Year C

1ST SUNDAY
OF ADVENT

► Text of Sunday Reflection

“God will not forget you”
by Fr Dan Carroll SDB

Advent gives us an opportunity to make a new start in our relationship with God and become more aware of His hidden presence in our world. It is a season of hope and expectation.

God’s relationship with humanity is one of gift, mercy, love and forgiveness. God has always communicated his care and love for us through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the prophets before coming to live with us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Our God is always faithful to us and, this is shown in a special way at Christmas, when, he comes among us a baby. This is a mystery. Advent invites us to reflect on this mystery and be ready to receive Jesus at Christmas.

In one of the darkest moments of Israel’s history, when the Babylonian army was about to invade and take the people into exile, the prophet Jeremiah proclaims that God will not forget them. God will not forget the promises he had made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the prophets. As a sign of his fidelity Jerusalem would be called ‘the Lord is our saving future’.

St Paul, in the second reading suggests how people should live as Christians – loving one another and the whole human race as much as possible, while waiting for the second coming of Jesus.

In his Gospel St Luke speaks about the destruction of Jerusalem. He wrote his Gospel for the Gentile Church – people who knew about the death and resurrection of Jesus and were waiting for his second coming.

Advent is a time of waiting for the coming of Christ at Christmas. How we wait is so important but we need to remember that God is the 1st one to start this work within us. That we desire to prepare for Christmas indicates we are listening to the Holy Spirit. God accompanies us and gives us food for the journey in the Eucharist, Scriptures and support in our Faith Community. Our role is to be able to give him the freedom to guide and transform us.

We can prepare to welcome Jesus at Christmas by taking time to slow down, reflect, give time to people and pray. We create a space within ourselves and our homes to let Jesus into our lives. Wherever Jesus was engaging with people he was always fully present to them. Advent invites us to cultivate a way that allows us to be present to Jesus as best we can.

We can give thanks for the many blessings and gifts life has given us – health, meaning in life, hope, joy and faith.

Psalm 24 says ‘The Lord’s friendship is for those who revere him; to them he reveals his covenant’. We wait in joy and hope for the second coming of Jesus Christ in the sure knowledge that ‘our liberation is close at hand’.

► Readings, Reflections & Prayers

Scripture readings: Association for Catholic Priests
– www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie
Reflections and Prayers by Fr Jack Finnegan SDB

1st Reading – Jeremiah 33:14-16

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Reflection

Jeremiah offers us powerful words of hope, words he had already spoken (see Jeremiah 23:5-6). The prophet is seeking to console and encourage a people bowed down by the weight of its present situation. He offers them the image of a new Israel and a king from the line of David. The days are coming when ancient promises will be fulfilled, promises for renewal, deep promises for hope and peace. The Lord will keep his promises. Christians believe that these ancient promises are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In him, the wonderful saving act of God, what scripture calls God’s righteousness, God’s integrity, enters human history and changes everything. A new shoot, a new way of life, is planted and grows. How open are we to God’s wonderful gift of new life? Where do you see the new shoots today? Are we ready to live in God’s vibrant reality? Are we ready to welcome Christ into our lives and hearts in these dark times?

Prayer

LORD, Adonai, in these advent days we rejoice that your glorious promises are being fulfilled! We rejoice that the Messiah has come and shown us the way to your loving heart. May the shoot you planted, that wonderful root of Jesse, come to fresh flower in our lives and times! You are our justice! You are our peace! Give us the courage to reject violence and the ways of conflict and war in human affairs. Give us the courage to embrace the ways of compassion and justice! In these days of Advent preparation may we hear the cry of the homeless and the poor! May we respond to hungry children! May we actively work for a better world! Now and forever. Amen.

