Year I Monday of the First Week of Advent

Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122:1-9; Matthew 8:5-11

Advent is the season during which the theological virtue of hope comes into full relief. Longing is almost a one-word description of human experience. As human beings, we long for what we desire. When you think about it, desire expressed as longing, that which drives us, is what constitutes our humanity.

Longing often remains ambiguous because the object of one’s desire is often not clear. There is a tendency to think if I acquire this or accomplish that I will be fulfilled. Within a short time, one is left asking questions like, “Is this all?” or “What’s next?” It takes us time to learn that all accomplishment and all acquisitions are fleeting.

For those who are attentive to experience, the fleeting nature of things reveals over time that human desire is infinite. Infinite desire can never be satisfied by finite things. Infinite desire requires an infinite object.

Our reading from Isaiah paints a picture of something worth desiring: God’s kingdom as place of peace and tranquility. In this passage we hear the words “ways,” “paths,” and “walk.” These all refer to God: God’s ways, God’s path, walking in God’s light. We don’t need to wait until eschaton to walk in God’s paths, to follow God’s ways, to walk in the light of the LORD. In reality, these describe how to live between already and not-yet of God’s kingdom.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preached about the Lord coming three times. His first coming is as man, His Incarnation. In the end, He will come again in glory. But in between, this span between the already and not-yet, there is a hidden advent that happens in the one with true faith.

“In case someone should think that what we say about this middle coming is sheer invention,” says Saint Bernard, “listen to what our Lord himself says: ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him’ [Jn. 14:23].” He then exhorts his listeners: “Keep God’s word… Let it enter into your very being, let it take possession of your desires and your whole way of life.”¹ This is how one brings desire into focus.

Christmas is not only about celebrating the Lord’s birth in Bethlehem, which often becomes very sentimental. It is much more about the present, about Him being born anew in you. Advent, then, is a gestation period. It is Jesus present in the Eucharist who bridges the span between the already and the not-yet.

If the Lord is truly present in the consecrated bread and wine and you receive Him under these signs, it stands to reason that He is in you. He comes to be present in you not merely for your own sake, but for you to make Him present to others.

Making the Lord present to others, thus living in and for Him is how you begin to fulfill your longing, to satisfy your desire. The title of a lovely hymn composed by Bach summarizes this well: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.

Rightly, the issue of worthiness comes up. As a wise mentor said to me years ago, “You’re not worthy. Get over it.” Try as you might, you will never make yourself worthy. Only One is worthy: Jesus Christ.

The words of the Roman centurion from our Gospel today should sound very familiar to you. At each Mass, we say aloud, or should say aloud, a variation of what this man says to the Lord in today’s Gospel: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

To be fully healed is something we all desire because it is something we all badly need. Wholeness and holiness are integrally related. To become holy is to be made whole. We’ve all been wounded and all of us have wounded others. To be healed, therefore, is to become, in the words Father Henri Nouwen, a wounded healer.

Attend to the fact that the centurion did not reject what Jesus did because he was unworthy. His honest profession of unworthiness is a sign of genuine faith. It is what hope looks like. On the one hand, this pagan recognized who Jesus is and understood he had no right, no standing, to ask the Lord for anything. On the other hand, he recognized that this is what the Lord came into the world to do and so humbly implored Him, confident in the Lord's mercy.

If we follow the story beyond the bounds of our reading from the lectionary, after lauding this Roman soldier to his fellow Jews by way of rebuke, Jesus tells this pious pagan, “You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.” The inspired author ends this pericope with these words: “And at that very hour [his] servant was healed.”²

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1 St. Bernard of Clairvaux (Sermo 5, "In Adventu Domini," 1-3: Opera Omnia, Edit. Cisterc. 4 {1966}, 188-190..^↩
2 Matthew 8:13.^↩

Year C First Sunday of Advent

Readings: Jer 33:14-16; Ps 25:4-5.8-10.14; 1 Thess 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25-28.34-36

Prior to Mass yesterday, we celebrated the first liturgy of this new year of grace. With Evening Prayer last night, the Church throughout the world entered the season of Advent. Being a noun, “advent” means arrival. This is a season meant to prepare us both for the Lord’s return and celebrating His humble birth in Bethlehem at Christmas. Advent, therefore, is consciously living between the already and not-yet, about letting Christ be born in you as “we look forward to his second coming.”¹

