Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Advent

  • The First Sunday of Advent

    The First Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    To you, I lift up my soul, O my God.
    In you, I have trusted; let me not be put to shame.
    Nor let my enemies exult over me;
    and let none who hope in you be put to shame.

    Those are the very first words in the Roman Missal’s Proper of Time.  This is today’s proper entrance antiphon, and with these words, the Church begins the new Church year.  We stand here on the precipice of something new: a new Church year, a new season of grace.  We eagerly await God’s new creation, lifting up souls full of hope and expectation.  We come to this place and time of worship to take refuge from the laughing enemies that pursue us into our corner of the world.  And yet we wait for God on this first day of the year, keenly aware that our waiting will not be unrewarded.  This is Advent, the season whose name means “coming” and stands before us as a metaphor of hope for a darkened world, and a people darkened by sin.

    When we’re praying through Advent, perhaps we feel a sense of longing. We do long for that newness. This time of year, we long for warmer days. In the news lately, we long for peace in the world and even in cities and communities. Perhaps we long for peace in our families. As a community of faith, we long for the One who alone can bring the real, lasting peace that makes a difference in our lives and in our world. We long for the promised Savior who will bind up what is broken in us and lead us back to the God who made us for himself.

    I sure think Isaiah had it right in today’s first reading, didn’t he?  “Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways,” he cries, “and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?”  What a wonderful question for all of us – it’s a question that anyone who has struggled with a pattern of sin has inevitably asked the Lord at one time or another.  He goes on to pray “Would that you might meet us doing right, and that we were mindful of you in our ways!”  We so much want to break free of the chains of sin and sadness, and turn back to our God, but so often, we encounter so many obstacles along the way.

    Whether it’s our own personal sin, which is certainly cause enough for sadness, or the sin in which we participate as a society, there’s a lot of darkness out there.  Wars raging all over the world, abortions happening every day of the year, the poor going unfed and dying of starvation here and abroad.  Why does God let all of this happen?  A quick look at the news leads us to ask ourselves, what kind of people have we become?  Why does God let us wander so far from his ways?  Why doesn’t he just rend the heavens and come down and put a stop to all this nonsense?

    There is only one answer to this quandary, and that’s what we celebrate in this season of anticipation.  There has only ever been one answer.  And that answer wasn’t just a band-aid God came up with on the fly because things had gone so far wrong.  Salvation never was an afterthought.  Jesus Christ’s coming into the world was always the plan.

    I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite Advent hymns this week.  One of my favorites is “O Come, Divine Messiah,” a seventeenth-century French carol translated into English in the late nineteenth century.  It sings of a world in silent anticipation for the breaking of the bondage of sin that could only come in one possible way, and that is in the person of Jesus Christ:

    O Christ, whom nations sigh for,
    Whom priest and prophet long foretold,
    Come break the captive fetters;
    Redeem the long-lost fold.

    Dear Savior haste;
    Come, come to earth,
    Dispel the night and show your face,
    And bid us hail the dawn of grace.

    O come, divine Messiah!
    The world in silence waits the day
    When hope shall sing its triumph,
    And sadness flee away.

    As we prepare to remember the first coming of our Savior into our world, we look forward with hope and eagerness for his second coming too.  You’ll be able to hear that expressed in the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer today.  That second coming, for which we live in breathless anticipation, will finally break the captive fetters and put an end to sin and death forever.  That is our only hope, our only salvation, really the only hope and salvation that we could ever possibly need.

    All of this requires vigilance; we must be watchful, be alert, as Jesus instructs us in today’s Gospel. We want our God to meet us doing right.  And so our task now is to wait, and to watch.  Waiting requires patience: patience to enjoy the little God-moments that become incarnate to us in the everyday-ness of our lives.  Patience to accept this sinful world as it is and not as we would have it, patience to know that, as Isaiah says, we are clay and God is the potter, and he’s not done creating, or re-creating the world just yet.  And so we watch for signs of God’s goodness, alert to opportunities to grow in grace, with faith lived by people who are the work of God’s hands.