Psalm 25:4-5, 8-10, 14

R./: To you, O Lord, I lift my soul
Lord, make me know your ways.
Lord, teach me your paths.
Make me walk in your truth, and teach me:
for you are God my Saviour. (R./)

The Lord is good and upright.
He shows the path to those who stray,
he guides the humble in the right path;
he teaches his way to the poor. (R./)

His ways are faithfulness and love
for those who keep his covenant and will.
The Lord’s friendship is for those who revere him;
to them he reveals his covenant. (R./)

Reflection

Psalm 25 was sung as people came down from Jerusalem. It contains a moment of repentance wrapped in a warm prayer full of faith and hope. It shows us the meaning of trust and its importance in Christian spirituality. In Advent we open our hearts afresh in trusting prayer to God’s amazing goodness-in-Christ, to God’s healing-saving love, to God’s bright guidance and wisdom. Listen to the poet’s prayer: Lord, teach me your paths, guide me in your truth and teach me your ways, ways of kindness, ways of compassion! Lord, lead me, guide me, walk beside me. Are we ready to trust? Are we ready to let go of our bitterness? Are we ready to forgive? Are we ready to be forgiven? Are we ready to walk with God? Are we ready to be led in the ways of God’s breath-taking wisdom?

Prayer

LORD, Adonai, listen to our songs of praise as we bow down before you and open our hearts to your saving compassion. Full of gratitude we stand on the holy ground of your amazing goodness. We enter your bright place of truth and beauty. We seek the shimmering place of the Messiah who is to come again in glory! Lead us in your truth! Teach us your ways! You are the God of our salvation! Let your righteousness, your healing graciousness, enter this world afresh today. Touch the hearts of leaders whose peoples are in conflict. Let the Spirit of Peace burn brightly in the torn and oppressed parts of our world. Most of all guide us in your saving truth and teach us how to walk in your healing ways, your ways of kindness and compassion! May we wait on you today and every day! Amen.

2nd Reading: 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2

And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Finally, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God (as, in fact, you are doing), you should do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

Reflection

Our second reading comes from the middle of 1 Thessalonians where Paul prays that his people grow in holiness until the Parousia, the second coming of Christ. He then invites them to be true to the gospel they had received through the Lord Jesus. Here, Paul reminds us that the tradition of the Church is good news coming from a living Jesus who is the living Lord of the faith community. What we are given is a living word from the living Christ. He is not dead, but risen! His word is alive! Are we ready for a living word? Are we ready to live a living word lovingly? Are we ready for God’s vision and God’s mission? Are we watching for His coming?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for the grace of holiness! Thank you for opening the way to the Father’s heart! Thank you for your living word! Widen the tent strings of our hearts! May we trust your holiness in these wintry days! Teach us how to be bearers of your love in a darkened, selfish world. Show us how to be peace makers and bearers of goodness in the places where we live. Let us be carriers of beauty! Expand our hearts and our visions! Shower us with the grace to stand blameless before you in this Advent time! Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.

Gospel Reading: Luke 21:25-28,34-36

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Reflection

In Luke’s account of the apocalypse we are invited to contemplate the images of cosmic disruption the gospels associate with the Parousia, the second coming of Christ. We are also invited to reflect on the implications of dark times for the Church and the human family: division, the nations in dismay, people perplexed. More to the point we are invited to greet what is happening courageously. These events are not bad news, but good. That is why we are invited to be ready, standing erect, our heads held high. For the fullness of redemption is at hand. What a tragedy if we were asleep, distracted, on that great day because of our carousing and drunkenness, our minds and hearts trapped in the anxieties of life. The call is to be awake, on the watch, alert, vigilant, ready to take our place in the bright presence of the Son of Man, to be signs in our own lives of the triumph of love over darkness. Some people say, “The time is near” when it is not. We always need the grace and light of resilient hope because there are always moments of disappointment and loss. Advent invites us to look to the light. And so we light our first advent candle.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, send your Spirit upon us afresh that we may truly be Advent people! Give us the grace to be watchful and vigilant, our heads held high as we give glory to your name! Let us be your aroma in the world’s despair! You are Wonderful Counsellor, Prince of Peace! May we be ready to welcome your bright presence! May we be signs in our own lives and neighbourhoods of the triumph of love! Touch our hearts that in union with you we may be able to offer a kindly word and a welcoming smile to everyone we meet. Teach us that Advent is a season for listening, an opportunity for change, a graced time for growing in love. Help us return to you with all our hearts! Now and forever. Amen.

