Homily - Advent 1

 

Advent – Starts with Christ’s coming at the end of time, then transitions towards Christmas as we get closer.

Prophet Isaiah – crying out to God and to His people. Here is a prayer that can really be on all of our hearts. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you, while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for, such as they had not heard of from of old. No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him.

Isaiah would never have expected his prayer to be fulfilled in the great mystery we remember in under four weeks, that God would rend the heavens and come down in human flesh. It is certainly unheard of, and for the Jews absolutely unimagined, undreamt. But this is how much God loves His people. Love does whatever it can to unite with the beloved.

Saint Paul himself experienced this in a profound way, when Christ Jesus revealed himself specifically to “Saul” on the road to Damascus, literally tearing the heavens open and crashing into his world. He made him blind temporarily so that Saul could finally see the entire universe from the right perspective: it was all centered around the Gospel of Christ Jesus. That’s why today in the 2^nd reading, Paul is repeating the name of Jesus Christ again and again. In fact ten times in the first ten verses of 1^st Corinthians. He knows who we must build our lives around, and he gives his entire life and his death to this message. A good question as we begin Advent is “How centered is my life on Jesus?”

Isaiah continues: Would that you might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you in our ways! We know in humility that we are not “ready” for God to come, either at the end of time, or to come tearing through the shell of our lives now, unless we “stay awake” like Jesus asks us in the Gospel today. We “stay awake” by practicing what is right, or as we said in the opening prayer, by “running forth to meet Christ with righteous deeds at his coming.” The righteous deeds are outlined last week, from the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. The sheep and the goats are all surprised in fact, by the king who says to them: “I was hungry, thirsty, naked, ill, a stranger, and in prison, and you treated me well or poorly.” May we not let these four weeks of Advent rush by without us truly getting ready for Christmas by deeds of righteousness and a deeper life of prayer that centers around Jesus.

Homily - Christ the King

Audio:  https://soundcloud.com/stthereselittleflowersb/nov-22nd-solemnity-of-our-lord-christ-jesus-king-of-the-universe 

 

The full title of today's feast is Our Lord, Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. Man that's a rather powerful title. Some of us act like they are king of the world, and many of us think we are king of our own lives, at least part of the time, but Jesus is King of the Universe - of literally every created thing. He is God and man, and the Father "will place all things beneath his feet," even death. We ourselves will also be placed  beneath Jesus' feet. We have no choice. Well, we do have a choice, but it's not what we would expect, the freedom-hungry and self-directing people that we are. Our choice is this: do we receive Jesus as our King now, or is it imposed on us later.

When our lives end, they will be wrapped up with one ultimate defining line in the sand. Everything we do: every action we take, every conversation with another person, every check that we write, every opportunity we take and every one that we turn down, every step toward chasing a goal, every decision for our careers and for our families, every friend we support in good or help steer away from evil, all the most important things in our stories and all the little moments of our lives that no one in the world notices - - all of it will come down to two simple choices: God, or myself. "I will serve" or "I will not serve" are the only two things our lives can say in the end.

St. Augustine outlines this in his masterpiece, the City of God: Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly [city] by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly [city] by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its own head in its own glory; the other says to its God, "Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head." In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength." 

So which one do we want to be part of?

Although our lips and voices are important, our lives are the real answer we give to to this question. "I will serve the Lord, Jesus Christ, King of the Universe" or "I will not serve this king" is seen in how we follow Jesus' commands. As St. Augustine describes it, do we love God so much that we even despise our own selves (that is, forget ourselves entirely) when He demands it? (This is what Jesus means when He tells us to "deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow after Him") Or do we cling to ourselves so much that we end up despising God for "attacking" us.

Our lives show the answer to this question in a million different ways. But I want you to think about two this week: time, and service.

1. Time: How do I spend my time? Do I ever "waste" time for God? (It's never waste, but the worldly view sees it as useless, so we can say this not to agree, but to remind ourselves of the lie we need to reject). How much time to I "waste" for God? When looking at life from the perspective of our death, we may look back and say we "wasted" a whole lot of time on things that seemed important to us.

2. Service: Is my life mostly about building up "my life" in some way? (career, legacy, family, hobbies). When I say, "that was a good day / great day today," was it great because I spent it on others? because my life was saying "I will serve the Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe"? or for some other reason?

This is hard for me too. I just spend five days on retreat and I feel more than ever that I have a lot of room to grow in this. I have a lot more to give to Jesus. More of my heart, more of my time, more of my life.

As we face this task, Psalm 23 should strengthen us. The Good Shepherd will not abandon us. God will do everything He can to help us if we only ask Him, day after day, to do so. We cannot fail unless we rely on ourselves to do this. Ask Jesus for His help. He wants to hear your voice crying out to him. He loves you so much. He is only waiting for you to turn toward His face so that you can feel the warmth of His love.