    We wait and we watch knowing – convinced – that God will rend the heavens and come down to us again one day; that Christ will return in all his glory and gather us back to himself, perfecting us and allowing hope to sing its triumph so loud that all the universe can hear it, dispelling the night and putting sadness to flight once and for all. Be alert for that day.

  • Monday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Emmanuel

    Monday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Emmanuel

    Today’s Liturgy has us on the edge of our seats.  As tomorrow’s night turns to day, our salvation will be closer at hand than ever.  Our Savior Jesus Christ, the Promised One of all the ages, will be incarnate among us as one like ourselves.  “And suddenly there will come to the temple, the LORD whom you seek,” Malachi prophecies, and his words could not be more true.  The Gospel, too, has us yearning, as Saint John the Forerunner is born and all wonder at what will become of him.  Little do they know the significance of that event!  Today’s “O Antiphon” speaks of Emmanuel, God-with-us: “O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Savior of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God.”  Come, Lord Jesus; be our Emmanuel – God with us –  come quickly and do not delay!

  • The Fourth Sunday of Advent – Make Some Room!

    The Fourth Sunday of Advent – Make Some Room!

    What has captured my imagination as I’ve prayed this Advent is how we have been given this wonderful gift.  This gift eclipses anything we’ll ever be given, anything we will ever earn, anything that will ever cross our meandering path in life.  Today, the readings call that gift Emmanuel – God with us.  I think sometimes we forget how wonderful this is.  That the infinite all-powerful awesome God, who is not in need of anything or anyone for His self-worth, that He would choose to come to earth and take the flesh of his creatures, this is a truth too wonderful to even imagine.  But not only that, this God took on our imperfections so completely that he paid the price for our many sins, both individually and as a society.  He died the death we deserve for our waywardness, and then he rose from the dead in the Resurrection that assures us access to eternal life, if we will but love and follow him.  No gift on earth is like this one!

    The most important thing that we can know about this Gift is that it isn’t for us.  Well, that’s not true: it is for us, but never only for us.  We are meant to share it.  Because we have been loved by God who is Love itself, with a love so complete and sacrificial and permanent, then we have to be willing to love that way too.  The people God puts in our lives, our family, our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors – all of them deserve to be loved in this same way too, and it’s up to us to be conduits of that love to others.

    So we have to be on the lookout for ways to do that.  Last week, Father Steve preached at all the Masses and gave some very practical ways for each of us to gently invite our loved ones and friends to a relationship with Christ at our family gatherings and other Christmas events.  Every encounter with others should be a time for us to be ready to share God’s love with the people in our lives.

    Today, I am talking at all the Masses to speak on another opportunity I believe that we have.  That opportunity is the one that we’ll have when we walk through the doors of this holy place on Tuesday or Wednesday.  God willing, our Masses on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day will be packed, as they usually are on those days.  These are days when we have more people come through our doors than any given Sunday.  We have lots of visitors, family members of our parishioners, people from the community who don’t regularly join us for worship, people who are seeking something in their lives, people who perhaps have a hard time believing in anything this time of year, maybe those who have been going through hard times or family strife, or any of a million different stressors.

    Those of us who are here all the time could get our noses out of joint at this time of year.  We put in all the effort to get here every week, so maybe the lack of parking and the packed seats inconvenience us to the point of irritation.  But what if it didn’t?

    What if, instead, we used this as an opportunity to put the discipleship we’ve been learning about all year long into practice?  What if we chose to see Jesus in all of them, to be aware of Emmanuel – God with us – in such a way that we did everything we could to make their first time with us, or their first time in a long time, a memorable one?  What if we as a parish decided that a loving relationship with our God was so glorious, so important, that we didn’t want anyone to go without one?  What if, as a community, we decided there is nothing we won’t do to make those who visit us on Christmas irresistibly attracted to our community, so that when they’re here they think, “Those people at Notre Dame know something I don’t, and I have to find out what it is”?  Well, that’s what I’d like us to try and do this Christmas.

