November 30, 2003
The Advent Season of Hope
and Prayer
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and that we can make this holy season
of Advent a special time of hope and prayer and grace and light and waiting
for Jesus. Advent is my favorite season, more than Lent, because it’s
a time of wonder and grace and expectation as we open our hearts and keep
lookout for Christ.
Our Gospel is from the end of Luke, just before Jesus is arrested,
and Jesus tells us to get ready, that Christ is coming, to put it bluntly,
that the end of the world is coming, or the end of the world as we
know it, or the end of our lives, so Jesus tells us to be on alert,
to notice the signs of nature and the signs of the times, from the
sun and the moon and the stars, to the nations of the world in all
their turmoil and dismay--which we see on TV every night--and to be
vigilant for Christ and to “stand erect and raise our heads because
our redemption is at hand.” So although the coming of Christ
and the turmoil of the world sound pretty scary to most, for us as
people of faith and hope and love, the Gospel says all we have to do
is have courage, hold our heads high, and keep our chins up because
Jesus is coming, redemption is at hand, the reign of God is here, and
everything is going to be alright.
The Gospel tells us that we don’t know when God is coming, just
that God is definitely coming, and we have to get ready. So today’s
Gospel give us some specific advice: Beware about our hearts. Don’t
give in to problems and anxieties of the world. Be vigilant at all
times and pray for strength to escape tribulations and to stand before
Christ.
I just want to reflection on three things I hear in our Gospel: redemption,
hope, and prayer.
First, our Gospel and Advent tell us that “our redemption is
at hand.” What does that mean? Fundamentally we are all sinners,
we’re all broken, we’re all victims of the culture of war
and the world of injustice, we all have terrible problems and no matter
how hard we try, we cannot fix them and no matter what, we are all
going to die. But the Gospel says that Jesus is coming to the rescue,
to redeem us, help us, heal us, fix us, save us and make everything
work out and this is just what we need! This is good news.
Second, our Gospel and Advent are about hope. The world tells us we’re
doomed, there’s no hope, there’s nothing we can do, war
will always occur, the powerful will always crush us, go ahead and
wallow in your despair, but the Gospel says, “Be vigilant! Be
on the lookout!” That means to me that we are people of hope.
We are looking for change, we keep watch for the coming of Christ,
not in some distant future, but right now, today, in the present. We
live in relationship to God and to our redeemer, and so we place our
hope and trust and obedience in Jesus. To be Advent people is to live
in hope right now.
Finally, our Gospel and Advent call us to get ready for Jesus, an specifically,
Luke urges us to pray for the strength to stand before Christ, to spend
time in prayer, to take quality time every day in silent prayer, to
keep vigil by sitting in the presence of God, talking to God, listening
for God, and being in the presence of God. So I want to invite us all
to take time this Advent to renew our prayer lives, to go deeper into
the spiritual life, to spend quality time in contemplative prayer with
the God of peace, to wait in hope in the silence of deep meditation
for Christ, to attend daily Mass when we can, to participation in our
Advent reconciliation services and receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation,
to renounce our inner violence and sinfulness and to do as St. Paul
writes in his letter to the Thessalonians, “to increase and abound
in love for one another, to strengthen our hearts, and grow in holiness.”
So this Advent, as we await our redemption, stand in hope, and pray
for the gift of Christ’s peace, we can sing our Advent song of
hope, “O come, o come Emmanuel, and ransom us ‘captive
Israel’ that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God
appear. Rejoice, rejoice, O ‘Israel,’ to you shall come
Emmanuel!”
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