Advent I

Advent I 2018 – Cycle C Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25; 1 Thessalonians 3:12 – 4:2; Luke 21:25-28; 34-36

Parents look at their children sleeping and dream of their futures.  The people of Paradise, California wait and imagine a new future whether a rebuilt Paradise or elsewhere.  The refugees journeying from Central America to our borders are looking, as our immigrant ancestors did, for a better future.  College students look forward to adulthood and working in emerging and exciting new markets.  New Year’s Eve revelers anticipate a better new year.  Smoke rises from birthday candles as a wish for the future is made.  Wedding, Profession and Ordination days are filled with good wishes for a future life as a husband and wife or a nun, priest or deacon.

We can’t wait for school to end, retirement to arrive, vacations to begin.

The anticipation of what we will do, where we will travel, what new adventures lie ahead waiting for us fill our present lives with great eagerness and expectation.

And yet is not each look into the future tinged also with just a dash of fear? Will I arrive?  Will I succeed?  Will the experience be like I thought it would?

Anticipation tinged with just a dash of fear.  And so it is with the Advent… “The days are coming…”            “In those days…”            “There will be signs…”            “People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming…            “…they will see…”

Advent invites us to look to the future.  A future often filled with present ominous images that Californians, Central American refugees, people suffering addictions and Yemenis all too literally experience.

What does a person look toward when caught in the anxieties of daily life? …when deprived of security?  …of freedom?  … of confidence?  …of dignity?

What is this future that Jeremiah, Paul and Jesus are calling us to eagerly await?

I hate to tell you but…it is not Christmas.  We Catholics Christians “take the long view of things”.  We do look back to Christ but so as to look forward toward eternity.  Advent is unpredictable time, unsteady time.  We look for a child to be born while we know that the child has been born, and is still being born within us.   Emmanuel who came and is coming. Or as the poet T. S. Eliot puts it…

Time present and time pastAre both perhaps in time future,And time future contained in time past.            What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present.Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

Eliot’s poems circle endlessly on each other as does Advent.   Have you realized how often the liturgy which makes the past event of the death of Jesus present is also future oriented?  Every Mass we pray:

“We proclaim your Death…until you come again.”“When we eat this bread and drink this cup…until you come again.”“as we look forward to his second coming…”“as we await his coming in glory…”“as we await the blessed hope – the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

We look back so as to look forward toward eternity.  Advent chafes against our society; a society so ingrained in the immediacy of the moment.  We constantly check our phones so as not to miss out on any moment.  We think that we can experience everything.  We desire funeral eulogies that look to the past rather than worship the risen Christ who calls us into the future.  Do we ever as Christians look to eternity anymore?

Advent futures invites us into this eternity of hope and trust in a God of promises.  What else do we have to offer Californians whose homes have been totally destroyed…a person whose child, spouse, or parent has died…to refugees fleeing famine, death and desperate situations…to Christians and people of faith who are being persecuted…to a person and their family and friends who struggle with mental illness, greed, addictions or misplaced priorities…to a starving Yemeni child…to the homeless who pass through our city…to the bullied or harassed woman or youth?

What Advent offers all of us is the opportunity to look forward with hope into a future governed by our God.  A God who fulfills promises.  The promise?

“I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God;and you will know that I, the LORD, am your Godwho has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians”.  [Exodus 6:7]

Notice “I will take you”.  We never decide on God.  God decides on us.  And there is found the hope that can look at a border fence, a burnt out town, an unknown future, a sleeping child and dream of a tomorrow in security and peace.  The African slaves of this country sang of such hope in their spirituals all the way down history to the Civil Rights Movement and King’s “I have a dream…” speech.  Hymns and words rooted in the biblical experience of a people in need of hope.  Such hunger births redemption.

What hope do you and I deeply desire to be fulfilled so as to find the Christ within us?

What drowsiness, carousing and daily anxiety need to be redeemed so you and I can be known by Christ?

A hope that causes us to look back so as to look forward toward eternity.