First Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 24:36 - 44

This is the first Sunday of Advent, as you can tell by our purple vestments.  Advent is a word related to coming, and we all know that it means the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, which we will celebrate in four weeks and four days from now.  When I was a little kid, this was the time I suddenly became aware of the fact that Christmas was not far off in the indefinite future, but that it was inevitable, and I could only suffer the long wait until Christmas morning.  For us, Advent was a lot like lent; we gave something up, prayed more, got ready.  For me it seemed that it should be the other way around -- 6 weeks for Christmas, four for Easter.  To my childish mind which lasted until I was through college, Christmas beat Easter as the most important of the special days of the year.

So we celebrate the coming of Jesus into the world.  That moment described in the gospel of Luke, when Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and Jesus was conceived, the world changed completely.  God became flesh to give us the clearest possible picture of how he wants us to live our lives, including that part of life that all of us must go through, our deaths.  One of the best ways to prepare for Christmas, then, is to examine the life of Christ.  This is the year we will read through the gospel of Matthew, and it would be a wonderful thing to spend a few minutes each day reading that gospel and thinking about it.  After all, it is inspired; as someone put it, the scriptures are the love letter God gives the human race.  Read the gospel.

But we also celebrate Jesus coming into the world right now.  Between his first coming, as a flesh and blood Jewish preacher and healer in the first century, he does not disappear but comes into the world over and over again.  Whenever the word of God is preached it is Jesus preaching.  Whenever the assembly that is the Church comes together in prayer, word or action, Jesus is there in his body, the Church, because wherever two or three are gathered in his name, there he is.  And whenever our priest calls upon the Holy Spirit to change the bread and wine into his body and blood, there he is.  Jesus did not leave us with his ascension into heaven; he remains with us throughout history, every day of our lives.  And he is always with us, even to the end of the world, as he promised.  

And finally, we celebrate Jesus' return, which we call the second coming.  As I mentioned this is not an accurate description, as he comes to us over and over again.  Perhaps a better term would be “the last coming”.  Because we are promised throughout scripture that a day will come when he returns in visible, obvious and unmistakable triumph to rule over a new heaven and a new earth.  That’s a promise.  But if we truly believe that what should our response be?  Some people say that his return with a new creation means that this present creation doesn’t matter very much.  If as in the days of Noah some of us will be whisked away and others left behind, all that we do comes to nothing in the end.  But Jesus’ last coming isn’t something that will be imposed on us.  It is his constant presence in the word, the assembly and the Eucharist that will ultimately create the condition such that earth will become like heaven -- “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.  

The first theme of today’s readings has to do with the anticipation of the comings of our Lord and savior -- God entering human history, God shaping human history through his people, and God ultimately reigning over our transformed world, transformed by you and I and everyone who belongs to Christ.  

The second theme is that we must be alert, we must be awake, we must take up our crosses and follow him.  We each have a part in bringing about the kingdom of heaven.  A small part? Maybe, but an essential part.  God could choose not to use us, but his desire is to work through us.  And that’s what we need to remember as we enter a new church year on this first Sunday of advent.  Let us resolve to wake up each morning and look forward to that day’s opportunities.  Saint Jose Maria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, told us that humans are given the task of working, and in work we make ourselves holy, we make the work holy, and we make the world holy through our work.  And in doing so we hasten the coming of God’s kingdom into our world, we summon the last coming of Our Lord.