Homily for the First Sunday of Advent

December 3, 2023
Saint Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Isaiah 63:16b-17,19b; 64:2-7
Psalm 80
First Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:33-37

The season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday with ashes placed on our foreheads with the admonition to each of us to “turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.” The season of Advent begins, not with our initiative in turning away from sin, but rather with our attention directed to watching for God’s turning toward us “to come and to save us.” Advent is about our paying attention to God’s initiative and our being alert to His grace offered to us in seeking to save and to redeem us.

In today’s first reading, Isaiah the Prophet is addressing the Lord God. Usually, prophetic speech is addressed to human beings to convey God’s desires for human beings. Here, the Prophet is echoing Moses in calling the Lord back to his foundational promises of fidelity to Israel. Yet, the fact that Isaiah dares to prophesy to God shows in a certain manner that Israel is worse off than even Isaiah grasps. He is prophesying to God about Israel’s desires for Him, when it is Israel who needs to receive the prophesy regarding God’s desires for them as His people to let go of their sin and to return to Him with contrite hearts. Isaiah is speaking as if it is God who has drawn away from Israel and who has left them estranged and isolated, when in fact it is Israel who has pulled away from God and needs to repent and to return to fidelity to their promises of the Covenant.

In the Gospel today, Jesus warns his disciples to pay attention and to watch because we do not know when He will come again for us to give an accounting. This is the moment in which we recognize in the present how God has been active in past events throughout our lives that otherwise we would overlook and take for granted. This is the time that God offers us as an opportunity for us to pivot in the direction we are living our lives. It is time for us to watch for God’s approach and then to turn towards His embrace as He sends His Son to save us. Such moments could involve the birth of a child, the moment of decision to marry shared by a couple, the mysterious and quiet recognition of a religious vocation, the death of a parent or of a spouse, a moment when our confusions disappear or a moment of when perplexity confounds our previous certitude, a moment when we feel the weight of our sin or a moment when we feel that burden lifted by forgiveness and reconciliation.

If we do not watch, there is a strong possibility that such moments will be missed by us. If we become lost in time, thinking only that time is the ordinary movement of a consecutive series of unrelated events but without overarching meaning or purpose, we will miss the recognition that God offers us in this season of Advent. The call to be watchful and alert is a call to take time to be silent and to listen to become aware of how God is shaping our lives directly and through other people. Advent is a call to silence. Advent is a call to listen. Advent is a call for conversion.

Advent is not simply a time for urgent shopping in December, but rather Advent affords us the critical moment when we recognize how much the Lord loves us and then we turn towards Him who has first turned towards us. The Lord never stops calling us to turn towards Him, but many of us just stop listening at some point when we grow impatient with Him. When we become complacent and cynical with our lives, first we stop hearing His knock on our door, then we stop caring. Advent offers us the time to listen for the Lord in silence instead of becoming so distracted by noise that we mistake His silence for absence or even apathy.

May this Advent be a time of grace, a time to recognize God’s desire for us to be reconciled to Him and in our recognition of His coming to let go of our sins and our fears and accept the love that the Lord offers us in the gift of Himself who came as the Divine Infant born in Bethlehem of Mary, the gift of Himself when He comes at the end of time as our triumphant King and Judge, and the gift of Himself as He comes to us now in the Eucharist we offer and receive.