FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Fr. Pat Earl, SJ
We are beginning a special time of year. And special times bring special expectations. Our expectations make us alert to things. We become alert – aware of the good things in our lives. And that is so good for us. We need to do that: to let the goodness in our lives come to life for us.
Advent is just such a time – a time for letting the goodness in our lives really come to life for us – letting people, places, events come to mind and heart. A word we will frequently be hearing throughout the Advent season is “awake”. In the gospel Jesus says to us: “Be watchful! Stay alert! I say to you and to all: ‘Stay awake!’” But our awakening presumes we’ve been sleeping – somehow not alert. Advent is there to call us from our sleeping – to call us out of our un-awareness.
Advent wants to be a kind of cold shower for us to shock us out of our un-awareness. And Advent wants especially to shock us out of our myths about God. It wants to shock us out of what we have settled into calling God’s presence. This is the presence we have made of God. The myth is the God of our own creation – usually a very American god – reliably nice and polite – and very therapeutic. This god makes us feel good all over. This is a comforting, churchy god made in the USA. Advent wants to stun us into recognizing God’s real presence – God’s holy, awesome, living presence. It wants us to smell God where we normally don’t.
Advent wants to change us. It wants to fill our minds and imaginations with confusing, perplexing images – images of a world where God is seen, sensed and smelled in human flesh – yours and mine – and even in daily bread. This fleshy God confuses beyond all expectation. This God of Advent says: “Take me, eat me, become me.” This God says to us: “I am already in you; you are already in me.”
We will know Advent is having its affect on us when – at an hour we do not expect – in a manner we cannot imagine – in a closeness that baffles and blesses us – the Son of Man will come to us – will come into our real, ordinary, daily lives. He will have our own smell.
The grace of Advent will be given to us – as we come to recognize and realize we are where Jesus is most at home. His first choice of residence is: us. We are his chosen tabernacle. This wonderful church, this sanctuary, this tabernacle – they all have their use in recalling to us Jesus’ real presence: “I am already in you; you are already in me.”
Let us awaken and be watchful. Let us in Advent prepare ourselves for finding in our own lives God’s preferred place of residence. Let us learn to smell God there – in our own lives. Indeed, we are the Body of Christ.
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