INTRODUCTION
In many parts of the world especially in europe, this period is usually characterized with change in the weather that produce effects in the biosphere. Most plants do shade off their leaves and some animals such as the insects and several reptiles do hide off into the earth because of the cold weather. It is the pick of autumn season which mediates the summer and the winter. At the dawn of winter, we notice a sparkling beautiful substance which we call snow. This usually occur within the Christmas period. At the tale end of the winter is the spring. During this period, the plants will begin to regain new leaves, and the flowers will blossom while the animals that went into hiding will resurface again.
Isn’t it wonderful to see how this natural phenomena serve as a wonderful explanation of the advent period? Advent calls us to shade off our old life, to hide away from the contamination of sin and corruption, so that we may resurface and blossom with the radiance of Christ who comes to us first in the mystery of the incarnation and then in definitive mystery of the parousia. Yes, the advent bell calls us to turn on new leaves which is an expression of the perpetuity of Christ’ presence in our hearts.
On this first sunday of advent, the invitation we get from the readings especially the Gospel, is the call for “spiritual vigilance”. Jesus insists in the Gospel that we should “watch and pray” for we do not know when the master returns. When the eyes are closed, the body loses light and suffers in obscurity; and it has almost zero possibility of averting dangers that come on its way, but when the eyes are open, the body receives light and is able to escape possible dangers. This is the spiritual vigilance imprinted in the call of Jesus today. The prayer He speaks of is not some sort of rhythmic ritualistic prayers, rather the prayers that spring from the heart; a heart that dialogues with the Spirit. This is the effective prayer that inter-connects the heart with its creator.
FIRST READING: Isaiah 63:16-17, 19; 64:2-7
Around 600 B.C during the reign of king Jehoiakim, king Nebuchadnezzar laid a second siege in Jerusalem leading to the death of Jehoiakim and the deportation of his successor Jeconiah and many Jews into babylonian captivity (this was the first deportation. About ten years later, Nebuchadnezzar will carry out the second deportation).This exile experience spanned about 60 years. But at his appointed time, God raised up Cyrus, the Persian emperor to conquer Babylon. He liberated the Jewish captives and allowed them to return to their homeland. It was within this tumultuous moment when the returnees were still breathing the air of captivity that the prophet Isaiah delivered to them the message of our first reading today. At this time, they were still trying to settle down in their own soil. We can imagine how is feels to return home to a ruined and deserted homeland.Tears will surely roll down the cheek and the mind will be clouded with confusion of not knowing where to start to fix up things. This is exactly the feeling we get from the reading. It contains feelings of guilt, regret, anguish, outrage at God, though alternating with the praise of God. It equally expresses hope as clearly enunciated by the prophet: “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before You.” It was a time of longing and prayer for God to return in the midst of His people after what seemed like a breakup in the relationship between God and His people a result of their infidelity (which incurred their exile experience). But in order to attract the presence of God again, the prophet pleaded for forgiveness on behalf of the people: “You, O Lord, are our Father; we are the clay and You are the potter: we are all the work of Your hands.” He reminded God to take into account the imperfection of his people and their total dependence on the Him to mould them according to the shape He desires: “Yet, o Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the workof your hand.”
The role of Isaiah in this context shows that the work of a prophet is not primarily to remind the people about their failings and to condemn their actions, rather to mediate between them and their God and to intercede on their behalf.
This glorious return of the people was already anticipated by the Psalmist as we see in the responsorial Psalm today: “God of hosts, turn again, we implore; look down from heaven and see. Visit this vine and protect it, the vine your right hand has planted…and we shall never forsake you again; give us life that we may call upon your name.” It was a miserere prayer that is, a prayer of the just begging for God’s mercy on behalf of his people.
SECOND READING: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Corinth was an important and wealthy city on the isthmus (narrow strip of land) separating Northern and Southern Greece. The Apostle Paul spent 18 months there on his Second Missionary Journey and established a church there. Acts 18 gives us considerable detail about Paul’s work at Corinth. At the conclusion of his sojourn in Corinth, Paul left for Ephesus, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Galatia (Acts 18:18-23).
Our reading today is an epistle of the Apostle Paul to the community of Corinth from Ephesus in 57 A.D. In this pericope, Paul tried to respond to a report he got about the problems in the Corinthian church (1:11). In this letter, he provides apostolic guidance for dealing with those problems. The first of those problems is divisions in the church, which Paul began discussing in 1:10-17. In the intervening chapter and a half (1:18 – 2:16), Paul talked about Christ as the true wisdom of God. And in the chapter three he will once again focuse on the divisions in the Corinthian church. (Sermon writer).
Paul seemed to be frustrated after investing so much of himself in the Corinthian Church. And being in the context in which they Christians were expecting the return of the Lord, Paul made the Corinthians to understand that according to his own judgement, they were not yet ready to face the Day of the Lord because they were misusing the gifts of the Holy Spirit that had been given to them. He insisted that the gifts they had received were not for personal glory and gratification, rather for the good of the community. He urged them to use the gifts at the service of unity. And Just like Isaiah prayed for the people in the first reading, Paul prayed for the Corinthian community: “He (Jesus) will strengthen you to the end…so that you will be blameless on the day of Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, and it was He who called you to fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
GOSPEL: Mark 13: 33-37
Mark is the shortest of the four canonical Gospels and, in the view of most Scripture scholars, it was probably written at a time when the Romans had swept through upper Galilee to suppress a Galilean revolution. This region was where Mark’s Judeo-Christian community lived. This community was besieged by three hostile forces, all of which demanded loyalty from the followers of Jesus as former Jews. Since Palestine was the breadbasket of the Empire, the Romans controlled it through military might and local alliances. At the time Mark wrote his Gospel, the Roman legions were poised to destroy the Temple and all of Jerusalem with it, once and for all, and thus end the Jewish nation as it had existed before. (Fr. Anthony Kadavil).