► Lectio Divina

We are beginning a new liturgical year during which we will recall again what God has done for us down through history, for he is Lord of history. In this way we will be better able to imagine what God is willing to do for us in our little story, if we allow him to be master of our history. This memory of the God who acts for the good of all mankind and for our good should motivate us to give thanks and lead us to a more permanent conversion. We begin, as we do every year, with the season of Advent, during which the Church teaches us to live in enthusiastic expectation of the Lord’s coming, and in vigilant concern as the hour of his coming approaches.

Luke makes use of apocalyptic images, and refers also to the recent fall of Jerusalem, to announce the coming of the ‘day of the Lord’, as a great cosmic catastrophe. The events will be such that fear will take grip of the hearts of mankind. Only the Lord’s disciples will feel secure. The people who are waiting for the Lord will know that their salvation has come. On the day of disaster they will hold their heads high, since they are already awake. Their waiting demands that they keep vigil. The fact that they do not already enjoy the Lord’s presence obliges them to renounce whatever separates them from him. They are strengthened by continuous prayer as they wait. The disciple who prays is prepared and will be ready to receive the Lord. Those who await the Lord’s coming do not fear present catastrophes and do not worry about the delay in his coming. They renounce everything that is not of the Lord, but they do not give up on the joy of living.

I. Read: understand what the text is saying, focussing on how it says it

The so-called ‘eschatological discourse’ (Lk 21, 5-28) concludes the public ministry of Jesus in Jerusalem, and it does so in dramatic manner. Jesus foretells the destruction of the city and its temple (Lk 21, 5-24) and predicts the coming of the Son of Man (Lk 21-25-38). The end of one world must precede the appearance of the new world. Jesus wept for the destruction of the city in which God had been revealed (Lk 19, 41-44). When some people admired the magnificence of the temple, which was still under construction (Lk 21,5-7), Jesus reacted by saying that they should put their trust, not in the stones of the temple, but in the Son of Man who is to come.

Our gospel passage (Lk 21, 25-28.34-36) concentrates on the end events. The coming of the Son of Man obliges people to live in a state of permanent vigilance. It is not the first time Jesus has said this (Lk 12, 35-48; 17, 20-37). The coming of the Son of Man will be preceded by the sudden fall of the ‘old’ world, fear on the part of all mankind, and a great cosmic upheaval. Then the Son of Man will appear with tremendous power. His coming will hasten the end of the world, and will give courage to all who have been waiting for him. Far from being terrifying, what we are waiting for – not a new world, but a new man – will be a reason for joy. The fact that the Saviour is near will mean that our definitive salvation is at hand.

However, this good news is accompanied by a serious warning, Certainty that the Savour is coming is no excuse for inactivity on the part of those who are waiting for him. Since he is coming, we must stand ready for him, heads held high. Knowing that the Lord is coming need not keep us awake at night, nor worry us during the day, but we must not waste our days in sleep and idleness. The Lord who is to come wants his servants to stay awake and keep watch (Lk 12:37).

II. Meditate:  apply what the text says to life

I think the first thing we have to do today is to ask ourselves if this obligation to live in expectation of the Lord’s coming is burdensome to us, or does it seem superfluous and useless. It is true that we all desire more peaceful days. We want to live without having to worry about the future. We dream of being free from the problems that preoccupy us. But our everyday experience is contrary to our best hopes, so much so that we are often tempted to despair. Who will restore our enthusiasm in the faith? How do we maintain hope in this life?

