First Sunday Of Advent (Year B)

Isa 63.16-17, 64.1,3-8;
I Cor 1.3-9;
Mk 13.33-37

WHAT I SAY TO YOU, I SAY TO ALL STAY AWAKE!

I welcome you all into a new liturgical season (YEAR B) and I wish you all a very happy new liturgical year! Today the Church begins once again a new liturgical year – this is of course our real new year which majestically cuts across anything as transient as the secular calendar. Today once again, the Church begins its annual meditation on the history of our salvation. And the Church’s view of history is rather different from that of the secular historian. The perspective of Advent is paradoxically both looking backward, looking at the present moment, and looking forward. Advent is a time of preparation when we look back to the first coming of the Son of Man, how presently he can come in our hearts, and also look forward through all future centuries still to unfold, to His glorious return at the end of time.

Dear brethren in Christ, we would be mistaken to allow the first part of Advent to be swallowed up by the approaching feast of Christmas. There is so much to contemplate before we turn our gaze to the Infant King in Bethlehem. Before that, let us lift our eyes once again, into the words of the introit of today’s Mass, to the author of salvation. And we do so by looking to the future. Today we should turn the eyes of faith to the return of Christ. The end of the world. This is an intrusive image. It cuts across the dreamy apathy, which we may perhaps have allowed ourselves to sink into.

The liturgical texts for Advent do their best to reassure us. Advent does not have the same penitential feel as Lent. It is a season of joyful expectation. We look up and look forward to the author of salvation. His eventual return should fill us with joy. And if it does not, we must examine our conscience. Why would we not welcome the Advent of Christ? Is there something deep within us that, which if we are honest we know is a barrier? Is there something that, if left unchecked or unconverted might lead us to hate our Maker?

Today’s gospel tells us bluntly – ‘stay awake!’ Yes and of course, we dare not fall asleep, lest the minutes, or the centuries, pass us by, and we come to our final destination unprepared. We rouse ourselves, as we again face up to the austere reality – the ultimate goal of our pilgrimage, our final and unavoidable confrontation with the Lord of history. As the ephemeral centuries of our secular calendar tick by, so many fleeting seconds when seen against the backdrop of eternity, as the secular calendar ticks by, the stern image of Christ at the end of time imprints itself again on the Church’s mind. In the end, Christ. The human race will not and cannot escape Him. Evolve and progress as we may, we shall come to Him at the last. We could say, “He will return”, or we could say, “We shall arrive”. The end will be the same. An ineluctable confrontation with Christ’s majesty and naked power.

Let us remind ourselves again of the dominant motif of Advent; the need for preparation. God gives us time, to help us prepare for eternity. We are to live in the present, with our eye on the future. And to make that easier for us, the Lord of history has given us a certain means of telescoping history, the better to prepare us for our final destiny. The means is simply this: the Blessed Sacrament. Perhaps a rather unexpected emphasis for Advent. But think of it. In the Blessed Sacrament, we have Christ veiled. He graciously condescends to scale Himself down, to reduce His majesty, so that we can cope with what would otherwise overwhelm us. His Real but hidden presence in the Eucharistic species orientates us in two directions; back to the period of His incarnation, and at the same time forward to what awaits us beyond time – the celestial banquet, of which the Mass is an earthly foretaste. The Eucharist enfolds or interweaves these historical realities. In the Blessed Sacrament, we have a miraculous interlocking of Christ’s past, His present, and His future. The Eucharist enables us to share in all three eras of Christ’s being. If we dread our encounter with Him at the end of time, we can start to face its awesome reality now, and in a form well suited to our dread. In this world, He veils His substance, under the accidents of bread and wine. At His Second Coming, His “Advent“, that distinction will no longer obtain. We shall have to face His substance, unveiled.

How will that confrontation be for us? How shall we react in the face of that searing omniscience? Christ’s unblinking gaze will produce in each of us one of two effects, stark in their contrast. Quite simply; either sheer blinding terror, or strange to tell, the exact opposite; bliss unspeakable. That countenance which now we can only faintly imagine, when fully unveiled, will inspire either hatred or adoration. By then, there will be no other choices. All our reassuring and mellow shades of grey will have polarized into the starkly contrasting light of eternal noonday or the thick darkness of endless midnight.

During Advent, while we have time, while we are still able to dispose of time, let us cultivate and renew a deep devotion to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar. By cultivating His hidden presence now, we shall truly rejoice when that presence is finally and irrevocably unveiled.

HAPPY NEW SEASON OF ADVENT!!

Fr Joseph Osho