    I liken it to the whole way Jesus came into the world.  We all know the story, don’t we?  The whole world was on the move, headed to their native places to be counted for the census, and there wasn’t an inn anywhere that would take Mary and Joseph, and the coming Christ Child in.  But one innkeeper made some room out back and gave the newborn King the best he could offer.  We absolutely know that Christ is in our brothers and sisters, so how on earth can we turn them away?  As Saint Benedict teaches us, “Let all guests be received as Christ.”

    And so I’m going to make some suggestions for things that we can all do to make people feel welcome, to help them to know that there is a joy here in our community that has to be shared.  First, make some room.  I know we all want to get here first for a good parking spot.  But if you can walk here, would you consider doing that, just to make a spot for a visitor?  I can remember when my family would try to get to Mass as soon as possible to stake out a good seat, and I’d see so many people with coats over whole sections of a pew like they were lawn chairs on parking spaces in the city!  We all want to have room, but if you can move in a little and let some other folks sit with you, would you consider being a bit uncomfortable so that someone can be welcome?

    Lots of times people will come here and won’t know where they’re going.  We all want to get to Mass on time, but if you see someone looking puzzled, would you consider taking a moment to ask if you could help them?  If they’re looking for the bathroom, would you go out of your way just this once to walk them there so they don’t get lost in the crowds coming in on a busy day?  Again, as intent as we are to get to our seats, if you notice someone coming in who needs some help walking, could you offer them your arm, or hold the door open?

    We all like to see our friends and the people we know at Mass.  It’s a comfort to us.  So it might take a little concerted effort, but would you consider smiling at someone you’ve never seen before, perhaps introducing yourself and telling them what you like about Notre Dame?  Because it just takes a tiny little gesture, or a little inconvenience for us, to make a huge difference.  What if every person who walked through the door on Christmas Eve or Christmas had a life-changing experience because of the way that we treated them?  We can do that, and I really think that we should.  Would you all be willing to do a little something extra to make someone know God’s love in an awesome way?  I’m counting on all of you to do that.  If every Guest is received as Christ, then as Saint Benedict also said, we will all go together one day to eternal life!

  • Advent Penance Service

    Advent Penance Service

    Today’s readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44

    In these late days of Advent, we pray the “O Antiphons.”  These antiphons are the various titles of Jesus as found in Scripture.  Today’s antiphon is “O Root of Jesse” and it is found as the antiphon for the Canticle of Mary in Evening Prayer: “O Flower of Jesse’s stem, you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you.  Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.”

    And we gather here tonight because we do need our Lord to come to our aid.  We are a people who have turned away from our God, numerous times, both individually and also as a society.  We are a people who, try as we might, have a hard time getting a handle on our sinfulness, that cycle of foolish turning away from God that we know in our heads is the wrong way to go.  We find that we are in the same place, over and over, and it is hard to turn back and be on the right path once and for all.  We just can’t do it ourselves.

    So it’s good that we don’t have to do it all ourselves, isn’t it?  No one can come to our aid in quite the same way as Jesus our Savior.  Born as a child in a poor family, the expectations of him seemed great: redeeming the nation Israel and restoring its political greatness.  But we know how limited even that lofty vision was: instead, he broke the bonds of sin and death, paying the price we owed for our sinfulness and obliterating the ancient curse that too long kept us from friendship with our God.  Coming to our aid is exactly what God had in mind for us all along.  No wonder that kings stand silent and nations bow down in worship!

    The Gospel reading today is from the First Sunday of Advent, in which the Church called us to wake up and realize that the time is running short.  Maybe you’ve felt that way in your Christmas preparations.  Wasn’t it just Thanksgiving a few hours ago?  But as quickly as Christmas has come, so quickly do our lives go, so quickly pass the opportunities to open our hearts and spirits to God.

