First Sunday Of Advent :: Op-stjoseph.org

1st Sunday in Advent (Cycle C) – November 29, 2009 Scripture Readings First Jeremiah 33:14-16 Second 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2 Gospel Luke 21:25-28, 34-36 Prepared by: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P. 1. Subject Matter •

God fulfills his promises pertaining to our happiness

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Our personal predisposition at the coming of our Lord Jesus

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Gospel vigilance

2. Exegetical Notes •

“In those days…I will raise up for David a just shoot:” “The presence of a king and priest reflects the importance of a tangible, visible power by which all nations may recognize YHWH’s might and authority…. Although the present bleakness undergirds the whole, a variety of images, many of which were used negatively earlier in the book, hold out hope…. [T]he restoration of the Davidic kings allude[s] to a renewed national existence. Healing recalls the need to overcome sinfulness; the reinstating of celebrations indicates ongoing life.” (The International Bible Commentary)

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“May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another…so as to strengthen your hearts:” “Christ alone is the immediate source of growth in love.” (JBC)

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“They will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory:” “When one considers how helpless people feel in the face of the full fury of a natural disaster, one can see the mood Jesus conveys here…. Jesus details the nature of human perplexity and its cause. Humans will be overcome with fear. In addition, they will look with ‘expectation’ (elsewhere in the New Testament only at Acts 12:11) about what is happening in the world because heavenly powers will be shaken…. The Son of Man is a regal figure who receives kingdom authority and comes with superhuman majesty…. Luke includes the allusion to the clouds because it is the key image of authority…. Redemption is used in a broad sense: not deliverance from the penalty of sin but deliverance from a fallen world.” (Darrell L. Bock)

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

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522 The coming of God's Son to earth is an event of such immensity that God willed to prepare for it over centuries. He makes everything converge on Christ: all the rituals and sacrifices, figures and symbols of the "First Covenant". He announces him through the mouths of the prophets who succeeded one another in Israel. Moreover, he awakens in the hearts of the pagans a dim expectation of this coming.

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524 When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior's first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming. By celebrating the precursor's birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his desire: "He must increase, but I must decrease."

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1095 The Church, especially during Advent…, re-reads and re-lives the great events of salvation history in the "today" of her liturgy. But this also demands that catechesis help the faithful to open themselves to this spiritual understanding of the economy of salvation as the Church's liturgy reveals it and enables us to live it.

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459 The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness:

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2849 Christ unites us to his battle and his agony. He urges us to vigilance of the heart in communion with his own. Vigilance is "custody of the heart," and Jesus prayed for us to the Father: "Keep them in your name." The Holy Spirit constantly seeks to awaken us to keep watch.

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2730 In positive terms, the battle against the possessive and dominating self requires vigilance, sobriety of heart. When Jesus insists on vigilance, he always relates it to himself, to his coming on the last day and every day: today.

4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities •

St. Ambrose: While many also fall away from religion, clear faith will be obscured by the cloud of unbelief, for to me that Sun of righteousness is either diminished or increased according to my faith; and as the moon in its monthly wanings, or when it is opposite the sun by the interposition of the earth, suffers eclipse, so also the holy Church when the sins of the flesh oppose the heavenly light, cannot borrow the brightness of divine light from Christ's rays. For in persecutions, the love of this world generally shuts out the light of the divine Sun; the stars also fall, that is, men who shine in glory fall when the bitterness of persecution waxes sharp and prevails. And this must be until the multitude of the Church be gathered in, for thus are the good tried and the weak made manifest.

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St. Ambrose: So severe then will be the manifold fires of our souls, that with consciences depraved through the multitude of crimes, by reason of our fear of the coming judgment, the dew of the sacred fountain will be dried upon us. But as the Lord's coming is looked for, in order that His presence may dwell in the whole circle of mankind or the world, which now dwells in each individual who has embraced Christ with his whole heart, so the powers of heaven shall at our Lord's coming obtain an increase of grace, and shall be moved by the fullness of the Divine nature more closely infusing itself. There are also heavenly powers which proclaim the glory of God, which shall be stirred by a fuller infusion of Christ, that they may see Christ.

