C Cycle – 1^st Sunday of Advent 24

Lk.21:25-28, 34-36

Years ago, there was a song with the lyrics “Sunrise, sunset, quickly go the years.”  We mark those past years celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, marriages, and with memorials for someone we loved who is no longer with us.  The problem for us humans is that we do look forward to the future with hope while doing little during the now to change hope to a reality.   We know the Israelites heard the prophecies about the coming Messiah but six hundred years after Jeremiah prophesied God would fulfill that promise, they were still waiting.  Those years did not go quickly because the Israelites experienced the destruction of the temple and were captives to foreign powers with no sign of a Messiah.

In your lifetime and mine we grew up looking forward to the future with hope for a better life.  A life free from wars, pain, division, sickness, and a life shared with people we love.  We ignore the one thing that is certain in our future and that is our own death.  Jesus tells us to stay vigilant because He understands our human nature is to ignore what we know is coming.  We are too wrapped up in the now, enjoying the fullness of what life offers us. 

This is why Advent, which stands at the beginning of the Church calendar, is our reminder to get refocused.  The heartbeat of the Church begins now, telling us to prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ.  To be like the shepherds and the wise men who came to give Him homage.  But all too often we are like the townspeople who ignore the choirs of angels and the bright star hovering over Bethlehem.  We miss everything that points us toward Jesus. 

During Advent, the church offers us a time of self-reflection, prayer, reconciliation and surrender of our desires to please self.  Will we respond this year, or will we put it off until we have more time for reflection and prayer?  Will we make changes and begin to seek Christ every day we have left on this earth.  Will we give Jessus our hearts and raise our heads and become alert to the many ways Jesus daily reaches out to us.  Jesus tells us we are to always be vigilant and not become drowsy.  Become wary, cautious, alert because everyday living keeps us unfocused, unaware, unconcerned about the things of God.  We are kept occupied with things of this world and Jesus takes a back seat. 

Jesus does not invite us to become hermits, isolating ourselves from society.  He is inviting us to be citizens of the Kingdom of God on earth. That kingdom He came to establish and did establish on earth.  It is a place where we feel the presence of God each day.  It is a place where we are guided by the Holy Spirit and make decisions based on what will keep us living in God’s kingdom instead of in the world while we are remaining in the world.  God’s kingdom is a place where we can overcome the anxieties of life and the weaknesses of our humanity. 

This Advent is a time for each of us to examine our lives and invite the transforming power of the Spirit to transform our hearts and open us to seek intimacy with God.  Not reverence Him, not be frightened of Him, not be in awe of Him but desire to feel His embrace of forgiveness and love. 

It is interesting how Advent points us to Christmas, the birth of Jesus.  Instead of focusing on the awesome beauty of an infant let us do something different as we move toward Jesus’s taking on our humanity.  Let our prayers take that infant into our arms and commit to keeping Him alive by bringing Him into our lives.  Let us open our hearts and allow all our flaws to become insignificant as we become mother and father to the child Jesus.  Let us hold Him close to our hearts.  Let us live our lives knowing that Jesus desires to become alive in our hearts.  That we are to remain focused on deepening our intimacy with Christ and remain focused on living in the Kingdom of God rather than in the world. 

Let us change how we live by not allowing ourselves to become unaware of the one single truth: Time does go by quickly. We live the life God desires us to live by believing we will have time for God someday in the future.  The time is now: The Kingdom of God is at hand.