Homily for 1st Sun Adv, Year B
Fr. Albert
St. Peter’s, New Iberia, LA
Happy New Year! Now is a time for new beginnings, resolutions, and looking forward to what the future might hold. It’s the time to ask ourselves “will this be the year? Will this finally be the year when I get my act together, be the person I want to be, and show my friends and family the loving, generous side of me they never knew before?” What are your New Year’s resolutions?
No, I haven’t got my wires crossed and I’m not off by a month. I know it is December 3rd, but it really is a new year. Not the civil new year, but the liturgical one, when the Church starts her cycle of prayer and worship all over again, taking us once again through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with celebrating January 1st as a new year, but we mustn’t overlook our own sacred tradition. Advent is also a time of new beginning, making resolutions, and looking to the future.
The difference is the reason why. The civil new year, the one that starts next month, is usually about self-improvement and making ourselves happier. Advent, however, is about preparing for what is to come. The word means “arrival” or “coming” and it prepares us for Jesus’ arrival at Christmas. But, you’ll notice that none of the readings talk about Jesus as a baby. Instead, they are focus on Jesus’ second coming, when he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.
And that is what makes the liturgical new year so much more important. Advent is a time of preparation, and yes, of penance, because Jesus is coming back. A failed New Years resolution is just another personal let down. But, when it comes to Advent our resolutions have a more transcendent value. Jesus tells us that the master “leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work.” Our resolutions are not about one-time efforts to improve ourselves, but about returning to the work entrusted to us by our Lord and Savior, the work of our sanctification. We “do not know when the Lord of the house is coming” so we have this time to wake up, to remember our responsibilities, and to fix our gaze on the horizon, watching for his return.
But, have you made your Advent resolutions yet? A plan to read more scripture? Extra prayer to ready your heart and mind for Christmas? What about fasting? And as you scramble to find gifts for friends and family, what about giving to the poor? Not just dropping quarters in the salvation army bucket, but taking the time and effort to invest in charities that do better work than that?
People have already started saying “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” because the world says we’re in the holiday season. That is what it is, and it is silly to waste time getting angry at the world for being worldly. But, it’s still worth considering, would you go around shouting “Happy Easter” on Ash Wednesday? Would you stockpile your house with chocolate bunnies during Lent when you gave up chocolate? This is Advent, not Christmas. Christmas has its own season that lasts for two weeks; It starts with Christmas Day. So, when someone says, “Merry Christmas,” consider replying, “thank you and a Blessed Advent to you” as a small sign and reminder that there is a necessary time of preparation before the celebration.
And that preparation is a great thing! Anticipation heightens the joy. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. These might be platitudes, but there is real truth in them. Our first reading is a deep and heartfelt prayer to God from the prophet Isaiah. It takes an honest look at our fallen, broken world and it take seriously the fact that God is involved in our lives. It prepares us to receive God by recognizing our need for Him.
“Why do you let us wander, O LORD, from your ways?” There is a real struggle in this question, a deep sense that something is missing. And how does he respond to that desire? “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you.” This man, hundreds of years before Jesus Christ, is begging God himself to come into our world, even though he knows it would shake the mountains. If the mountains would shake, what about us?
Isaiah is honest when he says to God, “Behold, you are angry, and we are sinful.” Just turn on the news for a few minutes and you will agree with his lament that “all of us have become like unclean people, all our good deeds are like polluted rags… and our guilt carries us away like the wind.” And what is God’s response to that sinfulness? “You have hidden your face from us and have delivered us up to our guilt.” We reap what we sow, and the world is broken because we continue to break it – in ways small and large – each time we turn aside from God’s plan for us.
And yet, this rending and quaking, this judgment and guilt seem a far cry from the quiet little manger scene of Christmas. The tiny baby and the singing angels do not really strike the same note of terror that Isaiah has played for us. But they are in reality deeply connected. It is precisely this terror that leads Isaiah to the most profound part of the prayer. “O LORD, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your hands.”
This is one of the very few places in the Hebrew Old Testament where God is directly addressed as “Father” in a prayer. After recognizing the problem, it recalls God’s love for us and his ability to transform us. And that is why Advent comes before Christmas. Until we recognize our sin, we do not understand our need for forgiveness. Until we recognize the burning power that is God’s holiness, we will not understand why we need to be holy. Until we recognize that we must face judgment, we will not appreciate our savior.
God answer Isaiah’s prayer in two stages. Isaiah cries out in hope: “would that you might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you in our ways!” The Lord’s first coming was to teach us and give us the grace to make that happen. The Lord’s first coming has enabled us to be shaped like clay in the hands of a potter. The second coming will rend the heavens, shake the mountains, and cast fire upon the world. That fire will harden the clay and we will forever hold the shape we’ve taken.
Advent reminds us that this life is a preparation for something more. Resolutions of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are like water to soften the clay of our souls so that the Lord can shape us. Will this be the year that you get in shape? Will this be the year that you become the person you are meant to be? Behind those questions are these two: Will this be the year Our Lord returns, and will I be ready?
Douse yourself in grace now, while the time is right. Be shaped by Advent, so that you will know what Christmas really means. Repent of your sins in the sight of the All-Powerful God, be faithful to your work in the absence of your traveling master. And then… then you will know just what a gift it is when we dare to say to God, “Our Father.”
