First Sunday of Advent, Year A | Dominica Prima (I) Adventus, Anno A
27 November 2022 in the year of our Lord
Mt 24:37-44 Jesus said to his disciples: "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left. Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come." |
Κατά Ματθαίον Ευαγγέλιον 24:37-44 37 Ὥσπερ γὰρ αἱ ἡμέραι τοῦ Νῶε, οὕτως ἔσται ἡ παρουσία τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. 38 ὡς γὰρ ἦσαν ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις [ἐκείναις] ταῖς πρὸ τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ τρώγοντες καὶ πίνοντες, γαμοῦντες καὶ γαμίζοντες, ἄχρι ἧς ἡμέρας εἰσῆλθεν Νῶε εἰς τὴν κιβωτόν, 39 καὶ οὐκ ἔγνωσαν ἕως ἦλθεν ὁ κατακλυσμὸς καὶ ἦρεν ἅπαντας, οὕτως ἔσται [καὶ] ἡ παρουσία τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. 40 Τότε δύο ἔσονται ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ, εἷς παραλαμβάνεται καὶ εἷς ἀφίεται· 41 δύο ἀλήθουσαι ἐν τῷ μύλῳ, μία παραλαμβάνεται καὶ μία ἀφίεται. 42 Γρηγορεῖτε οὖν, ὅτι οὐκ οἴδατε ποίᾳ ἡμέρᾳ ὁ κύριος ὑμῶν ἔρχεται. 43 Ἐκεῖνο δὲ γινώσκετε ὅτι εἰ ᾔδει ὁ οἰκοδεσπότης ποίᾳ φυλακῇ ὁ κλέπτης ἔρχεται, ἐγρηγόρησεν ἂν καὶ οὐκ ἂν εἴασεν διορυχθῆναι τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ. 44 διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ὑμεῖς γίνεσθε ἕτοιμοι, ὅτι ᾗ οὐ δοκεῖτε ὥρᾳ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔρχεται. |
Father John Lankeit's homily :
When I was little, I was afraid of the dark. At some point, however, a shift took place that dispelled my fear. It no doubt had everything to do with my growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
Now, I prefer to pray in the dark!
I love getting up really early, while it’s still pitch dark outside, to do my spiritual reading with small candles lit before the icons, statues and pictures in my room. The only other light is a reading light.
I also love to pray my Eucharistic Holy Hour before the exposed Blessed Sacrament in our rectory chapel with all the lights off—except for six small candles around the monstrance.
At other times, I pray in chapel with no lights or candles at all, other than the vigil candle next to the tabernacle. When I first turn the lights off—and before my eyes adjust to the darkness—I have to strain to see the crucifix above the altar. But as my eyes adapt, Jesus steadily begins to emerge out of the darkness and become more visible.
I suspect we can all relate to this experience of gradually improving vision in a dark place. The eye adjusts automatically. It’s not something we do as much as something we wait for.
Our spiritual vision is a bit different. It’s something we must cultivate...deliberately! Granted, it starts with something God does when he infuses the soul with grace through the Sacrament of Baptism. Grace is a gift from God with which we must cooperate if we want our relationship with Jesus to grow and mature.
In our 2nd Reading, taken from his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul contrasts darkness with light:
You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us...put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh. (Rom 13:11-12, 14)
St. Paul’s words speak as fittingly of our time as they did of the time when he wrote them. We live in a world where darkness seems to be gaining the upper hand at every moment, in every aspect of human life. Despite all of our technological advances and material abundance, people today are less connected, less happy and less peaceful—individually...and as a society.
Our homes are full of gadgets, but our hearts are devoid of joy.
Studies tell us that society is becoming more atheistic and less Christian. We see the dark, disturbing chaos, violence and division exploding all around us—terrorist attacks, mass shootings, corruption in government and in the Church—and we fail to connect the dots.
We fail to see how the human decision to replace God with the self has created the Hell that is raging around us!
Hell is—by definition—life without God. Rather than avoiding Hell, we invite it—first squeezing God out of our private lives and then out of the public square—sometimes deliberately—sometimes out of negligence—and then we act surprised when the world around us is consumed by the flames of hatred and violence...division and confusion.
