First Sunday of Advent, cycle C

Luke 21: 25-28; 34-36

Christians are supposed to be citizens of two worlds, and this time of year it seems very obvious. Here we are beginning the Advent season, and we are hearing about the Last Judgement and wearing penitential purple and many of us will use the season to take advantage of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But it seems like society in general is ringing bells, wearing festive red and green, dreaming of acquiring more stuff and putting on six or seven pounds between now and New Years. As Christians we feel out of place; we have those images of the end of time when some of us will be frightened literally to death, and the Son of Man will descend from the heavens to judge us all.

Judgment. We talk about God being a just judge, and that frightens us a little bit; we hear in other parts of scripture that what has been concealed will be revealed, and that frightens me even more, to be frank, because there are things in my life that I would prefer not to be revealed except to my confessor. And sometimes in the middle of the night I worry that I haven’t done what God put me on the earth to do, and if the great saints were aware of their sinfulness to the point of flogging themselves and wearing hair shirts as penance, how do I stand a chance with my charmed life and my aversion to discomfort of any kind?

But God does not judge. We judge ourselves. God condemns no one, but we can put ourselves in hell. It’s that simple. With the Incarnation, God’s light and God’s truth come into the world. We can choose to live in darkness, we can choose falsehood. Saint Paul gives us a very clear picture of this. He says the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is not the spirit of self-indulgence, sexual vice, jealousy, rivalry, antagonism, bad temper, quarrels, drunkenness or factionalism. When we cultivate these vices we can be sure that we are not living in God’s spirit. And we may not think we can cultivate vices, but we can. Whenever you exercise your bad temper, it’s easier the next time. When you have that extra piece of pie or that fourth Martini that you don’t need, you are cultivating self indulgence or drunkenness. And we are all guilty of cultivating vices, hopefully less so as we get older and wiser. Saint Paul tells us that the spirit of God is the spirit of charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and chastity; and when we cultivate these virtues, we are living in God’s spirit. We judge ourselves, we punish ourselves, we put ourselves in hell when we choose to live outside of God’s spirit. When we live in God’s spirit we find salvation.

So when you hear someone say, “How can an all good and all merciful God send anyone to hell for all eternity?” the answer is, he doesn’t. God shows his goodness and mercy by sending his Son to share our human condition, from being a single-celled zygote to a fetus to a newborn baby, to a teenager struggling with mental and physical changes, to a young man doing labor to earn enough to take care of his loved ones. His Son studies scripture and worships with the others in his village, some of whom seem to be hypocrites. His Son is hungry and thirsty, is pushed around by the authorities. His Son is condemned as a criminal and flogged and beaten and mocked; his Son is put to death. Some people say this is so that his Son, who is truly God and truly man, can pay the price for our sin that we never could pay. Some say that this is so because it is the only way the human race can satisfy the demands of God’s justice. But maybe the answer is in Jesus’ own words: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” If we keep his word and love him, we will be inhabited by God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we will share in His resurrection from the dead.

It’s probably almost impossible for someone to become completely holy, completely one with God while on this earth. Maybe Mother Theresa, Maybe Padre Pio, maybe Pope John Paul II – but if you read biographies of them you learn that they had faults and vices.

Mother Theresa suffered from the feeling that God was absent, leading to doubt and pain. According to her letters to her confessor, she felt as though she had lost that intimate connection with God that she had enjoyed when she was young. Padre Pio was known to have a problem with temper, and he often used shocking language in letting people know what he thought. Pope John Paul II appointed Theodore McCarrick an archbishop and a cardinal when he was being counseled not to because of the rumors of McCarrick’s scandalous life. And I believe every saint whose life is realistically known to us had something about him or her that showed the effects of original sin. In other words, the more you study the saints the more you realize you could be one too. If you can be a saint and still have faults, I have a chance.

The Son of God lived among us and loves us; the Father loves the Son and raises him from the dead. And the Son constantly asks the Father to do the same for those he loves. So Jesus’ life and death makes up, in some way, for all those impediments to holiness that you and I have, and Mother Theresa and Padre Pio and Saint John Paul II had. The wonderful thing is that Jesus left us a Church that is a constant source of holiness and grace and the way he designed to share the love his Father and he have for each other, which is the Holy Spirit The Church is like an oasis in the desert, a place where the thirsty traveler can get water. And the Church never runs out; it is constantly being replenished by the Holy Spirit.

Its a good thing to remind ourselves during advent that there will be judgment; that we judge ourselves by how we live; but we can hold up our heads because God has given us everything we need to enter eternal life in the Church Jesus founded. So today give thanks for the Church and resolve to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the weeks to come.