Homily: 1st Sunday of Advent – Cycle A
It’s always good to be back home during the Thanksgiving holiday and break. I pretty rarely get to spend more than a day or two here with my family, so I relish these days. Back home in Indiana I don’t watch much TV (traditional, streaming, or otherwise), but when I’m visiting home, given that my family spends more time than I watching TV, I end up watching more than usual. I mention this because, on Thanksgiving evening, I ended up sitting and watching a replay of the movie Mary Poppins with my parents. It was a delight! Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke… c’mon. If you can’t smile watching that movie, you might just need a long hug, ya know?
One of the things that stuck with me after watching the movie, was that Mary Poppins seemed to be someone who had it all together. In other words, her life seemed to be lacking nothing. She was perfectly content, supremely confident, devastatingly charming, and seemingly unconcerned that anything would go wrong that she couldn’t handle herself. In fact, her life seemed to be “practically perfect in every way.”
For us, it is a fun diversion to think about a life that is “practically perfect in every way”, and unrestrained by many of the limitations that we experience in our lives. But it’s just not our lives, is it? For the many joys that we can experience in our lives, there are, nonetheless, a lot of struggles, too. Often, these struggles can be overwhelming. And as much as this “season of giving” promises to provide relief, it often isn’t quite enough to take away the disquiet that remains within us. The “disquiet” that says, “My life is not all right”, and “The world is not all right”. It’s an unsettled-ness that, in our more quiet moments of the day–early morning, lying half awake in bed or those moments after you turn the TV off at night as you’re preparing for rest–stirs within us and clouds our thoughts.
Imagine for a moment a non-Christian–one who’s never heard of the Good News that God is real and that he has come among us to save us–imagine this person realizing for the first time that his life is not all right, and that the world is not all right, and that, in truth, it never will be. Imagine the despair that this person would feel knowing that, no matter how hard he worked for the good, and no matter how many people he could (in his limited capacity) rally to join him in working for the good, his life and the world would never be “all right”, but that limitations, brokenness, and suffering would always be something with which he would have to contend and with no promise that anything better would be attained after this life ended. To me, that doesn’t seem like a very pleasant place to be. Yet, if we pay close attention to what is happening in us, this desperate idea is the source of the disquiet in all of us.
Most non-Christians, I would guess, and (sadly) a lot of Christians, I assert, just try to ignore the disquiet of these realities. How do I know? Because I sit in the confessional. There, I often hear things like, “Father, I just keep trying and things don’t seem to be getting better” and “I pray and I pray, but nothing seems to change”. These are statements of a person who has lost sight of the end and is despairing because her life isn’t “all right”, and the world isn’t “all right”, and it never will be. But what if there was a way to soothe the disquiet in all of us and to have hope in the midst of a hopeless situation? /// Friends, welcome to Advent!
You see, Advent is about hope. “No, Father, Advent is about celebrating Christmas!” Okay, sure, but only secondarily. Primarily, Advent is our yearly reminder of “the reason for our hope”: namely, that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.” But not only that (which, frankly, would be enough), Advent is our yearly reminder that he is here with us still and that he is coming again to bring and end to this imperfect world and to usher in the new creation–that is, the world that is “all right”, so that we might live “all right” lives for all eternity. In other words, Advent is our reminder to have hope: a firm belief that a better future is ahead of us; and not simply that this world, in all its limitations will be made “all right”, but rather that the one who is to come will make all things new–with no limitations–a creation in which the harmony of the first Garden is restored–something far beyond anything even Mary Poppins’ “practically perfect” life could imagine.
Thus, on this first Sunday of Advent, we hear this hope-filled prophecy from Isaiah: “In days to come…” “In days to come” is one of my favorite phrases in Isaiah, because it almost always foretells a coming turn of events that will lead to a desperate situation being made new. In this case, it is the end of the Babylonian exile and the restoration of the temple mount in Jerusalem. But not only that, it is also the foretelling of the coming fulfillment of the covenant promise that God had made to his chosen people, the Israelites: that nations and peoples will no longer war against each other and strive to deprive others of resources to their own advantage, but that all will stream together towards Jerusalem to worship God and live in harmony and prosperity–swords turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. In short, an establishment of universal unity, harmony and peace… the very things that each of us, in our hearts, wishes we could see today.
As Christians, we know that God has sent his Son to save us. It is the very reason we gather on each Sunday: to celebrate the Paschal Mystery by which Christ, through his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension, has redeemed us and restored our relationship with God. The season of Advent is our reminder to look eagerly for his second coming: that is, not to “fall asleep” in the daily grind of life and thus forget that there is hope for what is yet to come. The strength of this hope is that he has already come, which is why we connect this yearly reminder to look for his second coming to the season of preparation that ends with our celebration of his first coming. This year, as we celebrate the Jubilee Year of Hope, we have even more reasons to celebrate and to look longingly for his return.
And so, how do we prepare? That is, how do we prepare in hope for his second coming? Well, let me say something unpopular. It’s not by putting up trees and holiday decorations. (I’m just sayin’.) Rather, it’s by following Saint Paul’s admonition from the second reading. Let’s hear it again:
Brothers and sisters:
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 conduct ourselves properly as in the day,
not in orgies and drunkenness,
not in promiscuity and lust,
not in rivalry and jealousy.
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.
These are strong words, but necessary for us to hear in this season that often gets overwhelmed with dinner parties and family gatherings that can stir up old “rivalries and jealousy”. Our work this Advent–our work of hope–is to look past these things, acknowledging them as parts of our lives and our world that is not “all right”, and to look towards the one who is to come and so “put on the armor of light” and to “conduct ourselves properly as in the day”; so that we might be ready: both to celebrate with proper joy the anniversary of his first coming, as well as the day when he comes again. ///
“We need a little Christmas, right this very minute…” No, what we need is a little Advent: a season that reminds us to look beyond the limited joy we can experience in this world towards the infinite joy that is yet to come. And so, as we begin this new year of grace, let’s resolve to stay awake, and to strengthen (and give witness to) our hope in Christ’s second coming: the coming that all of us (Christian and non-Christian) unknowingly desire in our hearts, and which is foreshadowed for us by his presence here, in this Eucharist.
Given at Saint Mary Nativity Parish: Joliet, IL – November 30th, 2025
