The Universal Church celebrates Sunday, November 27, 2022, as the first Sunday of Advent in the Liturgical Year A. The first Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of a new Church year. In the entrance antiphon we pray: “To you, my God, I lift my soul, I trust in you; let me never come to shame. Do not let my enemies laugh at me. No one who waits for you is ever put to shame. Amen.”
What is Advent? The season of Advent is a four-week period before Christmas during which the Church concentrates her attention on our Lord’s coming, a central theme in the Church’s worship. Advent (from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming”) looks back to the first coming of Christ, when he was born that first Christmas in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago, and it looks forward to his second coming at the end of time – the Parousia -- when we will meet Him and His Father face-to-face in the glory of the heavenly kingdom.
During this liturgical year A, the Gospel readings will come mainly, but not exclusively, from the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Mark dominates Year B, and Saint Luke’s, Year C. These are the synoptic gospels. The Gospel of John is only heard in Lent and Eastertide.
Several figures overshadow the Advent liturgy. Isaiah’s prophecy is the traditional book for the Advent Season. It monopolises the first readings with some of his most beautiful messianic pronouncements found in the Bible. Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans, in the second reading, strikes the keynote of the season: “our salvation is near.” The Gospel passage from Matthew asks us to stay awake and be ready because we know neither the hour nor the day of his coming.
First Reading: Isaiah 2:1-5.
The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In the days to come the mountain of the Temple of the Lord shall tower above the mountains and be lifted higher than the hills. All the nations will stream to it, peoples without number will come to it; and they will say. ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the Temple of the God of Jacob that he may teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths; since the Law will go out from Zion, and the oracle of the Lord from Jerusalem.’ He will wield authority over the nations and adjudicate between many peoples; these will hammer their swords into ploughshares, their spears into sickles. Nation will not lift sword against nation, there will be no more training for war. O House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Comment
Of all the Old Testament Books, pride of place in the liturgy belongs to the Book of Isaiah. Its sublime doctrine on the Messiah and the Suffering Servant of God makes it a natural choice for the Advent preparation of Christmas and the Lenten prelude to Holy Week. As Saint Jerome once remarked, Isaiah is more a Gospel than a prophecy. It leads the collection of Old Testament prophets more for its religious importance and beauty than for its age and size.
Isaiah, often considered the greatest of the prophets, was born in about 765 BC of a Jerusalem aristocratic family. He received his prophetic vocation in the Temple of Jerusalem in 740 BC and his long ministry spanned a period of over forty years.
The Book of Isaiah covers three distinct periods of Israel’s history. The first part, chapters 1 through 39, was written by the prophet himself; the second and third parts were written by other prophets when the people of Israel were in exile in Babylon and after their return from exile.
In today’s reading, Isaiah shows that despite the sins of the people and the disastrous situation in Judah, described in the first part of the book, there is a glimmer of hope provided by the vision of the messianic restoration which shows that salvation centers on Zion, the mountain of the Lord, which is Jerusalem. The word of God radiates from the Temple, instructing the nations of the world, not with violence, but with gentle power to draw all men to its sources. All nations now converge on Jerusalem, not for war, but in peace eager to hear God’s word and receive instruction in his law.
In contrast with the desolation sin brings to the people, peace is the outcome of the reverence for God and readiness to obey his will. The weapons of war now become tools for development and agriculture: the swords become ploughshares while the spears become sickles. No nation shall again go to war against another nation. What a formidable lesson for our country, Cameroon!
In this reading, Isaiah announces God’s salvific intervention in the fullness of time that will come true with the birth of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. It is he who will bring an era of peace, justice and reconciliation. Let us pray for God’s light to shine on us and on our families as we prepare our souls, hearts and minds to receive our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, he who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, One God forever and ever. Amen.
Second Reading: Romans 13:11-14.
You know ‘the time’ has come: you must wake up now: our salvation is even nearer than it was when we were converted. The night is almost over, it will be daylight soon – let us give up all the things we prefer to do under cover of the dark; let us arm ourselves and appear in the light. Let us live decently as people do in the daytime: no drunken orgies, no promiscuity or licentiousness, and no wrangling or jealousy. Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ.
Comment
In the winter of the year AD 57, in the comparative quiet of the city of Corinth, Paul wrote what was to be his greatest masterpiece: The Letter to the Romans. This letter, Paul’s longest, most influential and rewarding letter to any community, deals with the key aspects of the teaching and redemptive work of Christ. It may well be the last he wrote. He seems to have written it from Corinth during his stay there that ended with him nearly being killed by influential Jews, who were jealous of his missionary successes, as recorded in Acts 20:3.
The Church in Rome was probably founded by Jewish Christians from Judaea or by Jews who had been converted to Christianity while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Paul had never visited nor evangelized the Church of Rome and he longed to visit them, Rome being the most important city in his world.
The doctrine that Paul develops in this letter concentrates on three major elements: the need of all people for the unmerited justification that can only be found in Jesus Christ; the new life of hope and freedom in Christ that God’s love has given to all; and the problem of the failure of Israel, God’s favoured people, to attain this life.