    What if we have found Advent a less than prayerful time?  Have we missed the opportunity to clean up our act, to spend more time in prayer, and generally prepare a home for the Savior to be born in us in new ways?  Have we meant Advent to be a more reflective time, and instead given way to secular concerns and holiday parties and all the trappings of a busy season?  Well there’s two pieces of good news if that’s how you find yourself this evening.

    First, God will enter into our lives anyway.  It might not be in the way we expect, and perhaps it won’t be as pleasant as we would like.  But God is not limited by our lack of time.  God does what he wills and never lets anything keep him from coming to our aid.

    Second, we have tonight to turn things around.  This is the time to come before our God in the Sacrament of Penance and leave what we’ve come with behind.  This is the time when we can throw off all those dark deeds as Saint Paul urged the Romans, and put on the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is the time that we can do our small part to beat our swords into plowshares and cure the societal evils that perpetuate war and terror and all sorts of worldwide death.  This is the time when we can step out of the darkness and shine the light of Christ on those parts of us that have been shrouded for too long.  This is the time for us to walk in the light of the Lord, as Isaiah commands.

    And so we begin tonight by reflecting on our lives, and opening ourselves up to God’s mercy as we pray our examination of conscience.

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Advent: O Root of Jesse

    Thursday of the Third Week of Advent: O Root of Jesse

    Today’s readings

    In these late days of Advent, we pray the “O Antiphons.”  These antiphons are the various titles of Jesus as found in Scripture.  Today’s antiphon is “O Root of Jesse” and it is found as the antiphon for the Canticle of Mary in Evening PRayer: “O Flower of Jesse’s stem, you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you.  Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.”

    Zechariah in today’s Gospel certainly knew what it was like to stand silent in the presence of the Root of Jesse.  Having been promised a son by an angel of the Lord, his disbelief moved him to silence in God’s presence.  Here is a man who, one would think, should know better.  But maybe his years of childlessness have led him to accept a life that was not ultimately God’s will.  Certainly we could not blame him if the angel’s message was a bit unbelievable; we who have the benefit of so much science would probably be a little harder on the angel than Zechariah was.

    When you’re accustomed to living without hope, any sign of hope can be met with an awful lot of skepticism.  Would Elizabeth and Zechariah ever give birth to a child? Would God save the world from the darkness of sin and death?  Can God be born here among us, giving us rootedness and a solid foundation for our lives?

    Better to be silent than to voice our lack of faith and hope.  Then, in the stillness of our hearts and souls, maybe God can give rootedness to our scattered lives, bring hope to a world grown dark in sin and greed and war and too much death.  Today’s Gospel has God bringing hope to a elderly, childless couple.  God forbid that we would doubt that he could bring hope to us too.

    We pray today: Come, Lord Jesus, come root of Jesse, give rootedness to our lives that are sometimes adrift in despair or apathy, give hope to a world grown cold in darkness and disappointment, give life to a people burdened by sin and death.  Come, let us stand silent as we await the dawning of your hope in our lives, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.  Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly and do not delay!

  • Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent: O Wisdom

    Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent: O Wisdom

    Today’s readings

    That was quite a list of names, wasn’t it?  Forty-two generations of the pilgrim people Israel led by some real characters.  Some of them were heroic like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah and to some extent David and Solomon.  But some of them were pretty wicked, especially Manasseh, whose wickedness in shedding innocent blood incurred God’s wrath such that he allowed the Babylonian captivity that took place during Jeconiah’s reign.  So we have forty-two generations of saints and sinners, great men and flawed men, all leading up to the Incarnation of Christ, who was the only remedy to the cycle of sin that spiraled all through the story.

