First Sunday of Advent
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
November 27, 2022
Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done
Most of us pray the Our Father every day, and as we do, we can easily glide over the words, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” God’s Kingdom will come whether or not we are ready and whether or not we want it to come. In the meantime, most of us, myself included, are busy building kingdoms of our own, for example, our careers, our financial security, and our legacy. And even as pray that God’s will be done, we do our best to ensure that our will, not God’s will, wins the day … or at least that God’s will would conform to ours! During Mass, right after we pray the Our Father, the priest, speaking for the congregation, tells the Lord that we are “waiting in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ.” That’s right! We are eagerly awaiting the end of the world, the second coming of Christ to judge the living and dead… Really? Most of us try not to think about God’s judgment on our lives, and hope we won’t be alive when the cataclysmic ending of the world takes place.
On this first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of a new liturgical year, the Church offers us a vision of life in Christ that frees us to embrace the future – not merely the future that is around the corner, but the absolute future, the future for which we were created, the future for which, deep down, we are longing – and what is it? It is a life of unimaginable joy and contentment in the presence of God, as we are numbered among the saints and surrounded by the choirs of angels who are singing God’s praises everlastingly. But we hesitate. We are creatures of habit. We like what we know, and we know what we like.
And besides all that, Christmas is coming. Isn’t THAT what Advent is all about – injecting a little spirituality into the holidays? Well, actually…no. It’s about a lot more than that. It’s about preparing to celebrate the first coming of Christ in all its fullness so that we will be prepared to embrace Christ with joy when he comes in glory to judge the living and the dead – one of the things we solemnly profess to believe in, Sunday after Sunday. And do today’s Scripture readings help us do that? Yes, indeed they do . . .
The Prophecy of Isaiah
. . . beginning with Isaiah’s prophecy about Jerusalem. He paints a beautiful picture of it, doesn’t he? He calls it “the mountain of the Lord” – the highest of mountains, a place towards which all the nations of the earth will one day stream, a place of peace, a place where there is no more strife, violence, or death. What Isaiah is describing here is the new and eternal Jerusalem – indeed, he is speaking of the Kingdom of God for which we pray, that “place” where we shall experience sublime peace and joy. For unlike the world in which we live, God’s Kingdom will not be a mix of good and evil, nor will the wicked and the righteous dwell side-by-side.
No, in the new and heavenly Jerusalem, in that Kingdom for which we pray, we will all gaze in love and amazement at the God who loved us first, and our love for one another and our friendship with one another will never fail. In the world to come, not only will there be “a new heavens and a new earth” – but we too will be re-created, made new, made glorious–collectively and individually. That is why the Son of God came into the world: to redeem us! To rescue us from sin and to recreate in us the image and likeness of God, that image and likeness which sin has obscured and disfigured. He came to make us ready and fit to participate in the love of God and neighbor that reigns supreme in the house of the Lord, the new and eternal Jerusalem, in a word, to love like God loves, to love like the saints and angels love. Only in Christ who is our hope could we sing our response to Isaiah’s prophecy: “Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord!”
A State of Readiness
Both the reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, and Jesus’ own words from the Gospel of Matthew call out to us to use our time and freedom to prepare for entry into the Kingdom of God. To reiterate, the way we prepare for the Particular Judgment after our death and for the General Judgment at the end of time … is to cling to Christ, to open our hearts to the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit, to live as sons and daughters of the heavenly Father. This is how we should read St. Paul’s words addressed to us today in Romans where he exhorts us to “cast off the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light”, to have done with immorality and selfish gratification of every sort, to have done with the “quarreling and jealousy” so evident in our polarized culture. Instead, Paul tells us … “to put on the Lord Jesus Christ” – or as he says elsewhere, to be “clothed in Christ” just as a newly baptized person is clothed in a white garment. For Christian morality is not about “following the rules” or “staying in one’s lane”. Christian morality is about the grace Jesus came to bring us, the grace that transforms us into a new creation, so that even now, while we are still on this earth, we can begin to love like the saints love and to decide the way the saints decided, to bear witness to our faith, the way the saints bore witness … Christian morality is not just about how we live – it has to do with who we are, viz., God’s sons and daughters who are on our way to the Kingdom, those who are preparing in hope for the direct gaze of God’s love.
So, what gets in the way of all that? What do we have to work on during Advent? Surely, we have to repent of our sins by which we have rebelled against God’s will. This means making a good unburdening confession of our sins before Christmas. But along with making a good confession, you and I need to weed out from our hearts any tendency we may find there to camouflage our sins – to make them seem almost virtuous – to imagine that we can repent of them some other time, but not now, or simply to presume that God doesn’t care about our sins – He does care about them, precisely because he loves us. If, in God’s grace, we overcome the dangers of procrastination and presumption, then we will be prepared to welcome anew the birth of Christ at Christmas, and in welcoming Christ at his first coming, we will be eager to greet him at his second, when he will come in glory to judge the living and dead. May God bless us and keep us always in his love.