HAPPY NEW YEAR!
No, I haven’t forgotten or am I confused about the date. But today is the beginning of a new year in the church otherwise known as liturgical calendar.
Why is the church year more than a month ahead of the world calendar? The “out of sync” liturgical calendar seeks to reframe our lives beyond the order and systems of this world. The church year invites us to fit our lives into the Big Picture of God’s time and work from creation to redemption and final reunion with God.
The first day of the church year is always the First Sunday of Advent. Advent is the first liturgical season of the church year consisting of the four weeks before Christmas. Advent comes from the Latin word, adventus, which means ‘coming, arrival’. The coming and arrival that the church highlights in Advent is the return in glory of Jesus at the end of times.
Contrary to the conventional activities during this season which are preparations for Christmas, Advent is more about contemplating and celebrating the coming back of Jesus in glory anytime soon! That is why, every time this season comes during this time of the year, we experience different and profound kinds of feeling, mainly feelings of joy, wonder and excitement. We usually associate these feelings with Christmas, which is exactly right, Christmas being the birth of Jesus Christ. But the church, through the Advent season, also invites us to dig deeper. We feel and experience profound gladness and eagerness because the final glory of Jesus will soon be fully manifested to all humanity. As St. Augustine said,
“The first coming of Christ the Lord, God’s Son and our God, was in obscurity; the second will be in sight of the whole world.”[1]
Thus, the richer and more meaningful attitude and outlook appropriate for the season of Advent are waiting, preparing and longing. Patience, vigilance, preparedness, alertness and watchfulness are the virtues that accompany these attitudes. Jesus extolled these virtues in the gospel today.
In today’s world beset with so many overwhelming problems, we easily become impatient. We cry out to the highest heaven to annihilate all evil. We ask why injustice, violence, domination, and falsehoods continue to prevail. In the suffering and struggles of our lives and our world, we seek God but God is nowhere to be found. Then, tragically, we begin to lose hope: Nothing will change. A better world is not forthcoming. This is our fate. There is nothing we can do about it except to accept it. God cannot rescue us. Let us just rely on the gods of this world!
This dilemma is reflected in the readings today. In the first reading from Isaiah, the prophet intensely longs for the love of God but instead finds what he cannot bear: an angry God, an absent God. This experience of the prophet seemingly reflects our own experience in the midst of our turmoil: God is angry and has hidden his face; he is somewhere above the heavens and we cannot find him there.
The prophet found the answer to this dilemma, albeit, in the hard way. The reason lies in our sinfulness, the prophet says. God is not gone from us because he has forsaken us. Our sins—our weaknesses, our complacency, our pride, our failure to love, our failure even to accept the love of others—all these things have made us to falter and to wither.
The Psalm articulates the action needed to be done out of this prophetic realization. The Psalmist says, “Lord, make us turn to you!” It is a cry from someone who has wandered from the Lord. Far away from God, there is profound emptiness and longing.
These readings highlight the penitential character of advent. Advent season is a season which calls for repentance. Advent is a time to recognize that we are “sinful; all of us have become like unclean men, all our good deeds are like polluted rags.” Our personal and social sins are many: hatred, violence, oppression, indifference, selfishness, etc. Our sinfulness has hindered us from experiencing the wonder and joy of the coming of the Lord in our lives.
The gospel today from Mark happened during the critical events of the last moments of Jesus on earth. Jesus near the time of his death warned his disciples about the end times and instilled in them the necessity of watchfulness.
Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.
These words of Jesus may be read not only as a warning about the end times, but as a challenge for us today to live in the present, to engage life now, to be attentive to the moment at hand. Be awake. Do not put off the opening of your life to God.
Denial and postponement have been strong patterns in our lives especially in the matter of our sins. We try to hide the dirt under the carpet. Admission and reform are hard to come by. We project, we accuse, we complain, we evade, we distract ourselves.
The challenge of Advent is not to pretend. Let us get real. Here. Now. We need first to stop everything we have been busy about during this time of the year. Let us retreat in silence and prayer to prepare to face the Lord in the dark and sinful places of our hearts. Only through an honest soul searching that we can make real the need for God. Only through a sincere confession of our sins that we can make real God’s coming into our lives.
Let us never stop watching for you, O Lord. Let us experience your return in glory. Here. Now.
[1] St. Augustine, Sermon 18, 1-2: PL 38, 128-29
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