1st Sunday Advent B - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2005

Stay awake!  Mark repeats the warning three times: Stay awake!  Why? What’s on?  Advent has begun.  We have four weeks to prepare.  But, prepare for what?  Certainly not for Christ’s birth – that happened 2000 summers ago.  There is no point pretending that he will be born again.  Then stay awake to what?  To life..  to what is going on in my life.

What is going on in my life beneath the constant round of deeds and conversations, trips in the car, games, recreation, work, sleep, meals and Masses?  As St John of the Cross, the XVIth century Spanish mystic, said so beautifully and so wisely: At eventide they will examine thee in love.  They – the Father, Son and Spirit of God – will examine us in love – at eventide.  Everything we do, every deliberate response to what happens to us, can be the concrete shape of love.  But it need not be.  If often isn’t.

What makes the difference between loving and not loving? between loving and simply being busy? between gently nurturing our spirit and busily suffocating it, clogging it up, drowning it in a deluge of activity?  Part of the answer, I find, is being ready to reflect, to step back to look at my life, to ponder.  Stay awake – to life!

But why get all excited about it at Advent?  Simply because Advent reminds us, reassures us, that God has come among us and meets us in our lives, our interactions, our responses.  The God who came among us that first Christmas has always been in his world and is still at large in his world today.  How do we recognise him?

I suppose that among the many things that the first Christmas event told us is that he probably won’t look like what we might expect him to look like, won’t be where we might expect him to be, won’t be doing what we might expect him to be doing.

How did Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth recognise the advent of God entering and overturning their lives?  They were familiar with their own inner world, present to the moment, responsive to the unexpected.  They were awake to life and to experience.

We often say we’re too busy; there is simply too much to do and not enough time to do it - especially since we have amassed so many time-saving, energy-saving, labour-saving devices.  Whatever about our busyness, in designing the world’s flow of days and nights, God ensured that there was always time, plenty of time, to do what he wanted us to do.  Anything we realistically haven’t got time to do, and to do well, can’t be God’s will, can’t be energised by the life-giving, creative love of God – so in some way it will be undermining us, suffocating and even destroying our spirit.  We need to discern what is going on in our lives.  We need to step back to look at ourselves.  Most of us need to slow down.  Why don’t we?  

Though he came into our world 2000 years ago, our world has hardly learnt to recognise him, to listen to him.  The annual reminder of Christ’s birth among us can come and go once more, the 2005th time it has, and this year, will we have noticed? really noticed and learnt to prioritise?  That might depend on whether we take to heart the invitation of today’s Gospel: Stay awake! Be present to the moment, not distracted, focussed.

In the Eucharist that is now about to follow we have privileged access to Christ.  We know it; we believe it easily.  Our perhaps harder task is to learn to hear him working in our inner self, throwing light on what is going on in our lives, wanting us to thrive, to grow.  He is not interested in how hectic our lives are; he gives us no points for busyness.  He simply wants our spirit to become more alive.  And that is the point of Advent.