The liturgical year is a great gift. Understanding it and living the seasons of the Christian year, not only at Church, but at home, and in your personal life, grounds Christian spirituality in the Paschal Mystery. In the words of pastor/theologian Trevor Hudson, all the seasons of the Church year “are ‘time-gifts’ that the church offers to help us participate more fully in what God has done [and is doing] in human history.”²

God has done nothing in human history greater than being conceived by the Holy Spirit and made incarnate of the Virgin Mary, thus becoming fully human.³ This is why, when reciting the Creed, we bow while professing this central truth of our faith, which marks the beginning of the Paschal Mystery. Jesus Christ is not only consubstantial with the Father as it pertains to His divinity, He is also consubstantial with His Mother as to His humanity.

During Advent, we celebrate two great Marian observances: the Solemnity of Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Holy Day of Obligation, which we will observe this year on Monday, 9 December y el doce de diciembre, celebramos la Fiesta de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe. En virtud de la Inmaculada Concepción, la Madre María es la patrona de Estados Unidos. Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe es patrona de todas las Américas. Under the Immaculate Conception, Mother Mary is patroness of the United States. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of all the Americas.

Keeping Christ in Christmas starts with observing Advent. Observing Advent requires you to live contra mundum, to swim against the stream of well-meaning but premature and excessive festivities that leave everyone exhausted. Let’s face it, Santa Claus has little in common these days with Saint Nicholas. By all means, in the fullness of time, let’s celebrate Christmas! In the meantime, let’s prepare ourselves so we are properly disposed to do so.

Christmas starts on 25 December and, here in the United States, lasts until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which we will observe this year on 12 January. Traditionally, Christians prepare for great solemnities by observing a time of more intensive prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Advent is to Christmas as Lent is to Easter.

While a relatively short season, Advent has a twofold character. We begin Advent as an extension of Christ the King, when we celebrate, not the end of the world, but end of time. Time will end when Jesus returns “to judge the living and the dead.”⁴ And so, for roughly the first two weeks of Advent, we look forward to the Lord’s Advent, His second coming. In a very real sense, the whole of human history is mostly an Advent, a time of waiting on the Lord.

Our reading from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, is indicative of the beginning of Advent. Likely written in AD50, it is probably the first book of our uniquely Christian scriptures to be written, First Thessalonians possesses what might be called an eschatological urgency. In other words, it urges Christians to live in readiness for Christ’s return so as “to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.”⁵

“Eschatology,” in case you’re wondering, is just a fancy theological word referring to the end of time, to last things. It is often the case today that our eschatology does not extend beyond the fact that someday we'll all die. This even though Christ's return to judge the living and the dead (yes, judge) is credal, dogmatic, de fide, that is, an essential and indispensable element of Christian belief. Our dogmatic beliefs should have bearing on how we, as Christians, live our lives. Yes, you may die before the Lord returns. Then again, you may not.

As Saint Paul wrote to the Church in ancient Rome, in a passage from the scriptural reading for the Church’s Morning Prayer on the First Sunday of Advent: “it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.”⁶ Put simply, it’s always later than you think. How can we regain the proper sense of urgency? While not a panacea in and of itself, observing Advent can help in this regard.

It is tempting to explain away hard passages like the one from Saint Luke’s Gospel that is our Gospel for this First Sunday of Advent. But turning Christian faith into an exclusively this-worldly philosophy is to be unfaithful to what God has revealed in Christ. Note that our Gospel for today comes from the final chapters of Luke’s Gospel, not its beginning.

Let’s give our Lord the last word as we begin Advent, letting Him set the theme. After warning His followers not to be carried away either by excessive revelry or by excessive worry about “the anxieties of daily life,” thus living sub specie aeternatatis- under the aspect of eternity, always bearing foremost in mind the purpose of existence, He instructs us:

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 Man⁷

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1 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, Eucharistic Prayer III, sec. 113.^↩
2 Trevor Hudson. Pauses for Lent: 40 Words for 40 Days. Upper Room Books. Kindle Edition. Location 73.^↩
3 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, The Liturgy of the Word, sec. 18.^↩
4 Ibid.^↩
5 1 Thessalonians 13:3.^↩
6 Romans 13:11.^↩
7 Luke 21:34-36.^↩