Reflection on Mass readings for Dec. 1 (First Sunday in Advent)
Jer 33:14-16
Ps 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14
1 Thes 3:12-4:2
Lk 21:25-28, 34-36
I am, perhaps like many people, consistently awful at sticking with my personal projects and resolutions. I’ve found this is all the more true when it comes to the annual tradition of New Year’s resolutions, which in my case are born from a festive excess of holiday enthusiasm mixed with the desire to actually get my life back on track after the busyness of the Christmas season.
This week, I find that my track record of flubbed commitments is coming to mind in a particular way, because while a new calendar year is still a few weeks in the future, we in the Catholic Church get a head start with the beginning of a new liturgical year in the season of Advent.
Although the secular world may have already preempted the festivity of the Christmas solemnities, Advent remains for us an important time for preparation and, yes, for making and living out resolutions to recommit to our life of faith.
Much like the season of Lent, Advent is set aside as a penitential time, one which challenges us to push against the flow of commercialism and superficiality in order to ask a difficult question: What in our lives is preventing us from fully receiving the joy of Our Lord’s presence, especially as we anticipate his birth?
The readings given to us for this First Sunday of Advent propose at least two perspectives we might consider in answering that question. The first, offered to us from the Gospel of Luke, comes in the sobering context of a warning about the Lord’s second coming: “Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man” (Lk 21:36).
This cautionary message may feel jarring next to the festive spirit of Christmas, but it touches on a central dimension of the Advent season that is easily missed, namely that our preparation to encounter Christ in a new way is not merely the anticipation of a holiday, but really preparation for eternal life itself.
We should prepare for the Lord’s Nativity the way that we should prepare for the Final Judgment – by turning away from sin, reordering our lives toward prayer, and casting off the attachments or useless concerns that are keeping Christ from truly reigning in our hearts.
In fact, a traditional theme of Advent preaching is to focus on the “Four Last Things” – Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell – in order to put our lives and choices in stark perspective.
With that in mind, as part of our own preparation, we might consider making resolutions similar to those of Lent by committing to particular sacrifices, practices of prayer, or penitential works of service in order to enter deeper into this process of conversion.
Alongside the convicting words of the Gospel, however, we also receive words of consolation from St. Paul in his first letter to the Thessalonians, where he encourages us to “increase and abound in love for one another and for all” (1 Thes 3:12) as we continue on our journey of growth in holiness.
This is the entire point of the difficult process of penance and conversion, that as our hearts are set free from sin and disordered attachment, we do not become less ourselves, but instead become far more free to receive the gift of love from God, and then to live out that same charity toward one another and toward the Lord himself in our prayer and the offering of our vocations.
Where our penance is often our saying “no” to those things which have held our souls captive, a life of authentic love is a resounding “yes” to the call to give of ourselves in a spirit of joy and enthusiasm.
Let’s each make this our resolution as we prepare in this Advent season to encounter Our Lord anew, both in the humble beauty of his Nativity and at the end of our lives: to give him the gift of our entire selves, mind, body, and soul, and hold nothing back.
Father Cassidy Stinson is the pastor of St. Jude, Radford; chaplain of Radford University Catholic Campus Ministry; and a member of the Institute of Jesus Priest, a secular institute founded by Blessed James Alberione.