While I won't guarantee it will happen, I'll also try to start posting some reflections from my first six months of priesthood (...it feels like it's been a lot longer than six months!).
For now, just a prayer that this time will be a time of grace for each of us as we prepare for Christ's advent among us.
Homily: 1st Sunday of Advent –
Cycle C
I don’t know about all of you, but I
am pretty tired. I’ve been here for five
months now and have found that “priesting”—that is, fulfilling the ministry of
the priesthood—is a lot of work. And I
mean that in the very literal, scientific sense: for work is energy expended
over time and I know that I have been expending a lot of energy over extended
periods of time in the last five months.
I would guess that it’s pretty safe
to say, however, that I’m not the only one who is feeling this way. Let me ask, how many here have a new
baby? How many of you have more than one
kid under 7 years old at home? How many
have moved sometime this year? How many
have either lost or switched jobs? And
how many of you are working and going to school at the same time? I’m guessing that this pretty much covers
everyone here. But, even if I didn’t
mention part of your situation, I suspect that all of us could identify some
things in our lives that are causing us to expend a great deal of energy:
either just to keep up or, perhaps, to cope with the stress of transitioning
into something new in our lives.
Regardless of what it is, all of us can probably admit that we are
feeling a bit worn down by it all: that we, too, are tired.
As a result, I think that a lot of
us hope that we could come here and hear a word of comfort. Perhaps we’ve come here hoping that the
Gospel reading for the day would be something like: “Well done, good and
faithful servant, come share in your master’s joy.” Instead, we walk into this season of Advent
and are greeted with an exhortation from Saint Paul saying, “The good that you’ve already been
doing, you should do more!” Then, on top
of that, Christ tells us to “be vigilant at all times,” that is, not to take a
break. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he
prefaces that statement by saying, “You know, everything is actually going to
get a lot worse before it gets better!”
Thus, when we hear Christ’s instruction to us—“Beware that your hearts
do not become drowsy…”—it really doesn’t seem all that helpful. And what we come to realize is that our
hearts, indeed, have become drowsy.
In many ways, however, we are not
unlike the ancient Israelites. For
centuries, they waited for the Messiah—the one promised them by God who would
redeem them and free them from all of their oppressors. Yet, their hearts had become drowsy from
waiting as they endured exile away from their homeland, and then occupation of
their homeland by foreign invaders after their return. And so, even though God had sent them
prophets throughout these times to remind them of his promises—like the prophet
Jeremiah, who we heard from in the first reading today—many of the Israelites
still failed to see in Jesus the coming of the One that they had longed for.
Perhaps to us it seems as if
Christ’s return is also long
delayed. And perhaps, therefore, we’ve
allowed our focus to drift away from our eternal destiny, our anticipation of
his coming to become dulled, and our discipline in prayer and good works to
lapse. In other words, perhaps we, too,
have allowed our hearts to become drowsy from the anxieties, the worries, the
stresses of our daily lives. We’ve lost
sight of the goal, it seems, and, thus, feel a bit lost.
At the end of each calendar year, we
all somewhat instinctively assess where we’ve been throughout the year. For some, this is a time of great anxiety as
we look back at what we desired to accomplish in the last year and see what
remains undone. For others, the stress
comes from seeing how, though great efforts were made, circumstances meant that
there was little to show for it. Still
for others, it is a time of despair when we see that, through fear or lack of
self-confidence, another year has passed and we have not made any moves to
improve a difficult situation in our lives.
This is why the Church, in her
wisdom, guided by the Holy Spirit, gives us this season of Advent at the end of
the calendar year. She knows how easy it
is to get bogged down by the work of daily living and so She offers us this
season as a “wake-up call” and a reminder to us that the promise of Christ’s
second coming—the promise that there is something greater yet to come—is still
before us. Advent, therefore, is the
great season of detachment: of letting go of those things that tie us to this
world and its anxieties, lest we be caught off-guard, cowering in fear after
the days of tribulation, when Christ will come.
It is also the season of remembering that we can never accomplish our
fulfillment alone: for Christ came to us specifically because we could not effect
our salvation on our own. Rather, we
needed the help of Another—who is God made man, born in a cave outside of
Jerusalem.
Brothers and sisters, our Christian
faith tells us that we have been made for greatness and that our work in this
life is to strive for that greatness always.
It also reminds us, however, that our ability to reach the heights of
that greatness is limited and that we can never achieve it on our own. Advent is the season in which we are reminded
to rejoice, regardless; because in Advent—which, literally translated, means
“the arrival”—we remember that God himself has come, as a human person, in
order to overcome our weaknesses, and that God himself will come again to
fulfill his promise to end our anxieties and to draw us into himself: the place
of our eternal rest.
And so, my brothers and sisters, if
your hearts have become drowsy, then let this be your wake-up call. Because our hope, Jesus Christ our Savior, is
coming—and has already come—to
relieve us and to lead us home.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – December 1st & 2nd, 2012
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