Today begins the first Sunday of Advent - in fact, it is the first day of the Church's Liturgical Year. We come to a new Advent season and the opportunity to "enter into" the story of Jesus' coming. These days lead up to the celebration of Christ Jesus' birth on Dec. 25, but we don't stop there because these days remind us that Jesus will come again - the second Advent of his return.
This first Sunday's reading from the Gospel reminds us to watch, and wait with expectancy of faith. MK 13:33-37
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Be watchful! Be alert!
You do not know when the time will come.
It is like a man traveling abroad.
He leaves home and places his servants in charge,
each with his own work,
and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch.
Watch, therefore;
you do not know when the lord of the house is coming,
whether in the evening or at midnight,
or at Cockcrow, or in the morning.
May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”
Let's think a bit about what the Gospel says. As a child, I thought the days from Thanksgiving to Christmas were never going to end. I didn't wait with any kind of expectancy, but instead waited impatiently... "when is Christmas going to come?" How can we "watch and wait" in a faith-filled sort of way. Let's begin by realizing that all of Israel waited for hundreds of years that the Messiah might come - and, when Jesus arrived they didn't recognize him and in fact, rejected him because he didn't fulfill their expectations.
Perhaps this is where we need to begin - with the realization that we must set aside our concepts of what Advent should be, and instead see it as a time to prepare for Jesus' coming to change the world, including our own world. C.S. Lewis referred to our current world as “enemy-occupied territory” and reflected that, “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed…and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
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