We do not deny that one of the big problems of today is that it seems there are more reasons for discouragement in our world than there are reasons for hope. We cannot overlook the fact that there are many among us who have been robbed of hope, and are incapable of imagining anything new. Nothing fascinates them – they have lost their capacity for fascination. We believers, simply because we are still waiting for the Lord Jesus, have every reason to remain confident, and to nourish our own hope and the hopes of others in our world. We have many reasons for hope, but we do not find them within ourselves. They are not of our own making.  And it not that other people give us reason for hope. Our reason for hope is that we have God’s assurance.  Our world must be good if God chooses to be present in it. Man surely deserves our love and respect since God chose to become one. If God is determined to come close to us, it is because we mean something to him! And if we are important to God, we have one more reason to value ourselves a bit more. If God expects something new from us, then there is no reason for us to despair or lose hope.

God is close to us whenever we try to draw near to him. With his desire to be close to us, God guarantees hope in our lives, in our families, and in our hearts, provided we assure him that we are waiting for him, in our lives, in our families and in our hearts. If we try to live now as if he were already with us, it will make his absence more bearable, and we will be better prepared to recognize him when he comes. Peace is not achieved without suffering, and only those who give peace will find it and preserve it.  If we try to work for peace, without condemning others, and without complaining about our suffering, we will find the peace the Lord will bring when he comes

Today’s gospel speaks of the certainty that Christ will come. It is true that his discourse seems strange to us. Signs in the sun and moon and stars, the clamour of the ocean, heavenly powers that fall to earth – these are images that we find hard to understand. We find it easier to understand when he speaks about the suffering of the nations, and about men dying of fear as they await what menaces the world.  In our day, life depends on many imponderable factors, on decisions that do not depend on us, on political programmes that we have no part in, on people we will never meet, on sicknesses that we dread. We live in a world where even the air is impure because we have polluted it.  It is a world where rich countries sell more weapons than food to people who are dying of hunger. Love is easy to find nowadays, but does not last. Giving oneself for others has become something rare and extraordinary.  But even in a world like this, hope is still possible.

This is a frightening message, terrible and unexpected, but we Christians must proclaim it to the world. From the time of St Paul, a mere twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, Christians have been living in expectation of the Lord’s coming. Nobody and nothing can take this hope from us. The more the world becomes inhospitable, the more we await the coming of our Saviour.  If we ourselves feel deeply the absence of God, we will wait for him all the more willingly.

This is our task in the world we live in. We are to live without allowing the world to quench our hope, or allowing evil to stifle our dream. As believers, we do not deny the reality of evil, but we refuse to be prey to evil irredeemably and forever.  In spite of everything, in spite even of ourselves, God will not abandon us. He comes to us. He wants to be close to our problems. If we believe this, we will have the courage to maintain hope. We will rediscover faith in our world and in ourselves, and our faith will be credible in the eyes of others. If we feel loved by God, we will be stronger in time of trial and we will not lose hope.  We can try to love others, and to believe a bit more in them, to love them a bit more, not for who they are or what they do, but for what God is for them and what God has done for them. If we do this, then we will regain our hope and rediscover our duty towards every other person, which is to make of him our neighbour.

Then, and only then, will we have the certainty that God is coming to us, because he has saved us from our selfishness. The world, our world, will have recovered the hope that comes from recognizing this great change in us. The most urgent and lasting change, which brings better expectations, is not a change in social conditions, but the change that takes place in the human heart, when one becomes a neighbour to others. The fact that our Lord is near, and is coming, should bring us closer to those who have need of us. This is the best fruit of our hope, and the only credible one,

Living in hope is the only fitting way to celebrate the coming of Christ, and the only way worthy of trust. Christians who believe in hope create situations of hope, and give reasons for others to hope. They support those who may be gradually losing hope, and they encourage those who are still able to dream.

We pray that when God comes he will find us at work, spreading hope in our world, which is so much in need of it. May he find us vigilant, standing erect, working for a better world of the kind we all hope for. Only in this way can we celebrate Advent and the coming of our Lord into our lives.  Then when he comes, he will recognise us as his servants, because when he was absent we did what he told us to do. We made his promises come true as we were waiting for him. Is there any better way of being hope-filled servants?