Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, Year A

So, Advent has begun. A time to prepare, not only for Christ’s birth at

Christmas, but first to make sure our hearts are ready, should the Lord either

call us to Himself, or return in glory. Just imagine if the Lord were to return to

earth to judge the living and the dead in just a few days’ time. People are going

about doing their Christmas shopping and getting on with normal life, watching

TV, eating chocolate, having arguments, and then the Lord returns. If we knew

He was going to return at 2am on 1st December, how would we respond? “[If]

the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was

coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be

broken into.”

In the second reading, St Paul says, “the hour has come for you to wake from

sleep”. In other words, we need to be alert and ready for the return of the Lord,

rather than just going with the flow and lacking focus. St Cyprian, in a sermon

on mortality, pointed out that some people pray “thy kingdom come”, but if it

actually arrived, they wouldn’t be too pleased. They prefer this world instead.

How real is heaven for us? In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (para

2732) it points out an area where I’m sure we all struggle – it can’t be just me.

When we pray, we can find that all sort of other distractions come into our

minds, with jobs to be done, or maybe thoughts are still going through our

minds about the film we just watched or the book we want to get on and read.

What is our real love? Are we more enwrapped with entertainment than with

love of God? It’s a bit like St John Vianney, who effectively said that some

people seem to pray as if they are saying to God, “I’m just saying these two

prayers now so I can tick the box to say that I’ve prayed and then I can get on

with something else”.

In terms of our relationship with God, it’s always good to have some meaty

detail rather than everything being left general and vague. So, for those of you

who are feeling brave, there are a few copies in the narthex of a sheet headed

“A List of Serious Sins”. It also says it’s not for children. Challenge yourself

and make sure none of these is on your list. It also means that, when preparing

for confession, you can use it to make sure you don’t leave anything important

out, although it says that the list is not exhaustive. New sins come along,

which are variants of old ones. In the first century AD, none of the disciples

had been guilty perpetrating telephone scams, or hacking into government

computers.

Going back to the arrival of the kingdom of God, the Catechism dispels a few

wrong ideas about how it might happen. Around a hundred years ago, C H

Benson wrote two books, Lord of the World and The Dawn of All. Lord of the

World was about the final battle with the arrival of the Antichrist, and the

struggle the Church would have to face. I won’t spoil the story for you, but it

has some interesting twists and turns, including an ending that I had to re-read

to make sure I had understood it properly – it would make an interesting film.

He wrote the second book, saying that some found his first book a bit

depressing, so in this one, rather than the Church facing a very difficult trial

and struggle for survival, instead the opposite happens, with the world,

including England, rapidly adopting the Catholic faith, although the final

struggle isn’t over yet. The Catechism, though, says that things won’t happen

in this way. The Dawn of All, after all, is only fiction. Here’s what it says (para

675):

“Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that

will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution ... will [be] ... in the

form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their

problems at the price of apostasy from the truth ... by which man glorifies

himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.”

Skipping on a bit, it then continues (no. 677):

“The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church

through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final

unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.

God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgement

after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.”

In other words, before Christ returns, we can’t expect the whole world to

convert. Instead there will be a trial, so that Our Lord’s words come true:

“when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). But

there will be those who keep faith, and at the end Christ will return to judge the

living and the dead.

But we don’t know when it will happen. What we do know is that we

ourselves need to be ready.

Curious about exploring things further?  If you would like to ask further questions about the topics raised in these homilies (or maybe think it wasn’t explained too well!), please feel free to e-mail Fr Michael at stjoseph.thame@rcaob.org.uk