Reflection for the Vigil of the First Sunday of Advent

Consider that with the season of Advent, the Church is offering us a three-fold invitation.

Advent invites us to look back – back to Christ’s First Coming – to that time when the Word made flesh was born in Bethlehem.  We look back and ponder Mary’s fiat and Joseph’s trust in a dream and we look back at the indescribable mystery of the Incarnation and that holy night that changed everything.

Advent invites us to look ahead – to look ahead at Christ’s Promise to come again.  One would not call the Gospel we just heard a peaceful, soothing introduction to Advent. We hear an apocalyptic passage describing Christ’s Second Coming amid a universe catapulted into a tailspin with the stars, the sun, the moon and all of creation caught up in a cosmic dance. The Kingdom of God in all its fullness coming with a glory we can’t begin to imagine. However, this passage is not intended to create fear. Quite the contrary – it’s intended to create reassurance. Jesus often told his apostles and He tells us: ”Fear not, I have overcome the world.” While it appears as if our global family is teetering on a path of self-destruction, we hold fast to those words. Senseless suffering, wars and divisions separate peoples from one another and we ask: “What does the future hold? What kind of a world are we passing on to the children?”  We have no glass ball, but strengthened by our faith and trust in Christ’s promise, we must be women of hope, confident that sin and evil will never swallow up truth and righteousness. As we work for the coming of the fullness of God’s Kingdom, we are assured that when the end of all that we know comes, it will be God who has the last word!  Hatred and selfishness will never be stronger than God’s redeeming, unconditional Love. 

Advent invites us to look within- to look within at the Christ who comes into our lives now. Jesus warns us: “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life…”  What makes a drowsy heart? Is it when excessive worry robs us of hope and we become fixated on the darkness? Is it when we allow anxiety to creep into our spirit so much that our hearts become wrapped in a spiritual fog? The Christ light within us begins to cloud over and our vision of who we have promised to be grows dim. 

Jesus calls us to abandon such a spiritual sluggishness, to look within and to: “Be vigilant and pray.”  A prayerful heart is a vigilant heart, attentive, listening and awake to God’s Presence in the now.  In his book “Letters from the Desert”, Carlo Carretto writes:

“The degree of our faith is the degree of our prayer. The strength of our hope is the strength of our prayer. The warmth of our charity is the warmth of our prayer. No more no less.”  

Carlo Carretto

Jesus said: “I am the Light of the world”, but He also said: You are the light of the world.” In tonight’s first reading we heard: “Lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”  Advent calls us to do just that. Writer Frederick Buechner said: “Maybe the words “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” best sum up the paradox of who we are and where we are. Somewhere between the darkness and the light. That is where we are as Christians. And not just at Advent time, but at all times.”

May we accept the three-fold invitation offered to us this Advent season. Let us step into the stillness of silence, taking time to look back with awe and wonder at the Mystery of Emmanuel, God-with-us; let us take time to look ahead, aware that all things are passing and that the final victory goes not to sin and death, but to Christ; let us take time to look within, vigilant and alert to our God who comes to us each day in our ordinary but extraordinary lives. Pope Francis reminds us of the importance of seeing God in the now with these words:

“if we are unaware of His coming today, we will also be unprepared when He arrives at the end of time.”

Pope Francis

We live between the fact of darkness and the hope of light. We walk together on our earthly pilgrimage, supporting and encouraging one another. Let us keep our eyes on the light that comes from God, holding fast to those words of St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.”