FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT (2025)

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT (2025)

Readings:

Isaiah 2:1-5

Psalms 122:1-9

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:37-44

Today the Church begins a new liturgical year.  It likewise begins our preparation for the great solemnity of Christmas, when we celebrate God’s Son ‘emptying’ Himself that He might take on the flesh of human beings and so lead us to our heavenly destination.  Our readings have not changed dramatically from the readings at the end of the previous liturgical year, when Christ’s coming at the end of time demands our attention.  Advent’s readings will get more focused as we get closer to Christmas, but today Isaiah the prophet focuses our attention on that moment when God will gather all nations into the eternal peace of the kingdom of God.

Isaiah lived in turbulent times.  The Assyrians were treating the Jewish people like Israel today treats the Gazans.  Hammerlike blows were meant to force the Jewish people into submission.  Isaiah’s prophetic leadership, which we have a glimpse of in our first reading, is to challenge and lift the spirits of the Jewish people, getting them to look beyond their present difficulties to a time in the future, when God “shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples.  They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.  O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

Isaiah’s message is timely at all times, and no less uplifting now than in the time of Isaiah.  We watch the wars in Ukraine, in Israel, in Sudan, and the harsh violence perpetrated against Christians in Nigeria, and we long for a time when nations need not “train for war again.”  Mass shootings are so frequent that we have grown numb to them, and our televisions treat us to the scourge of cherry-picking boats that are designated for annihilation.  We modify today’s psalm and say: “Pray for the peace of the World!  May those who love you prosper!  May peace be within your walls, prosperity in your buildings.”  Genuine peace and justice cannot happen, if it doesn’t live in the hearts of all well intentioned peoples.

St. Paul, who lived some 700 years after Isaiah, is following in the footsteps of the prophets when he writes to the Roman community: “let us throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day[light], 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.”  With the Lord Jesus Christ as our guide, let us not be attracted to the desires of the flesh, for they are capable of leading us to chose chaos over peace, self-aggrandizement over generosity, injustice over that which is just.  That is how we prepare for Christ’s first coming in time, and for His second coming at the end of time.

In our gospel from Matthew, Jesus is teaching His disciples from the Mount of Olives.  He has made His way to Jerusalem where His earthly life will end, and there are a few things He wants those disciples to remember.  Jesus wants them to be ready for the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven, He wants them to be alert so they don’t get caught off guard like the people of Noah’s day.  There is a readiness that should characterize every Christian, whether it’s the ending of one’s earthly life, or whether it’s the second coming of the Son of God.

The attractions of this world, are strong and sometimes confusing, and so as we journey through life we must make every effort to choose what is right and good.  As we look to the light of the paschal candle at Easter, so let us look to the light of a candle in the advent wreath, which beckons us to live our lives, not in the darkness, but in the light.  The child that we will celebrate on Christmas has left a record of what it means to live in the light of Christ.  Let His teaching penetrate our often hardened hearts, and may we spend all of this Advent season rejoicing in the fact that God loves us so much, that He sent His only Son into our midst to show us the way back to Him.