    Today we begin the more intense period of Advent that extends from December 17th through the morning of Christmas Eve.  During this time, the Liturgy leads us to call all the more longingly for the presence of Christ.  Just as forty-two generations of a mix of wisdom and foolishness could only be remedied by the presence of Christ, so the foolishness of our time calls for that same remedy.

    During these last days of Advent, we pray the “O Antiphons,” from which we derive the verses in the Advent Hymn, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”  The verses are also used during Evening Prayer.  Today’s is “O Wisdom,” and the verse from Evening Prayer is “O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care: Come and show your people the way to salvation.”  We trust the governance of God, the Creator of creation, to satisfy our longing for wisdom with the presence of the Incarnate Christ.

    Come, Lord Jesus and bring us peace.  Come, Lord Jesus and put an end to the world’s foolishness.  Come, Lord Jesus and bring us your Wisdom.  Come quickly and do not delay.

  • Monday of the Third Week of Advent

    Monday of the Third Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    The whole progression of Advent is one that has always captured my imagination.  I see Advent as a kind of dawning of a new day.  Just as the day doesn’t come all at once, so Advent progresses and we see the coming of Jesus ever more gradually as we participate in each day’s Liturgy of the Word.  At the same time though, night doesn’t last forever, and the day arrives more quickly than we might be ready for.  I think that’s kind of where we are at this sort of late-middle point of Advent.

    Today we see some glimmers of light.  The prophet Balaam speaks of a star advancing from Jacob and a spear from Israel.  This wasn’t terribly good news for Balaam’s people, but it sure is for us.  The hope of all the earth was in the somewhat distant future for the people of Israel, and even though in the Gospel that hope was standing right in front of them, the Truth of it all had not yet dawned on the chief priests and elders.

    Tomorrow we begin a special part of Advent, marked by reflection on the “O Antiphons” which we famously sing in the hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and which we pray during Evening Prayer each day.  The Liturgy is pretty strict during these days and calls for us to focus on the coming of Christ and his manifestation among us in so many wonderful ways.

    So the question is, have we been progressing faithfully this Advent?  Has the light been made ever brighter in our hearts?  Are we progressing toward the dawning of the day, or will it happen all at once and find us unprepared?  This is the time to light the lamp if we’ve been keeping it dim.  This is the time to wake from our sleep.  Our salvation is near at hand.

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Blessed Pope Pius IX instituted the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8, 1854, when he proclaimed as truth the dogma that our Lady was conceived free from the stain of original sin.  This had been a traditional belief since about the eighth century, and had been celebrated as a feast first in the East, and later in the West.

    This feast celebrates the belief that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to be our Savior, and gave to him a human mother who was chosen before the world began to be holy and blameless in his sight.  This feast is a sign for us of the nearness of our salvation; that the plan God had for us before the world ever took shape was finally coming to fruition.  How appropriate it is, then, that we celebrate the Immaculate Conception during Advent, when we recount the unfolding of salvation through the Incarnation of Christ.

    The readings chosen for this day paint the picture.  In the reading from Genesis, we have the story of the fall.  The man and the woman had eaten of the fruit of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat.  Because of this, they were ashamed and covered over their nakedness.  God noticed that, and asked about it.  He found they had discovered the forbidden tree because otherwise they would not have the idea that their natural state was shameful.

    Thus begins the pattern of sin and deliverance that cycles all through the scriptures.  God extends a way to salvation to his people, the people reject it and go their own way.  God forgives, and extends a new way to salvation.  Thank God he never gets tired of pursuing humankind and offering salvation, or we would be in dire straits.  It all comes to perfection in the event we celebrate today.  Salvation was always God’s plan for us and he won’t rest until that plan comes to perfection.  That is why St. Paul tells the Ephesians, and us, today: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.   In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ…”

    And so, in these Advent days, we await the unfolding of the plan for salvation that began at the very dawn of the world in all its wonder.  God always intended to provide an incredible way for his people to return to them, and that was by taking flesh and walking among us as a man.  He began this by preparing for his birth through the Immaculate Virgin Mary – never stained by sin, because the one who conquered sin and death had already delivered her from sin.  He was then ready to be born into our midst and to take on our form.  With Mary’s fiat in today’s Gospel, God enters our world in the most intimate way possible, by becoming vulnerable, taking our flesh as one like us.  Mary’s lived faith – possible because of her Immaculate Conception – makes possible our own lives of faith and our journeys to God.  