If we are constantly immersed in this kind of darkness, we risk losing our spiritual vision completely. This is what happened to the people of Noah’s time. They were going about their daily business, oblivious to the things of God.
God wanted to spare Noah and his family from his wrath because of their faithfulness to him. God was also trying to get the attention of everyone else as well...so that they, too, would turn back to him.
But Noah’s neighbors were so wrapped up in their daily routines and habits that they didn’t even notice that Noah was building a giant ship in his front yard! God sent them a warning—through Noah—and they didn’t notice...or didn’t care...until it was too late.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus said:
As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In [those] days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be [also] at the coming of the Son of Man. (Mt 24:37-39)
Is Jesus saying here that eating and drinking are bad?
Or that marrying and giving in marriage are bad?
Of course not!
But if eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage...or any other activity—even another good activity—forces God out of our lives, then we corrupt these good gifts of God and turn them into something destructive...self-destructive.
St. Paul makes an important distinction his letter to the Romans:
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit; whoever serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by others. (Rom 14:17-18)
God’s first judgment on sinful humanity was to send the great flood.
God’s final judgment on the world will be to send his Son—Jesus Christ—to judge the living and the dead...to give each person exactly what he or she demonstrated they wanted...life with God...or life without him.
Our “judgment” day will merely be Christ’s affirmation of what we proved to him what we really wanted by the way we lived this life. Jesus’ words of warning should be enough to convince us, then, to look up from this dark world’s many distractions and to direct our focus back to him.
In the 1st Reading, the Prophet Isaiah said:
In days to come, the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:“Come, let us go up to the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths...let us walk in the light of the Lord!” (Isa 2:2-3, 5)
Isaiah’s words convey a sense of God being above the things of this world—a theme echoed by the composer of Psalm 121 who wrote:
I lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall come my help? My help shall come from the Lord who made heaven and earth. (Ps 121:1-2)
Advent, then, is about where we choose to look.
More specifically, Advent is about looking up!
Looking up from our smartphones—and from the many other distractions that dominate our lives—in order to recognize the Lord’s presence with us...in the midst of great darkness.
St. Paul sums this up beautifully in his Letter to the Colossians:
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col 3:1-4)
Now, let’s revisit St. Paul’s words in our 2nd Reading:
Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us...put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh. (Rom 13:12, 14)
What does it mean to put on the armor of light...to put on the Lord Jesus?
Before we can put on this armor, we need to know what it is.
St. Paul tells us precisely what this armor is in his Letter to the Ephesians:
Therefore take the whole armor of God... gird[ing] your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; above all taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Eph 6:13-16)
So, now we know what the armor is.
To find out how to put it on, we turn to John’s Gospel where Jesus said:
I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. (Jn 8:12)
Just as our physical eyes must adjust to a dark room before they can see what is before them; in a similar manner, our spiritual vision must adjust to the presence of Jesus in the midst of spiritual darkness.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus said:
The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Mt 6:22-23)
The eye, then, is key.
That’s why Advent is about where we look!
Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ begins with focusing on him.
So, how do we train our spiritual eyes to focus on Jesus?
Through Eucharistic Adoration!
Spending consistent time with Jesus—in his Eucharistic Presence in a Tabernacle or exposed in a monstrance. Through Adoration, we allow Jesus to reveal himself to us in the midst of darkness.
By shifting our focus, then, from our stuff to our Savior, we awaken from our societal sleepwalk and train our eyes to focus on Jesus, so that no matter how dark the world around us becomes, his light will show us his ways...his paths...which lead us through the darkness...to him.
Jesus warned in today’s Gospel:
...you...must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. (Mt 24:44)
The way to prepare for that hour you do not expect is to spend the hour we do expect—the hour we plan...the hour we commit to—a weekly Holy Hour of Adoration of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
If we want our life to be different—if we want to cultivate an interior peace that no darkness can overcome—then you and I must decide to make this Advent different from all previous Advents. We must train our eyes to look regularly and steadily at Jesus in his Eucharistic Presence so that we will recognize him in the other circumstances of our life.
Then we need never fear the darkness of this world because the light of Christ has... and always will... overcome it.
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