The Advent!
November 30, 2008
Once, I was preaching for the first Sunday of the advent. It was a mass for the children of the place, and the focus was helping them understand the meaning of Christmas. I explained to them the meaning of the word “Advent”; that it comes from the Latin word, advenire, which means to come to. And so I asked them, “Now, can anyone of you tell me ‘who is the one that is going to come’”. The majority of them lifted their hands. I pointed to one among them and she answered “Santa Claus!”.
Advent is a time of grace given to us by the Church to prepare our hearts for Jesus’ coming. We are the ones who wait for the second coming of the Lord. And each time we celebrate Christmas we come closer and closer to that day and the advent becomes an occasion to intensify that preparation. Let us not miss the real meaning and grace of Advent. Let us choose to use Advent as a time to deepen our relationship with God, to prepare our hearts for meeting God when we are called from this life, and to prepare our hearts for our celebration of Christmas.
The greatest danger that we Christians can face is to lose sight of the real meaning of Advent. We complain that the world outside keeps Jesus away from Christmas, but what about us? We just consider it as a spending season. From thanksgiving till December 24th we are busy doing Christmas shopping. It is always nice to see the sudden transformation that is coming into all of us during this season; we become more generous, energetic, and everyone appears to be happy giving and receiving gifts. But let us not miss the most important gift we can give to Jesus: our well-lived lives. But often time we miss the real Gift. There is only one gift at Christmas, and that gift is Jesus. That is why Jesus tells us.
Jesus is the reason for Christmas; let us not forget the reason for the season. To help us keep Jesus as the reason for the Christmas the Church gives us four weeks during Advent to prepare our hearts for Jesus. So our Gospel today asks us to prepare for Jesus’ Second Coming and since we do not know when that will be we could really see our Gospel today asking us to be ready to be called from this life whenever that will be. Jesus is asking us to be aware of the many attractions and temptations in life that are pulling us away from the real meaning of life, which is Jesus himself. So instead of spending time in debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life, Jesus’ advice is,
“Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen and to stand with confidence before the Son of Man.
St. Paul also had advice on how to use our time: “We urge you and appeal to you in the Lord Jesus to make more and more progress in the kind of life that you are meant to live: the life that God wants…”
So those words from Jesus and Paul lead us to ask ourselves, “How do we spend our time?” We need to “stay awake, praying at all times…” and to “make more and more progress in the kind of life that we are meant to live: the life that God wants…”
Let this Advent be a different one for you. Plan something that you can do as a family during this advent season. May be attending some weekday masses, preparing an advent wreath, saying family Rosary all through out the Advent, getting ready with confessions, or trying to know more about the first coming of Jesus which will help us to get ready for the second one.
May God bless us.
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