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St. Leo the Great: In the general ruin of the entire human race there was but one remedy in the secret of the divine plan which could help the fallen, and that was that one of the sons of Adam should be born fee and innocent of original transgression, to prevail for the rest both by his example and his merits. David’s Lord was made David’s Son, and sprang from the fruit of the promised branch—One without fault, the twofold nature coming together into one Person, that by one and the same conception and birth might spring our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom was present both true Godhead for the performance of mighty works and true humanity for the endurance of sufferings.

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St. Cyril of Alexandria: Christ will not come secretly or obscurely but as God and Lord in glory suitable for deity. He will transform all things for the better. He will renew creation and refashion the nature of people to what it was at the beginning. The dead will rise. This earthly and infirm body will put off corruption and will clothe itself with incorruption by Christ’s gift. He grants those that believe in him to be conformed to the likeness of his glorious body.

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St. John Chrysostom: “There is only one calamity for a Christ, this being disobedience to God. He who is engaged in the service of Christ draws himself out of the turmoil and stormy billows of life and takes his seat upon secure and lofty ground.

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Msgr. Luigi Giussani: “In our seeking, we must adhere first of all to our own natures and be mindful that the outcome of our search could well demand a radical change, a breaking through and beyond the limits of our own natures…. If Jesus came, he is, he exists, he remains in time with his unique, unrepeatable claim, and he transforms time and space, all time and space. If Jesus is what he claimed to be, no time and no place can possibly have a different center from this one…. Man, in all of the ages of history, resists the consequence of the mystery made flesh, for, if this Event is true, then all aspects of life, including the sensible and the social, must revolve around it. And it is precisely man’s perception of being undermined, no longer being the measure of his own self, that places him in the position of refusal, on the pretext that he does not want to see the clouds lifting off the inaccessibility of the mystery obscured, he does not want to render the idea of God impure with anthropological notions, he wants freedom respected, and so on.”

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Czeslaw Milosz: I am only a man: I need visible signs. I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction. Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church lift its hand, only once, just once, for me. But I understand that signs must be human, therefore call one man, anywhere on earth, not me—after all I have some decency— and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars •

Saint Andrew (November 30) exemplifies many of the truths proposed in this Sunday’s Scripture: he is a “just shoot” raided up God; we was “strengthened in heart” so as to be “blameless in holiness before God;” he was blessed with “the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.” A story from his life (from The Golden Legend): When Andrew settled in Achaia, he converted the wife of the proconsul Aegeus. Aegeus in turn sought to persecute Andrew, who said to Aegeus: “If I were afraid of

the pain of the cross, I would not be preaching the glory of the cross. But first let me teach you its mystery. Maybe you will believe in it, worship it, and be saved.” He then began to explain the mystery of redemption to the proconsul, proving how necessary and appropriate the mystery is. Since the first man had brought death into the world by means of wood, a tree, it was appropriate that the Son of man should banish death by dying on a cross of wood. Since the sinner had been formed out of clean earth, it was fitting that the reconciler should be born of an Immaculate Virgin. Since Adam had stretched out his greedy hands toward the forbidden fruit, it was fitting that the second Adam should open his guiltless hands on the cross. Since Adam had tasted the sweetness of the apple, Jesus had to taste the bitterness of gall. And since he was giving his own immortality to man, it was by a fitting exchange that he took human mortality, because if God had not become man, man could not have become immortal. To all this Aegeus’s reply was: “Go teach these inanities to your own people, but now obey me and offer sacrifice to the all-powerful gods!” And Andrew: “To almighty God I offer daily a Lamb without stain, who remains alive and whole after all the people have eaten him.” Aegeus asked how this could be, and Andrew answered: “Become his disciple, and I will tell you.” 6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI •

“Advent is the spiritual season of hope par excellence, and in it the whole Church is called to become hope, for herself and for the world. The whole People of God continue on their journey, attracted by this mystery: that our God is ‘the God who comes’ and calls us to go to meet him. The Advent cry of hope expresses from the outset and very powerfully the full gravity of our state, of our extreme need of salvation. It is as if to say: we await the Lord as the only way of liberation from a mortal danger and we know that he himself, the Liberator, had to suffer and die to bring us out of this prison.”

