Straighten the Path
The new Church year begins with a plea for God’s visitation. “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down,” the prophet Isaiah cries in Sunday’s First Reading. In Sunday’s Psalm, too, we hear the anguished voice of Israel, imploring God to look down from His heavenly throne—to save and shepherd His people. The readings this week are relatively brief. Their language and “message” are deceptively simple. But we should take note of the serious mood and penitential aspect of the Liturgy today—as the people of Israel recognize their sinfulness, their failures to keep God’s covenant, their inability to save themselves.
And in this Advent season, we should see our own lives in the experience of Israel. As we examine our consciences, can’t we, too, find that we often harden our hearts, refuse His rule, wander from His ways, withhold our love from Him? God is faithful, Paul reminds us in the Epistle this week. He is our Father. He has hearkened to the cry of His children, coming down from heaven for Israel’s sake and for ours—to redeem us from our exile from God, to restore us to His love. In Jesus, we have seen the Father (see John 14:8-9). The Father has let His face shine upon us. He is the good shepherd (see John 10:11-15) come to guide us to the heavenly kingdom. No matter how far we have strayed, He will give us new life if we turn to Him, if we call upon His holy name, if we pledge anew never again to withdraw from Him. As Paul says this week, He has given us every spiritual gift—especially the Eucharist and penance—to strengthen us as we await Christ’s final coming. He will keep us firm to the end—if we let Him. So, in this season of repentance, we should heed the warning—repeated three times by our Lord in the Gospel this week—to be watchful, for we know not the hour when the Lord of the house will return.
St. Aelred of Rielvaux
Sermon for Advent
Behold the time is now here for us, dearest brethren, when we are to «sing of kindness and judgement to the Lord» (Ps 101[100],1). This is the Lord’s Advent, the arrival of the Lord of all who comes and is to come (Rv 1,8).
But how and where is he to come? How and where is he coming? Has he not said: «I fill the heaven and the earth?» (Jr 23,24). How, then, is he who fills heaven and earth coming to heaven and earth? Listen to the Gospel: «He was in the world and world was made by him and the world did not know him» (Jn 1,10).
Therefore he was both present and absent at the same time: present in that he was in the world; absent because the world did not know him… How could he who was not recognised not be far away, he in whom people did not believe, who was not feared, who was not loved?…
He comes, then, so that he who was not known might be recognized; he in whom no one believed might be believed; he who was not loved might be loved. He who was present according to his nature is coming in his mercy… Think on God a little and see what it means that he should transfer so great a might; how he humbles so great a power, weakens so great a strength, makes feeble so great a wisdom! Was this a requirement of justice towards us? Most certainly not!…
In truth, my Lord, not my righteousness but your mercy guided you; not your necessity but my need. As you have said: «My mercy is established in the heavens» (Ps 89[88],3). Rightly so, for our neediness abounds on earth. That is why «I shall sing for ever of your love, O Lord», which you manifested at your coming.
When he showed himself humble in his humanity, powerful in his miracles, strong against the tyranny of the demons, gentle in his welcome of sinners: all these things came from his mercy, all came from his inmost goodness. That is why «I shall sing your love, O Lord» made known at your first coming. And rightly so, for «the earth is filled with the mercy of the Lord» (Ps 119[118],64).
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus, November 27, 2011
Today, together with the Church, we are beginning the new liturgical year: a new journey of faith to experience together in Christian communities but, as always, also to be taken within world history so as to open it to God’s mystery, to the salvation that comes from his love. The liturgical year begins with the Season of Advent.
It is a marvellous period in which the expectation of Christ’s return and the memory of his first Coming — when he emptied himself of his divine glory to take on our mortal flesh — reawakens in hearts.
“Watch!” This is Jesus’ call in today’s Gospel. He does not only address it to his disciples but to everyone: “Watch!” (Mk 13:37). It is a salutary reminder to us that life does not only have an earthly dimension but reaches towards a “beyond”, like a plantlet that sprouts from the ground and opens towards the sky.
A thinking plantlet, man, endowed with freedom and responsibility, which is why each one of us will be called to account for how he/she has lived, how each one has used the talents with which each is endowed: whether one has kept them to oneself or has made them productive for the good of one’s brethren too.
Today, Isaiah, too, the prophet of Advent, with a heartfelt entreaty addressed to God on behalf of the people, gives us food for thought. He recognized the shortcomings of his people and said at a certain point: “There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to cling to you; for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us up to our iniquities” (cf. Is 64:6).
How can we fail to find this description striking? It seems to reflect certain panoramas of the post-modern world: cities where life becomes anonymous and horizontal, where God seems absent and man the only master, as if he were the architect and director of all things: construction, work, the economy, transport, the branches of knowledge, technology, everything seems to depend on man alone.