It is in this context that the message of today was situated. For the Jews, the greatest catastrophe that could befall them is the destruction of the Temple because the Temple was not only the symbol of God’s presence among His people, it was equally a trademark of national unity. So, the destruction of the Temple was perceived as a foretaste of the end of time.
Dating this Gospel within this context of the destruction of the Temple was a way to address the Christians who thought that the end was near. Without negating their belief, the evangelist admonished them to be alert and awake reminding them about Jesus’ parable of the gate-keeper. The passage is sometimes referred to as the “little apocalypse” based on its similarity to the Great Apocalypse of the Revelation of John. Apocalyptic literature usually comes out of difficult times. For example, the book of Daniel comes from the era (165 B.C.) when Antiochus Epiphanes profaned the temple and tried to impose pagan religious practices on the Jews. The book of Revelation comes from the era (95 A.D.) when Christians were being persecuted because they refused to worship the emperor. While apocalyptic literature might seem strange to us, the word apocalypse means unveiling or revelation. Apocalyptic literature typically proclaims a message of hope in coded language not understandable except by insiders and therefore unlikely to draw the ire of hostile authorities. (Sermon writer).
The central message of today’s passage is the imperative invitation to spiritual vigilance: “Watch and pray” because the hour and the day of the master’s return is unknown.
Gospel makes allusion to absentee land-owners and wayfaring masters very much common during the time of Jesus. The owners of large properties often lived elsewhere, leaving servants in charge of caring for and carrying on business as if the owners were still present.
And again, in the time of the Roman empire, a servant-guard was always charged with the obligation to watch and to raise alarm in the case of a suspected danger or foreign invasion. If a guard falls asleep and the enemy invades and kills those whom he was charged to protect, he would be executed for falling asleep on guard duty. For that, the guard was always alert. Metaphorically, this is the type of spiritual vigilance that the Gospel speaks about insisting that one knows when the master will return (the return of the Lord); and the reward for an unfaithful servant (Christian) will be eternal damnation (just like the execution of a Roman guard).
LIFE MESSAGES
1. The best of Advent alert:
If we want to live a practical experience of advent which will truly prepare us to welcome the Lord who comes let us try the technique of waking up every morning with this prayer on our lips: “Lord, I acknowledge your love, and it is by your love that I am awake this morning. Please help me not to keep this love for myself alone, but lead me to share it with the persons I may meet today.” And at the close of the day just before we retire to rest, let us make an examination of conscience by asking ourselves: “Did I really meet Christ today?” Then the response should be, “yes I met Him.” He is always hidden in the faces of people we meet especially the wounded faces of the poor whom we often pretend not to see; that is the Christ we are waiting for in this advent. He is often there before us begging us to recognize Him, though distractions and the configuration of our lives in the rhythm of the directionless world do not always allow us to notice Him. Let us not miss Him this time around, now and today. He needs us just as we need Him. St. Thomas Aquinas would say: “Without God, I can’t. Without me, He won’t.”
2. Being wakeful and watchful:
All our plans and budgets in life are often consumer-oriented that we often forget that the real life is about being and not just about having. Our worries are often how to plan and save for rainy days, to get married, to buy a home, to send the children to college, to retire in comfort and to protect ourselves against future misfortunes.
We spend hours at work, business, shopping, catching up fun, yet five minutes of prayer is too difficult for some persons. One of the worst experiences I have had as a priest is to see people getting uncomfortable once the mass is a little more than an hour, yet the same people could spend five hours and more in the beaches, cinemas, bars, restaurants and other places of fun.
The present condition of our world filled with many unpredictable happenings is a call for us to be more spiritually wakeful and prepare for our eternal life because we can die any day, and that is the end of the world for us. I am sure that the millions of persons that were victimized by the Covid-19 welcomed the year 2020 without any idea of this misfortune. Let this Advent season not be like others in the past, but a time to truly experience, feel, touch and taste the presence of God.
3. “Maran atha the hope of believers” (Rev. 22:20):
“Maran atha” is a remarkable Aramaic (Syriac) expression used by the early Christian’s. It simply means, “Come, our Lord.” It was a habitual way of exchanging greetings among the Christians when they meet one another, when they gather and before they depart from their gatherings. “Maran atha” had an immediate import. It was an expression that usually remind them of the imminent parousia (the second coming of Christ). It appeared in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor.16:22) as well as in the last chapter of the book of Revelation (Rev. 22:20). In our epoch we are use to hello, hi, goodbye which is the same language code of our secular society. Our Church might probably undergo a revolution if we have in our hearts the type of spiritual disposition the early Church had and their attitude towards one another; a constant reminder of one another about the imminent coming of Christ might probably help to keep us in track.
PRAYER
May God renew our spiritual outlook as we wait in vigilant prayer and hope for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I wish you all a Spirit-filled advent journey.
PAX VOBIS!
