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.