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“[A] contemporary nihilism…corrodes the hope in man's heart, inducing him to think that within and around him nothingness prevails: nothing before birth and nothing after death. In fact, if God is lacking, hope is lacking. Everything loses its substance.’ It is as if the dimension of depth were missing and everything were flattened out and deprived of its symbolic relief. At stake is the relationship between existence here and now and what we call the hereafter: this is not a place in which we end up after death; on the contrary, it is the reality of God, the fullness of life towards which every human being is, as it were, leaning. God responded to this human expectation in Christ with the gift of hope. Man is the one creature free to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to eternity, that is, to God. The human being is able to extinguish hope within him, eliminating God from his life. God knows the human heart. He knows that those who reject him have not recognized his true Face, and so he never ceases to knock at our door like a humble pilgrim in search of hospitality. This is why the Lord grants humanity new time: so that everyone may manage to know him! This is also the meaning of a new liturgical year which is beginning: it is a gift of God, who once again wishes to reveal himself to us in the mystery of Christ, through the Word and the Sacraments. God offers to humanity, which no longer has time for him, further time, a new space in which to withdraw into itself in order to set out anew on a journey to rediscover the meaning of hope. Here, then, is the surprising discovery: our hope is preceded by the expectation which God cultivates in our regard! Yes, God loves us and for this very reason expects that we return to him, that we open our hearts to his love, that we place our hands in his and remember that we are his children.”

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At the beginning of a new yearly cycle, the liturgy invites the Church to renew her proclamation to all the peoples and sums it up in two words ‘God comes.’ These words, so concise, contain an ever-new evocative power. This is a continuous present, that is, an evercontinuous action: it happened, it is happening now and it will happen again. In whichever moment, ‘God comes.’ Advent calls believers to become aware of this truth and to act accordingly. It rings out as a salutary appeal in the days, weeks, and months that repeat: Awaken! Remember that God comes! Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today, now! The one true God is not a God who is there in heaven, unconcerned with us and our history, but he is the-God-who-comes. He is a Father who never stops thinking of us and, in the extreme respect of our freedom, desires to meet us and visit us; he wants to come, to dwell among us, to stay with us. His ‘coming’ is motivated by the desire to free us from evil and death, from all that prevents our true happiness. God comes to save us. The liturgy of Advent casts light on how the Church gives voice to our expectation of God, deeply inscribed in the history of humanity; unfortunately, this expectation is often suffocated or is deviated in false directions. Let us begin this new Advent - a time granted to us by the Lord of time - by reawakening in our hearts the expectation of the God-who-comes.

7. Other Considerations •

Saint Luke says, “And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Which means that Christ’s “power and great glory” is something visible, something concrete and recognizable—not obscure or abstract. What does it look like? The ultimate, consummate power of Jesus Christ is the love with which he freely lays down his life on the cross in total, self-giving obedience to the Father. And the “glory” of Christ is the love that Jesus receives back from the Father in return for his self-sacrifice…a love that transfigures the Son’s very appearance (hence the mystery of the Transfiguration). So too, we glorify God by allowing ourselves at every moment to be drawn into the act of love that Jesus accomplished on the cross. That is, we conduct ourselves in a way pleasing to God (and not to ourselves)… we refuse to lapse into carousing, and drunkenness, and the anxieties of daily life (because we have encountered something greater in Christ)… and we remain vigilant and pray all out of love for the One we have encountered in our life who is the very meaning of our life. Our advent self-surrender to the Lord, who makes us increase and abound in love, is the very glory that will adorn the Son of God’s radiant face when he returns in the Second Coming.

Recommended Resources Benedict XVI, Pope. Benedictus. Yonkers: MAGNIFICAT, 2006. Biblia Clerus: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_eng.html Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To Preach—Cycle C. Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 2000. Hahn, Scott: http://www.salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/churchandbible/homilyhelps/homilyhelps.cfm.