    Our celebration today has special meaning for us.  Because Mary was conceived without sin, we can see that sin was never intended to rule us.  Because God selected Mary from the beginning, we can see that we were chosen before we were ever in our mother’s womb.  Because Mary received salvific grace from the moment of her conception, we can catch a glimpse of what is to come for all of us one day.  Mary’s deliverance from sin and death was made possible by the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus, who deeply desires that we all be delivered in that way too.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.  Amen.

  • Thursday of the First Week of Advent

    Thursday of the First Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    There’s an old saying that if you want to hear God laugh, just tell him your plans for the day.  And we know how true that is, don’t we?  How many times have we had a plan for the day, only to have it derailed by whatever circumstances come our way during the day.  But I think the real problem with our plans sometimes is that we don’t always factor God’s will into our plans.  We want God to come to our rescue when things go awry, as they always do when we depend only on ourselves.  But if things are going well, we sometimes feel like we can do without God’s direction, thanks anyway.

    This is the meaning of the song they’re singing about Judah in today’s first reading from Isaiah.  The people who are in lofty high places don’t think they need God, or don’t even give God a second, or even a first, thought.  And won’t they be surprised when God allows them to be caught up in their own folly and go tumbling to the ground?

    This Advent time is a time for us to examine our lives and see if we might have thought ourselves to be lofty recently.  How much do we depend on God?  Do we rely on his help day after day?  Do we consider his will in our daily plans?  Are we open to the movement of his Spirit?  If not, we might find ourselves tumbling and falling.  But if we choose to be aware of God and our need for him, nothing will ever make us stumble.  As the Psalmist sings today:

    It is better to take refuge in the LORD
    than to trust in man.
    It is better to take refuge in the LORD
    than to trust in princes.

    And so we forge onward in Advent, aware of the coming of Christ, building our houses on his rock-solid foundation.

  • The First Sunday of Advent

    The First Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    I don’t know about you, but I always find this weekend after Thanksgiving to be a little strange.  And I love Thanksgiving: I enjoy joining my mother and sisters in the kitchen to cook a wonderful meal, and spend the day with our family.  But this weekend, as a whole, has become rather conflicted, and it really seems to bother me in some ways.

    Here is a weekend when we can barely clear the plates at the Thanksgiving dinner table before we have to make room for Christmas.  And I’m not talking about the religious observance of the Incarnation of our Lord, but you know I mean all the secular trappings of that holy day.  It begins about Halloween, or maybe a little earlier, when you start to see the stores slowly make room for the Christmas stuff.  They sneak in some “holiday” signs here and there, and start to weave the garland in to the end of the aisles, just past the Halloween costumes.  On Thanksgiving day, you hear the great “thud” of the daily newspaper, heavier than it is on most Sundays because of all the “Black Friday” sales.

    And then there’s Black Friday itself, which now starts bright and early on Thursday morning – Thursday, you know, Thanksgiving Day.  We then get to be treated to Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.  I can hardly wait for what they’ll come up with for Tuesday, Wednesday, and the rest of the week.  What a commercial mess this has all become, what a sad commentary on what makes our society tick.  We barely have time to gather up the pumpkins and corn stalks and autumn leaves before we have to set out the Christmas stockings and brightly-lit trees and candy canes.  None of which has anything to do with the birth of our Lord.