The Church uses the passage of this day’s second reading in the liturgy of Advent to help us prepare for the coming of the Lord. In it, Saint Paul lays down a general principle of Christian morality – doing away with bad habits and renewing oneself. He therefore calls on us to ‘wake up now’ for the time of the Lord has come.
He warns the Christians of Rome, and through them all of us, to avoid drunken orgies, wrangling and jealousy. When people are engaged full-time in satisfying their own craving, they are not disposed to face reality and take responsibility for their own world. Christ is coming. Rising like the sun, he dispelled the darkness when he came into the world, and he continues to dispel whatever darkness remains in souls the more he obtains mastery over the hearts of men and women.
The Christian should therefore make an effort to stay awake so he or she can see the brightness of the rising sun. As Saint Augustine tells us, “There is a kind of sleep proper to the soul, and another proper to the body. The sleep of the soul consists in forgetting about God, whereas the soul who has stayed awake knows who its maker is. Your life, your behaviour,” continues Saint Augustine, “should be awake in Christ so that others – sleepy pagans – can see it and the sound of your watchfulness cause them to get up and throw off their sleepiness and begin to say with you in Christ: O God, my God, since dawn I have kept watch for you.” Amen. (Enarrationes in Psalmos, 62.4).
Gospel acclamation: “Alleluia, alleluia. Let us see, O Lord, your mercy and give us your saving help. Alleluia.”
Gospel: Matthew 24:37-44.
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘As it was in Noah’s days, so will it be when the Son of Man comes. For in those days before the Flood people were eating, drinking, taking wives, taking husbands, right up to the day Noah went into the ark, and they suspected nothing till the Flood came and swept all away. It will be like this when the Son of Man comes. Then of two men in the fields one is taken, one left; of the two women at the millstone grinding, one is taken, one left. ‘So stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming. You may be quite sure of this that if the householder had known at what time of the night the burglar would come, he would have stayed awake and would not have allowed anyone to break through the wall of his house. Therefore, you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’
Comment
From the earliest of times, the tradition of the Church has identified the human author of the Gospel we have just listened to as Saint Matthew, one of the first Twelve Apostles, whom Jesus himself called from his job as a publican, that is, a tax collector. He is said to have been the first to write down the Gospel of Jesus Christ “in the language of the Hebrews”. Even though the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are called the ‘human authors’ of the Gospel, the principal author of the Gospels is God himself, who inspired the human authors, or hagiographers, in their literary work. He moved and impelled them to write.
In his Gospel, Saint Matthew seeks “to show that Jesus of Nazareth, a descendant of David, a descendant of Abraham according to the flesh, who was virginally conceived in the pure womb of Mary by the working of the Holy Spirit, was the Messiah promised in the Old Testament prophecies; and that he was the incarnate Son of God, the Saviour of mankind, who had come to set men and women free from the slavery of sin, from the devil and from eternal death.” (The Navarre Bible: Saint Matthew: Texts and Commentaries, p. 15).
The passage selected for our meditation this day is a warning to us not to be so engrossed in worldly things that we forget what is most important, namely, our duty towards God our Creator. Our Lord sketches man’s continual insensitivity and carelessness towards the things of God. Man thinks that it is more important to eat and drink, to find a husband or wife; but he forgets the most important thing – eternal life. Our Lord also foresees that the end of the world will be like the great flood; the Son of Man’s second coming will happen unexpectedly, taking people by surprise, whether they are doing good or evil.
What is this reading saying to me? It tells me that the only way to secure the future is to care about the present. We are all responsible for the world we live in; we are not passive victims of the inevitable. We must care for the world the Lord has given us by promoting peace, justice and reconciliation in our families, in our work places and in our society at large.
We must therefore prepare for the coming of our Lord, who will come unannounced – like a thief in the night. For each of us, there is an individual day of reckoning with the Lord, the day of our death, which can be any day. So, I must prepare myself spiritually for the day the Lord calls me. The lack of vigilance and leaving everything for the last minute is disastrous.
I must therefore not wait, like the people of Noah’s day, who were more concerned with the material side of life, forgetting the most important – the spiritual. Let us therefore be attentive to our personal prayer, which keeps our faith warm and pleasing to God.
Cameroonian Jesuit Priest, Father Kizito Forbi, advises us, in his beautiful book Harden not Your Hearts, to put on Christ. We can do this through the sacrament of reconciliation. If we have not blessed our marriage in Christ, we hinder Christ from coming into that union. To bring Christ into our marriage, we have to bless that union in Church this Advent. If our children have not been baptized, we hinder them from being the little friends of Christ. Get them baptized this Advent and make them friends of Christ. Make them the little ones of whom Christ is proud.
As I begin today a new cycle of the Church’s year of grace, I resolve to be always awake in the spirit by living a life of faith and love in the service of the Lord so that whenever he comes, I shall be ready to follow him into the glory of eternity. I make my prayer through Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, One God forever and ever. Amen.
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