Today we turn to the 1st Sunday of Advent
and the Gospel of St. Mark 13. 30-37. In this Gospel we have Jesus using a parable to
sound the alert. It’s about a house-holder going away for a time and leaving
his affairs in the care of his servants.
The doorkeeper is told to stay awake.
Through the parable Jesus is
warning His disciples that He’ll be away from them for a time. If, when He returns
unexpectedly, He finds them to have neglected His affairs; if they’re asleep when He comes back to them, they’ll be in real
trouble! What is more, they’ll be losing for themselves the joy of having their
master back home with them!
Today the
Church begins a short season of preparation for the celebration of the greatest event into
the whole of human history – the coming (Advent) of the Son of God into our
world as the Son of Mary – the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Christians
confidently assert ‘Jesus in the reason for the season!’ He came that we might have life and have it
to the full – a share in God’s own life. He came for our sake and for our
salvation. He came to show us how to learn from His teaching and from His
example the way to lead godly lives.
By our celebrating each year at Christmas the birth
of Jesus we celebrate the reality that Jesus continues in
every generation what He achieved in a life-time of just over thirty years. Jesus now glorious
in Heaven continues to straighten and heal whatever twisted moral, spiritual
sickness we have brought upon ourselves, and what has been inflicted upon the
world in which we live.
Today’s parable is telling us we must be awake to this tremendous
reality of Jesus here and now in our lives. We simply can’t afford to overlook
it nor can we afford to be unfit to receive Jesus when He comes. During Advent
the Church is calling us to explore how significant to us is Jesus. Out of
honesty with Jesus and with our own
selves we would do well to see the value and beauty of receiving from Him His Sacrament of
Reconciliation – the forgiveness of our
sins.
This celebration of Christmas is not only about
making a huge thing of commemorating a uniquely significant event that occurred
long, long ago - the birth of the greatest of our heroes – the birth in Bethlehem
of Jesus, the Son of Mary, the Son of God. Christmas for us must be the celebration of
the birth of Jesus, who, being both human and divine, is and will
always be gloriously alive. What is more
it is our celebrating this same person,
Jesus, fulfilling His promise to His followers, “I am will you always; yes, to
the end of time,” (Mtt. 28. 20).
To crown it, all Christmas is meant to be our capturing the
excited enthusiasm of St. Paul, “I am alive;
yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me. The life that I am now living, subject to the limitation of human nature, I
am living in faith, faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me,” (Gal. 2.20).
The Gospel for this 1st Sunday in
Advent is urging us to wake up and to keep awake to the sheer wonder of the Son
of God being born into our world; His even now longing to come into our lives
and intimately bring His divine life into our personal lives. This Gospel is warning
us not to be such fools as to take this lightly or even ignore this.
I wish you a blessed, well- focused
Advent leading to a Christ-filled Christmas.
PETER CLARKE OP
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