    This is a weekend that has always brought a lot of conflicting emotions for me.  As a Liturgist, I want to celebrate Advent, but we don’t get to do that at least in the secular world.  And I’m not a Scrooge or a Grinch – I love Christmas, but I’d like to experience the eager expectation of it, and to be mindful of the real gift of Christmas, before we launch headlong into the real sappy Christmas songs that get played over and over and over in the stores and on the secular radio stations.  I’d like to savor the expectation of Advent before we have to deck the halls and all the rest of it.

    And, for a lot of people, these upcoming Christmas holidays are hard.  Maybe they’re dealing with the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job or house, or who knows what calamity.  The synthetic joy of these holidays just heightens their grief, and that makes this season anything but joyful for them.  I remember the year my grandmother on dad’s side passed away.  I went into a store one day in Glen Ellyn about this time of year, and it was decorated with all sorts of subdued lighting and homey Christmas motifs, and I had this feeling of grief that was just overwhelming – it came at me out of nowhere, and I had to leave the store in tears for no apparent reason.  Grief tends to sneak up on us, and sometimes the joy that others are experiencing amplifies the sadness that we feel when we are still mourning.

    The emotions we feel at this time of year are palpable and often conflicted.  The Church knows this, and in Her great wisdom, gives us the season of Advent every year.  It’s a season that recognizes that there is this hole in our hearts that needs to be filled up with something.  That something isn’t going to be an item you can pick up on Black Friday, or a trite holiday jingle, or even a gingerbread-flavored libation.  Those things can’t possibly fill up our personal sadness, or the lack of peace in the world, or the cynicism and apathy that plague our world and confront us day after day.

    And so in our readings today, rather boldly, the Church is telling us to cut out all of this nonsense and get serious about our eternity.  Because if we’re only living from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, we are going to be left behind with our cheap electronics and gaudy trinkets, and have none of the real riches of the Kingdom of God.

    And so our first reading, from the second chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, has us taking a step back to look at our lives:  “Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.”  We need to go a little higher and look down on what we’ve become in order to see how we fit into the bigger picture.  Do we see ourselves as concerned about peace and justice in the world, looking out for the needs of the needy and the marginalized, blanketing our world in holiness and calling it to become bright and beautiful as it walks in the light of the Lord?

    Or do we take part in those deeds of darkness that Saint Paul writes about in his letter to the Romans today?  Do we perpetuate orgies and drunkenness, promiscuity and lust, rivalries and jealousy?  Do we participate in these dark deeds to the point of giving scandal to those who carefully watch the activities of people of faith?  If we do, then Saint Paul clearly commands us to get our act together:  “Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.  Let us conduct ourselves properly…”

    So this Advent season is clearly about something more than hanging up pretty decorations for a birthday party.  It’s definitely about something more than perpetuating rampant consumerism and secularism.  The stakes are too high for that.  Because while we are distracted by all of that fake joy, we are in danger of missing the real joy for which we were created.  Just as in the days of Noah, as Jesus points out in our Gospel today, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, so it will be in the coming Day of the Lord.  Just as those oblivious ones were surprised by the flood, we too are in danger of being surprised by the second coming.  God forbid that two men are hanging lights on the house when one is taken and the other is left.  Or that two women are getting some crazy deals at Macy’s and one is taken and the other is left.  We have to be prepared, because at an hour we do not expect, our Lord will certainly return.

    Don’t get me wrong: the return of our Lord is not something to be feared.  Indeed, we eagerly await that coming in these Advent days.  I’m just saying that if we aren’t attentive to our spiritual lives, if we aren’t zealous about living the Gospel, if we aren’t intentional about making time for worship and deepening our relationship with the Lord, then we are going to miss out on something pretty wonderful.  We have to stay awake, we have to live in the Lord’s daylight and not prefer the world’s darkness, we have to eagerly expect our Lord’s birth into our hearts and souls, right here and now, and not in some distant day.

    Or we’ll miss it.  God forbid, we’ll miss it.