1st Sunday of Advent, Year A
First Reading: Is 2:1-5
Second Reading: Rom 13:11-14
Gospel Reading: Mt 24:37-44
The prophecy in the First Reading this Sunday, the first of the Church’s new liturgical year, is comforting.
“In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains,” it says. “All the nations shall stream to it,” so that he may teach them his ways.
Good will triumph over evil. God’s side is going to win. In fact, it has already won.
Jesus “possesses all power in heaven and on earth,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. His Father “has put all things under his feet”: he is “Lord of the cosmos and of history.”
Already “the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way.” Even now, Christ’s kingdom “manifests its presence.”
Just look at the good you cannot help seeing around you. Do not be disheartened by the bad news the media publish. Remember: anything that makes the news is, by definition, unusual.
The bad news is real. However, it should not make us despair. As Pope St. John Paul II said in his Letter to Priests on Holy Thursday in 1993: “When confronted with this world, which in many ways shows its indifference to the Kingdom of God, may we be accompanied by the certitude which you, the good Shepherd, poured into the hearts of the apostles: ‘Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.’ This is – in spite of everything – the same world which your Father loved so much that he gave you, his only-begotten Son.”
Archbishop Emeritus Adam Exner often quoted what the Pope had said to him personally: “Things are bad, and they are getting worse, but the reasons for hope have never been so numerous or so convincing.”
No one can doubt that the Pope believed this. In his book, significantly entitled Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he said, “Be not afraid!” about a dozen times in the first five pages. He confidently predicted a “new springtime of Christian life” for this millennium.
The powers of evil “have been defeated definitively,” but Christ’s reign is still under attack, notes the Catechism. The present age is “a time still marked by distress and the trial of evil,” a time of “watching and waiting.”
Christ has won the war, but his soldiers are still fighting a rearguard action. People who do not realize that the victory is a foregone conclusion are still trying to choose which side to be on. The job for us who do realize it is to keep fighting evil with good and to help others choose the right side by proclaiming the good news of the victory.
The time allotted is limited. Some day, at an “unexpected hour,” the Victor will invade in force, “on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” Everyone will see him and know him for who and what he is.
It will be too late then to choose which side we are on. We cannot choose to lie down when we can no longer stand. Rather, it will be the time to discover which side we have really chosen, whether we realize it or not.
We have no idea of the day our Lord is coming. All the usual things – eating, drinking, marriage, earthquakes, wars, rumours of wars – will go on right up to the end, Jesus said. That is why we must “keep awake,” always ready for the “unexpected hour,” as we await “the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.” If you have been asleep, “it is now the moment for you to wake.”
Now, in the twilight, we cannot see God clearly. Eventually the day will dawn, and it will last forever. Now, while we can still choose, we must prepare for it by rejecting “the works of darkness” and putting on “the armour of light,” as St. Paul says.
