1st Sunday Advent C - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2006 

Carbon dioxide is changing the balance of the upper atmosphere, leading to climate change and global warming.  We know that our Western life style contributes to it all, but struggle to face the need to change and pay the price,

Terrorism and counter-terrorism intensify ethnic and religious hatreds.  Fear stalks the world,and is used to justify the whittling away of hard-won freedoms, the abuse of human rights by torture and imprisonment, a contraction of hospitality and a coarsening of hearts.

The AIDS  epidemic marches on; and whole peoples slowly starve to death.

How did Jesus put it two thousand years ago?

There will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars.. nations in agony, bewildered, in fear as they await what menaces the world...

Obviously the experience is not new.

Even six centuries before Christ, as we read in today’s First Reading, Jeremiah – locked away at the time as a prisoner of conscience - irrepressibly hoped for integrity in the national capital, and yearned for a leader who would value honesty and integrity.

The temptation, of course, is to accept that it’s all too hard (You can’t do anything), to let national leaders do what they want, and, instead, to get caught up in and distracted by what we can control: what we eat, what we drink, where we live, and what we wear – our games and circuses.

As Jesus put it: Unless we watch, our hearts will become coarsened by food, sex and the cares of life.

Yet Jesus also said to his disciples: In the face of all that is happening in our world, stand erect, hold your heads high! your liberation is near at hand! Pray at all times for strength to stand with confidence before the Son of Man.

Is something else happening? what Jesus called The Son of Man coming with power and great glory?

If so, is it not noticeable yet because the Son of Man will come only at the end? Or is it already happening, but less noticeably - gradually, in the midst of ordinary things?

I believe that it is indeed occurring - not so much in  the national capitals and the corridors of power - but through the lives of ordinary people. It’s a now, more than an end of the world, reality.

What might the glory of the Son of Man, that Jesus spoke about, refer to? The glory of God – the revelation within the world of God’s beauty and transforming power - is the human person fully alive.  And human persons become fully alive as they learn to grow and to interrelate in love in the midst of an otherwise disheartening and often corrupting world.

Again and again, I come across people who are maturing in love, depthing at great cost, and sometimes in the midst of acute pain, their capacity for unshakeable, hope-filled, unconditional love.  At times I stand in awe at their strength, their courage and their freedom to die to so much – and to become beautifully alive in the process.

They stand erect, hold their heads high.  They experience liberation.  Empowered by God, they embody the glory of God.  Through them, Christ, the exemplar of mature humanity, becomes ever more incarnate in the world.

The Son of Man is indeed coming in power and great glory.  We simply need to stay awake in order to perceive him.  As we pray at all times, we learn to see reality. We find the strength not just to survive but to stand with confidence, side by side, with Christ as he comes inexorably into our hurting and wounded world.

This is our dignity; it is our destiny; it is our mission as disciples of Christ.