 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-movement: Christ’s journeying toward us and our going out of ourselves, out of comfort zones, out of our old habits, to meet him. It’s a time for us to cast off the deeds of darkness, as St. Paul tells us in the second reading, and put on God’s armor of light. If we’ve gotten into any bad habits, 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. The spiritual spiritual New Year we begin today is a time of setting spiritual “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 time we come to Mass is meant to be a little Advent. More than any place, this is where we are meant 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 here. 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. This new spiritual year that begins today is meant to be the greatest year in our spiritual life. It’s meant to a year of spiritual growth as we become the vibrant Catholics Christ has always intended us to be. Let’s respond to God’s graces that it may indeed become so! And let us help each other by our prayers, encouragement and concrete assistance to go out to meet the Lord who comes with love!
• What time is it? It’s time to get up, get excited, and get moving. Emmanuel is coming. Let us go out to meet him with all we’ve got!

The readings for today’s Mass were: