First Sunday of Advent (Year C): The miracle of hope

The miracle of hope

“Be vigilant at all times, praying.”
Luke 21:25-28,34-36

With the first Sunday of Advent, we begin the liturgical year “C,” during which the evangelist Luke will be our guide. Over the course of about twelve months, we will relive the mysteries of the Lord’s life. While the civil year is marked by specific rhythms and events, the Christian year is defined by the mysteries of Christ’s life, which give depth and meaning to history. Whereas the civil year tends to follow a circular pattern characterised by repetition, the Christian year takes on a spiral form: it does not simply repeat but invites us to a progressive deepening. A new year brings the grace of new beginnings and the opportunity to resume life with renewed zeal.

Each liturgical cycle begins with the season of Advent. Advent, from the Latin Adventus, means “coming,” the coming of Christ. But which coming does it refer to? Naturally, we think of Christmas, as we prepare to celebrate the memory of Jesus’s birth. However, the new liturgical year links back to the conclusion of the previous one: the proclamation of the return of the Lord as King of the universe, Judge of humanity, and Omega of history. That is why, in today’s Gospel, we hear the conclusion of Jesus’s eschatological discourse according to the Gospel of Luke: “They will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” This same passage was proclaimed in the Gospel of Mark two Sundays ago and is now presented in Luke’s version.

Advent primarily evokes the Christian attitude of looking towards the future. God comes from the future! A future we should not fear but long for, because it does not represent an end, but the end purpose—the fulfilment of our lives and the realisation of divine promises: “When these things begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads, because your redemption is at hand.” On the first Sunday of Advent, the Church’s final invocation continues to resonate as it awaits its Bridegroom: “Maranatha! Come, Lord” (Revelation 22:20).

Advent is structured around four Sundays leading us to Christmas. It is the second of the so-called “strong seasons,” paralleling Lent, which prepares us for Easter. The four Sundays of Advent symbolically recall the 40 days of Lent. However, there is a significant difference between Advent and Lent: while Lent is marked by a penitential character, Advent is dominated by joyful expectation.

Christians live in the “in-between,” between two comings: Christ’s coming in the flesh and His return in glory. However, in this “in-between,” there is also a third coming, one that manifests in the present. As Saint Bernard said in a famous sermon on Advent: “We know a threefold coming of the Lord. A hidden coming lies between the other two that are manifest. (…) Hidden, however, is the intermediate coming, in which only the elect see Him within themselves, and their souls are saved by it. In the first coming, He came in the weakness of the flesh; in this intermediate coming, He comes in the power of the Spirit; in the final coming, He will come in the majesty of glory. Therefore, this intermediate coming is, so to speak, a path that connects the first to the last.”

Points for Reflection

“Be on guard!”: the trumpet of Advent
“Be on guard that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise.” How strong and timely this warning from Jesus is! It is like a trumpet trying to awaken our consciences, often dormant, if not entirely numbed. How many of us are truly aware of the situation we live in, deliberately pursued by powers—not so hidden—that manipulate the world’s destiny? They want to keep us asleep, unable to see the direction we are heading and indifferent to rampant injustice. Today, those who are awake and free are often regarded as a “threat.” Well, the Word of God, in this time of Advent, is the trumpet that wants to awaken us before it is too late!

“Be vigilant at all times, praying!”: the alarm clock of Advent
Staying awake is not easy. It is easy to succumb to sleep or slide into lethargy. To remain vigilant, Jesus recommends praying at all times. Prayer awakens us and sharpens our senses, making us ready to perceive the Lord’s coming, who visits us in ever-new and often unexpected ways. Advent invites us to reset the “alarm clock” of prayer. This does not necessarily mean increasing the time spent in prayer but rather learning to “live in prayer.” How can this be done? A very simple way is to frequently repeat the invocation “Maranatha”—Come, Lord!—until these words echo constantly within the walls of our hearts.

Advent and the miracle of hope
Advent prayer especially nourishes hope. To hope, in the situation we find ourselves in today, is a true miracle. Only prayer can obtain this grace. Indeed, how can we hope in the face of a world that often appears like the valley full of dry bones described by Ezekiel? (Ezekiel 37). What was an image of God’s people in the past could well be our reality today. “They say: ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope has vanished, we are lost.’” God asks the prophet, “Can these bones come to life?” Yes, they can. “Prophesy over these bones and say to them: ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’”

The prophet is Christ who comes, but every Christian is also a prophet by vocation. This is the grace to ask for in Advent: to awaken and spread hope.

Fr. Manuel João Pereira Correia, mccj

“LIFE IS EXPECTATION!” 
Jeremiah 3:14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25-28,34-36

Autumn is the ideal time to meditate on human things. We have before us the annual spectacle of leaves that fall from the trees. This has always been seen as an image of human destiny. “Here we are as leaves on the trees in autumn,” says the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti. A generation comes, a generation goes …

But is this truly our ultimate destiny? Is it worse than the fate of these trees? After it is stripped, the tree regains its leaves in spring. But man, once he passes, never again returns. At least he does not return to this world. … Sunday’s readings help us to give an answer to this most anxious of human questions.

There was a particular scene that I remember seeing in a film or reading about it in an adventure story as a child, a scene that left a deep impression. A railroad bridge had collapsed during the night. An unsuspecting train is coming at full speed. A railroad worker standing on the tracks calls out: “Stop! Stop!” and waves a lantern to signal the danger. But the distracted engineer does not see him and plunges the train into the river. … It seems to me something of an image of contemporary society, careening frenetically to the rhythm of rock ‘n’ roll, ignoring all the warnings that come not only from the Church but from many people who feel a responsibility for the future …

With the First Sunday of Advent, a new liturgical year begins. The Gospel that will accompany us in the course of this year, Cycle C, is the Gospel of St. Luke. The Church takes the occasion of these important moments of passage — from one year to another, from one season to another — to invite us to stop for a moment and reflect and ask ourselves some essential questions: “Who are we? From whence do we come? And, above all, where are we going?”

In the readings of Sunday’s Mass, the verbs are in the future tense. In the First Reading we hear these words of Jeremiah: “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah. In those days, in that time, I will raise up for David a just shoot. …” To this expectation, realized in the coming of the Messiah, the Gospel passage brings a new horizon and content which is the glorious return of Christ at the end of time. “The powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”

These are apocalyptic, catastrophic tones and images. But what we have is a message of consolation and hope. They tell us that we are not heading for an eternal void and an eternal silence but we are on our way to an encounter, an encounter with him who created us and loves us more than mother and father.

Elsewhere the Book of Revelation describes this final event of history as an entering into a wedding feast. Just recall the parable of the ten virgins who enter with the bridegroom into the banquet hall, or the image of God who, at the threshold of the life to come, waits for us to wipe away the last tear from our eyes.

From the Christian point of view, the whole of human history is one long wait. Before Christ, his coming was awaited; after him, we await his glorious return at the end of time. For just this reason the season of Advent has something very important to say to us about our lives. A great Spanish author, Calderón de la Barca, wrote a celebrated play called “Life is a Dream.” With just as much truth it must be said that life is expectation! It is interesting that this is exactly the theme of one of the most famous plays of our times: Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” …

Of a woman who is with child it is said that she is “expecting”; the offices of important persons have “waiting rooms.” But if we reflect on it, life itself is a waiting room. We get impatient when we have to wait, for a visit, for a practice. But woe to him who is no longer waiting for something. A person who no longer expects anything from life is dead. Life is expectation, but the converse is also true: Expectation is life!

What distinguishes the waiting of the believer from every other waiting; from, for example, that of the two characters who are waiting for Godot? In that play a mysterious person is awaited (who, according to some, would be God, hence, “God-ot”), without any certainty that he will really come. He was supposed to come in the morning; he sends word to say that he will come in the afternoon. In the afternoon he does not come, but surely he will come in the evening, and in the evening, perhaps tomorrow morning. … The two tramps are condemned to wait for him, they have no other alternative.

This is not how it is for the Christian. He awaits one who has already come and who walks by his side. For this reason after the First Sunday of Advent in which the final return of Christ is looked for, on the following Sundays we will hear John the Baptist who speaks of his presence among us: “In your midst,” he says, “there is one whom you do not know!” Jesus is present among us not only in the Eucharist, in the word, in the poor, in the Church … but, by grace, he lives in our hearts and the believer experiences this.

The Christian’s waiting is not empty, a letting the time pass. In Sunday’s Gospel Jesus also talks about the way that the disciples must wait, how they must conduct themselves in the meantime to not be taken by surprise: “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life. … Be vigilant at all times.”

Of these moral duties we will speak another time. Let us conclude with a memory from a film. There are two big stories about icebergs in the movies. The one is that of the Titanic, which we know well. … The other is narrated in a Kevin Kostner film of several years back, “Rapa Nui.” A legend of Easter Island, which is in the Pacific Ocean, tells of an iceberg that, in reality, is a ship and that passes close to the island every century or so. The king or hero can climb aboard and ride toward the kingdom of immortality.

There is an iceberg that runs across the course which each of us travel; it is sister death. We can pretend to not see her or to be heedless of her like the people who were enjoying themselves on that tragic night aboard the Titanic. Or we can make ourselves ready and climb onto her and let ourselves be taken to the Kingdom of the blessed. The season of Advent should also serve this purpose …
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa
[Translation by ZENIT]