First Sunday of Advent
Is 63: 16b-17, 19b; 64: 2-7; 1 Cor 1: 3-9; Mk 13: 33-37
Deacon Larry Brockman
Today, we are being called to a frame of mind in our scriptures, a frame of mind that makes you ever comfortable that no matter when the Lord comes, we are ready for the second coming of Christ. It is not so much a call to stop everything and get ready for the moment when He comes because the scriptures tell us we don’t know when that is. But rather, it is a call to be ready for any moment that he comes, now and for the rest of your life. So it is a way of life Jesus is asking us to live.
In the first reading, Isaiah longs for the coming of a savior who will do great works. He had this hope, because the Israeli people had not followed the Lord. He thought that if only people were sent a savior who did mighty works, then they would believe and follow him.
Then Isaiah said that the Lord is the potter, and the people are the clay. And that people need to let the potter form them. The potter forms each person into a specific role that complements the other believers in the community. They worship together; they reinforce each other’s faith and they evangelize others together.
Such a Messiah never came in Isaiah’s day. But he came in the person of Jesus Christ much later. Christians are the beneficiaries of that first coming, with the magnificent miracles worked by Jesus in the Gospel.
Paul praises the Corinthians for putting Faith into practice. For he tells them they were “enriched in every way” as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among them, and that “they are not lacking in any spiritual gift as they wait for the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ.” As a result, He tells them they are called to eternal fellowship with Jesus Christ- that was their destiny. You see, the Corinthians were a community that heard the story of Jesus and believed in the miracles and the Resurrection. The Corinthians worked together to accomplish God’s plan. In their age, that plan was to spread the faith to the wider community through word and deed. They did that by showing everyone that they believed and they did it by mirroring the love and joy of Christ. And so Christianity spread like wildfire.
So it is to be with us. The Eucharistic celebration is a visible symbol of our commitment to the Church to be an active member of a believing community, a community that worships together, reinforces each other’s beliefs, and carries those beliefs to the greater community by evangelizing in word and deed.
We need to be formed by the Lord as a potter forms the clay to fulfill our roles in that community. We need to work together as the Church to mirror the joy and love of Christ to those around us. If we do all that, then we will be ready for Jesus second coming at any time because of the inner peace of doing God’s will continuously.
Advent is our time to prepare for the coming of Christ child, right. But our society has lost sight of what that means. Instead we have “Holiday Trees”; “Holiday Cards”; and “Holiday Parties” But this is Christianity’s feast- we are getting ready for a Christian Holy Day, one that rejoices over the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, True God and True Man. The Incarnation shows how intimate God became with us, and by following after Jesus through the Gospel, we have been promised everlasting life in heaven. Our role as a believing community of Christians is to celebrate and rejoice over the coming of Christ. We shouldn’t hide it or disguise it; we should actively show it.
And so let us celebrate Christmas the way it was intended to be celebrated, proclaiming to the secular, politically correct World around us, that it’s Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays; and that we are celebrating the great mystery of our faith, the joyful coming of God made man, Jesus Christ!
Merry Christmas..
Tags: Merry Christmas not Happy Holidays, Putting Christianity into practice, The Mass Unifies us