Dec. 1, 2013: 1st Sunday of Advent A

This past week I was feeling a bit under the weather, so I took an over-the- counter pain reliever with ingredients to help me sleep. The direction said to take two pills, so I did. When the alarm clock rang in the morning, my eyes were opened, but my brain felt like I was sloshing through a foggy and muddy marsh, with my feet getting caught in the mud with each step. Have you ever felt that way when you woke up? I was half awake, and my bed beckoned me to return. I wished instead I was waking up like the actor in the coffee commercial where the line in the jingle goes like this, “Oh the best part of waking up, is (coffee) in your cup.”

All of today’s readings sound much like a children’s song that goes like this, “Wake up! You sleepyhead. Get up! Get out of bed.”  In the First Reading, Prophet Isaiah describes to us the vision that the Lord had shown him. Isaiah saw a future time in which people from all nations would stream to the Lord’s mountain--Mount Zion on which the temple was built. In that time, people would no longer hurt or harm one another. There would be no more war or preparing for war. People would be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, and would walk in his ways. Is this just a wild dreaming? If you were to look at the Old City Jerusalem today where Mount Zion is, you would see it is a city divided into Muslim Quarter, Jewish Quarter, and Christian Quarter. The tension is there, and the peace is tenuous, but we don’t even have to look far. We look at our own town or even within our own family, and there is tension. If we are honest with ourselves, we can see the very things St. Paul spoke about--rivalry, jealousy, lust, over-indulgence. We come to realize that peace just doesn’t fall out of the sky.

So what does Jesus mean when he tells us, “Stay awake!” Jesus is trying to open our eyes to Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation. This plan is centered in Christ and realized through him. We may not realize it, but each of us  has a responsibility to bear Jesus in this world, not in name only, but in living out Jesus’ mission. We love to receive gifts from the Heavenly Father, but without wanting to know the Father, to love Him, or to serve Him. Isn’t it a tragedy that we do not realize that Heavenly Father longs for us, that He thirsts for us, that there will be great rejoicing when we turn to the Father.  

Heavenly Father offers each of us a personal invitation to accept his kingdom or to reject it. There is really no middle ground. We are either for the Heavenly Father or against Him, for His kingdom of righteousness or against it. The choice is ours. The Father’s grace is available to those who are willing to believe in Him and obey his word. Pope Francis recently urged us to ponder the following questions:  ‘Do I worship the Lord? Do I adore Jesus Christ the Lord? Do I in some measure play the game of the prince of this world?’ He urged all of us to worship the Lord to end with trust and fidelity. He said this is the grace that we must ask for this week.

Advent issues a spiritual wake-up call to us, and has an awakening power. Unless we are spiritually awake we are only half living. To be awake spiritually means to be open and receptive, vigilant and active. One excellent way to awaken your spiritual life is to use the daily Advent booklet that we handed out these past few weeks to go deeper into the Word of God as you go about each day.