FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT (2023)

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT (2023)

Readings:

Isaiah 63:16-17, 19

Psalms 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Mark 13:33-37

Today we enter a new season in the Church’s liturgical calendar, the Season of Advent.  It is a season of hopeful watching and waiting as all the readings point out.

Isaiah, composed some 800 years before the time of Christ, gives Isaiah, the person, an incredibly long time to wait.  Indeed, the Israelites’ story is one of endless waiting.   And since most Hebrews do not see in Jesus the promised Messiah, much of the Hebrew’s present history is marked by what seems an endless waiting.  You can hear that frustration in Isaiah’s words: “You, Lord, are our father….why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways… Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage…. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.”  800 years before Christ was not a good time for the Hebrew people.  There were wars and insurrections, and the Assyrians were laying siege to the whole north of the country and taking some people hostage.  Sound familiar?

800 years is a long time to wait, but as we begin this Season of Advent we are reminded that we will wait four weeks to celebrate the fulfillment of Isaiah’s passage, a fulfillment that finally comes to pass in a humble stable in Bethlehem.  God will “rend the heavens and come down” in the form of an “infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes.”  As the psalm also tells us, Almighty God “will finally rouse His power and come to save us,” and while many will still not have the eyes of faith to recognize Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God, He will give us the hints and advice that Isaiah so longed for.

It is not just that first coming in Bethlehem that we celebrate, for we too like the Israelites of old and like the newly minted Christians of 2,000 years ago, we wait for the promised second coming of that same Lord who will come again at the end of time.  Since we do not know the day or the hour, it is our job to stay watchful and alert.  Mark’s gospel, the earliest of the gospels, is plagued with the same issues Paul was with the Thessalonian community – they wanted to know when that basic tenet of our faith would be fulfilled, when Jesus would come on the clouds of heaven and gather all things to Himself.

No one will ever be surprised by Jesus’ second coming, or when He visits us in death, if we watch and wait, and be alert.  And this is not just a merely passive behavior.  Our time of watching is meant to be put to good use, increasing our store of good works.  As Paul says in our second reading, “the grace of God has been bestowed on us in Christ Jesus.”  “We are not lacking in any spiritual gift as [we] wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  It is those spiritual gifts that we are meant to use as we watch and wait for the Lord to come again.  We use those gifts to prepare these four weeks to celebrate His first coming in time, and we use those same gifts to prepare for His second coming, when God will keep us “firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.  God is faithful, and by Him you were called to fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”