+ Today we begin again, telling the story of “Jesus come from heaven to be our Redeemer,
Our Savior and our Friend”: today, the first Sunday of Advent is New Year’s Day
in the Church! It is time to make resolutions for the coming
days, weeks and months. This is a time
of planning how to open ourselves more to the influence of grace, and the
action of faith and love in our lives.
Our readings remind us that we
are all part of the great drama of
salvation as active participants: the
Scriptures are not just something we read in Church and occasionally at home,
but have nothing really literally to
do with us personally. This is wrong
thinking. The Scriptures have everything
to do with us as personally, individually and as families and communities.
Even if we were the only person living on earth they would have been written
for us because of the final page that is not yet written: the page on which the
conclusion of the grand drama of salvation takes place when Christ the King
comes on a cloud and call us, by name, (if just one of us) to make an
accounting of our life and then to be placed where he would have us placed – on
his right or left! We must be called or we will not be placed, so this is very
personal indeed.
St. Paul tells the
Thessalonians in the second reading (and us), that increasing in grace, love and faith is the best way to go, and the
only way to be sure that we will end up in the right place and the right time
at the end. He tells us to conduct
ourselves so as to please God, always,
just as we did at the first moment of our baptisms. If we do this at all times,
then we will be ready!
Let us therefore, as the
gospel urges us, stand straight and tall
when some of the calamities that might signal that the end is near, do, in
fact, begin to occur - (do you read the newspapers, and watch the evening news
on TV?); Be brave, then, for our redemption just might be at hand:
but no matter when it will be truly at hand, be ready, clear minded, sober,
stress free and alert. Be mindful!
And so vigilance at all times, is the watchword, while rejoicing in the
fact that if we are faithful to Christ,
he will be faithful to us, and we will stand strong when things really get
interesting on that great and Last Day!
O
come, O come, Emmanuel!
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