(The following is a homily given the Catholic Community of Enid on the First Sunday of Advent, 11/29/15)
Reading 1 Jer 33:14-16
Responsorial Psalm Ps 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14
Reading 2 1 Thes 3:12—4:2
Gospel Lk 21:25-28, 34-36
Today marks the end of an age, and the beginning of another. With this season of Advent, our Church prepares itself for the coming of a day of unimaginable glory and peace. But in order to get to that day, it has to get through other days. Days of struggle; days of purification.
“The days are coming… when [the LORD] will fulfill the promise [he] made to [His people] of exultation (see Reading 1), but first there will be darkness and anticipation.
“In those [joyous] days [to come],” there will be safety and security, but first “nations will be in dismay” and “the powers of the heavens will be shaken” to their foundations.
Why must this happen? Why does our merciful God place such a burden upon the shoulders of his people? In order to get to some semblance of an answer, maybe we should look at what our Church gives us to ponder in this liturgical season.
This time of year gives us a glimpse of what is at stake for our religion. Advent is a time of expectation and preparation. It is a time where we come to understand that the world around us is not what we are striving for, but rather what we strive for is a world not yet fully realized.
This time of year is meant to show us that “the days are coming” when God will visit his people again, as he did 2000 years ago, only this time in a glorified state of justice and righteousness, bringing to a definitive end the tears shed in pain and sorrow. But that these days are not yet.
We all know this, because we all experience the suffering of this world, at some level. Yes, we share in the joys of life and love which surround us, but if we are honest with ourselves, we know that these glimpses of truth, beauty, and goodness are just that – glimpses into a world at which we have not yet arrived.
This season of Advent reminds us that this waiting, this anticipation was foreshadowed for us. For 4,000 years of recorded history, the Israelites wondered the desert of unknowing and sin, desperately grasping at the scraps of goodness around it in order to fill the void left by the sin of Adam. They cried out, begging God to “make known” His ways; to “teach [His] paths [of] truth and [salvation]” (Ps.) to a people in need of His love.
This season of Advent tells us of the ongoing struggle for sanctity even now. Recognizing our continued efforts to “increase … in love” Advent “earnestly ask[s]” us to not only continue conducting ourselves in a way that pleases God, but to “do so even more.” (see Reading 2).
Advent tells us to “be vigilant at all times” (See Gospel Reading) in the face of a world that seems to be crumbling before us with the weight and decay of sin. For it is sin with which we struggle. It is sin that traps us here, like gilded prison bars, deceiving us into thinking that the world in which we live is all there is.
With this understanding of the Advent season, I think that we find our answer to the question of suffering. It is not a burden that a demanding God placing on our shoulders, but rather a loving releasing from us the chains of sin that we have worn so long that their weight is all we know. The “carousing” lifestyle of the listless; the “drunkenness of the complacent, “The anxieties of daily life” – these burdens must be removed from us so that we are able to experience those days to come when the God of the Universe lifts us out of this foreign wasteland into the place we have been destined for since God loved us into existence.
And so, my friends, today marks the end of an age -- the age of sin, and the beginning of the era of Love. Love is what has the power to cleanse us of the grime of what is to prepare us for what is to come.
Are we willing to endure this cleansing? Are we prepared to “be vigilant” in our hope for mercy?
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