Homily from the Parish Priest for the First Sunday of Advent
Readings for Year B: Isaiah 63:16-17, 64:1-8; I Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37
Walking through central London in these last few weeks as the nights have got shorter and colder has been a bleak miserable experience. Rather like the start of the first lockdown back in March the centre of the city has been quite desolate with hospitality places boarded up, normally busy streets empty, just a few people around loyally keeping shops open, the odd buses going out to the suburbs with a few ghosts on board, and huddled wherever there is some warmth – over a grate in the road, in shop doorways, at the entrances of tube stations, the still significant numbers of homeless trying to survive this dreadful pandemic. Christmas lights starkly signalling the start of a season we know will not gain much momentum this year, seemingly standing in contradiction this year to the cold and the dark of an abandoned city.
And yet there are glimmers of hope for us – all the successes with the vaccine, the move into a less locked-down run-up to Christmas – even amidst the anxiety and the tragedy of being cut off from friends and relatives, knowing the virus is still out there, and people are still sick and dying. As public Masses resume in our churches there is just a glimmer of the open door into something brighter for our world.
The readings we are given for this first Sunday of Advent invite us to enter through that door which will lead to the light, which will lead us to hope that a new chapter will dawn in the history of the world. At the heart of this is our belief in the Second Coming of Christ. A belief which was so strong for all the early Christians – that in fact Christ will come again imminently and will take us out of our darkness into the light. That belief is what this First Sunday of Advent is all about: our belief that Christ will come again - at the end of the world to reconcile our world to himself, to draw all things into his radiant and all embracing light. Professing this belief, as we do every Sunday in the Creed, we are being invited here and now to root our hope in this Christ, to hope in he who will deliver us out of darkness into his wonderful light.
And so we are invited to reflect on who Christ really is for me. Jesus meets us – each one of us – personally – and invites us to give our personal assent to him. It’s a good time – the start of a new Church year – to reflect on what we really mean when we say ‘I believe in Jesus Christ’ – as we will very shortly – because I am a baptised member of God’s family in the Church. What do we believe about this Christ whom we profess will come again?
Our faith teaches us that he is truly the Son of God, divine and human – a mystery we cannot properly explain but we profess – so he comes to us as one like us – human – we have a solid, concrete faith, an incarnate spirituality, God has flesh and bones, is real. This is the essence of Christianity. Yet he is divine. He comes to save us and bring us eternal life – and he can because he is God, ‘consubstantial with the Father’.
And so he suffered for us, to save us from our tendency to sin, and to give us the opportunity to live the life intended for us – to live according to the values of his Kingdom – and so we might have eternal life. His resurrection – a real physical event – makes this possible. And finally he will come again as judge of us all, living and dead – he will come again - and that should not confuse us, frighten us but give us hope that God does not abandon us – this God who has come in time to save us will return.
Advent is a time of preparation to make our response of faith again, a time to turn from whatever is dark in our lives and to ask for the grace of hope and of personal renewal. In the Gospel the command of Jesus captures the mood: in our dark and dreary night we must ‘stay awake’ if we are indeed to welcome the new dawn, welcome the Light of Christ into our world again.
And it is this message of hope which, amid the darkness, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the tragedy and desperation, is worth reflecting on, acting on and passing on to those around us. The hope of a new dawn which starts with lives which proclaim hope, lives which mirror Christ himself and his values, lives – that’s you and me – who can show through how we live out our faith his presence among us, here and now.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