This Sunday also opened the Year for Consecrated Life, in which the Church will celebrate the gift and beauty of men and women who have responded to God's call to live consecrated to Him for service to the Church and the world. Check out the USCCB's web site for more information.
Also, check out this series on Lifetime in which 5 women discern a call to religious life. It is a great peak into what religious life is all about.
Christmas is still four weeks away. Get into the spirit by living Advent instead of diving head-first into Christmas. It'll make Christmas even better!
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Homily:
1st Sunday of Advent – Cycle B
If any of you here grew up with siblings, you’ll remember
that life as you were growing up was a constant battle for superiority in your
home. From who gets the bathroom first,
to who gets the preferred bunk, to who gets to decide which radio station you
get to listen to and which television program you get to watch, there is always
a constant battle to be “in charge” of something in the house. This is never more true than when mom and dad
are going to be away for an evening and leave one of the kids “in charge”.
Being “left in charge” was like a dream come true for kid
with multiple siblings (and often a nightmare for the others who were passed
over for the responsibility). For the
one in charge, this was a chance to proclaim your superiority in all matters
because if ever there was a dispute, you had the trump card because you were
left “in charge”. Thus you made all of
the decisions and did everything your way.
If you were a teenager when your parents left you in
charge, then your power for abstract thinking opened many more possibilities
for you. Perhaps you’d invite some
friends over and do things that you wouldn’t normally be allowed to do if your
parents were home. You’d bribe your
younger siblings with candy to keep them quiet and then have fun the way you
wanted to.
Of course, your parents left someone in charge for a
reason. They knew that if anything came
up there would need to be one person who could make decisions. They also wanted to be sure that if anything
happened, they would know who should be held responsible for whatever
happened. When they left someone in
charge, they did so with the expectation that the house would be in the same
order that they left it in (if not better); and if it wasn’t, that the one left
in charge would be responsible for the consequences. Often, they didn’t say exactly what time they
would be home, but that shouldn’t have mattered because the one in charge would
keep everything together until their return.
This is not unlike the parable that Jesus uses in the
Gospel today. Jesus is warning his
disciples to be alert for the day of his return and uses a story about a man
who leaves his household for a journey and entrusts his servants to be in
charge while he is gone. His expectation
is that his household will be in the same order that he left it in, if not
better. He tells them that he does not
know when he will return and so leaves the expectation that the house will be
kept in order throughout his whole journey.
Of course, if your parents came home and found you sleeping, then they’d
probably figure that everything was fine.
In Jesus’ parable, however, the servants are admonished to stay awake,
because being ready to respond to the master of the house when he returns from
a journey is a sign that the servants were fulfilling their responsibilities.
Now, as it sometimes happens, when one of the kids is put
in charge, things can get a little out of control. Perhaps you and your siblings have made a
huge mess. Or perhaps the friends you
invited over invited other friends over—perhaps people you don’t know very well—and
the gathering got uncomfortably large.
And perhaps you begin to realize that the situation is more than you can
handle on your own. You begin to think
things like “What if mom and dad come home right now? They’ll kill me!” and “Oh, why did they leave
me in charge? Didn’t they know that I
would screw up?!”
If you ever had a reaction like this (or saw a sibling have
one like it), then you know what the prophet Isaiah was feeling when he
proclaimed the words in our first reading today. Speaking during the time when the Israelites
were exiled in Babylon, Isaiah is lamenting of how badly his people have failed
God. They had neglected their covenant
duties—in particular, to cast off all false idols and to worship God alone—and
so now they found themselves exiled—locked out of the house, so to speak—and
they were powerless to fix their failures on their own.
“Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways…” is
Isaiah’s way of saying “Don’t you know that we’ll just get in trouble if you
leave us alone?” And the rest of the
passage is Isaiah’s desperate call for God to return swiftly so as to make
everything right before it gets any worse.
It’s like when things get to the point that you realize that “I’ll be in
less trouble if I call mom and dad now and ask them to come home and save me
from this mess than if I wait for them to come home and allow things to get
even worse.”
Advent is the time for us to step back and take a look at
what has been happening while we have been “in charge”. It’s the time when we realize “It’s getting
late and mom and dad should be home soon, we should start cleaning up!” If we look at the state of the world that we
live in, however, perhaps we’ll begin to feel like the teenager who has let the
little gathering of friends grow out of control. We begin to see that the world seems to be
going to hell in a handbasket and we feel powerless to do anything about it.
Thus, our lament at the beginning of this Advent season
should echo that of Isaiah: “Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your
ways…?” and our cry for help, too, should be Isaiah’s cry: “Oh, that you would
rend the heavens and come down…” This
cry, of course, we direct to Jesus, who we wait for constantly in his second
coming, especially in this time of Advent.
As we prepare to celebrate the memorial of his first coming, we are
reminded that we are still awaiting his second coming in glory and so call to
him earnestly to come now and save us from this mess that we are in.
My brothers and sisters, Jesus has left us in charge, but
he hasn’t left us alone. When he
returned to his Father, he said that he was going to prepare a place for us in
heaven and that he would return to take us to be where he is. His instructions to us were to go and make
disciples of all men, but he promised us that he would be with us always. And so we should not fear to call out to him,
even if we’ve failed miserably to complete the work that he gave us; because if
we admit our failure before him—that is, before he comes to find it on his
own—then he will be merciful to us.
My brothers and sisters, this time of Advent is a gift—an
early Christmas present, if you will—an opportunity to refocus ourselves back
on the horizon as we await the dawning of that day when Christ, who has already
redeemed us from sin, will return to save us from this world and welcome us into
the place that he has prepared for us in heaven. Let us, then, receive this gift with joy and
use this time to begin to put the house back in order, and to watch with hope
for our Lord’s return to save us from ourselves and to bring us to the life
promised to us even now, here in this Holy Eucharist.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – November 30, 2014
Opening of the Year for
Consecrated Life
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