And in this world that appears almost perfect at times disturbing things happen, either in nature or in society, which is why we think that God has, as it were, withdrawn and has, so to speak, left us to ourselves.
In fact, the true “master” of the world is not the human being but God. The Gospel says: “Watch therefore — for you do not know when the master of the house will coming, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning — lest he come suddenly and find you asleep” (Mk 13:35-36).
The Season of Advent returns every year to remind us of this in order that our life may find its proper orientation, turned to the face of God. The face is not that of a “master” but of a Father and a Friend. Let us make the Prophet’s words our own, together with the Virgin Mary who guides us on our Advent journey.”O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay and you are our potter: we are all the work of your hand” (Is 64:8).
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address, November 30, 2008
Today, with the First Sunday of Advent, we begin a new liturgical year. This season invites us to reflect on the dimension of time, which always exerts great fascination over us. However, after the example of what Jesus loved to do, I wish to start with a very concrete observation: we all say that we do not have enough time, because the pace of daily life has become frenetic for everyone.
In this regard too, the Church has “good news” to bring: God gives us his time. We always have little time; especially for the Lord, we do not know how or, sometimes, we do not want to find it. Well, God has time for us! This is the first thing that the beginning of a liturgical year makes us rediscover with ever new amazement.
Yes, God gives us his time, because he entered history with his Word and his works of salvation to open it to eternity, to make it become a covenantal history. In this prospective, already in itself time is a fundamental sign of God’s love: a gift that man, as with everything else, is able to make the most of or, on the contrary, to waste; to take in its significance or to neglect with obtuse superficiality.
Then there are the three great “points” in time, which delineate the history of salvation: at the beginning, Creation; the Incarnation-Redemption at the centre and at the end the “parousia”, the final coming that also includes the Last Judgment. However, these three moments should not be viewed merely in chronological succession. In fact, Creation is at the origin of all things but it also continues and is actuated through the whole span of cosmic becoming, until the end of time.
So too, although the Incarnation-Redemption occurred at a specific moment in history the period of Jesus’ journey on earth it nevertheless extends its radius of action to all the preceding time and all that is to come. And in their turn, the final coming and the Last Judgment, which were decisively anticipated precisely in the Cross of Christ, exercise their influence on the conduct of the people of every age.
The liturgical season of Advent celebrates the coming of God in its two moments: it first invites us to reawaken our expectation of Christ’s glorious return, then, as Christmas approaches, it calls us to welcome the Word made man for our salvation.
Yet the Lord comes into our lives continually. How timely then, is Jesus’ call, which on this First Sunday is powerfully proposed to us: “Watch!” (Mk 13: 33, 35, 37). It is addressed to the disciples but also to everyone, because each one, at a time known to God alone, will be called to account for his life.
This involves a proper detachment from earthly goods, sincere repentance for one’s errors, active charity to one’s neighbour and above all a humble and confident entrustment to the hands of God, our tender and merciful Father. The icon of Advent is the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus. Let us invoke her so that she may help us also to become an extension of humanity for the Lord who comes.
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address, November 27, 2005
Advent begins this Sunday. It is a very evocative religious season because it is interwoven with hope and spiritual expectation: every time the Christian community prepares to commemorate the Redeemer’s birth, it feels a quiver of joy which to a certain extent it communicates to the whole of society.
In Advent, Christians relive a dual impulse of the spirit: on the one hand, they raise their eyes towardsthe final destination of their pilgrimage through history, which is the glorious return of the Lord Jesus; on the other, remembering with emotion his birth in Bethlehem, they kneel before the Crib.
The hope of Christians is turned to the future but remains firmly rooted in an event of the past. In the fullness of time, the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary: “Born of a woman, born under the law”, as the Apostle Paul writes (Gal 4:4).
Today’s Gospel invites us to stay on guard as we await the final coming of Christ. “Look around you!”, Jesus says. “You do not know when the master of the house is coming” (Mk 13:35). The short parable of the master who went on a journey and the servants responsible for acting in his place highlights how important it is to be ready to welcome the Lord when he suddenly returns.
The Christian community waits anxiously for his “manifestation”, and the Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, urges them to trust in God’s fidelity and to live so as to be found “blameless” (cf. I Cor 1:7-9) on the day of the Lord. Most appropriately, therefore, the liturgy at the beginning of Advent puts on our lips the Psalm: “Show us, O Lord, your kindness, and grant us your salvation” (cf. Ps 85[84]:8).
We might say that Advent is the season in which Christians must rekindle in their hearts the hope that they will be able with God’s help to renew the world.
In this regard I would also like to remember today the Constitution of the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, on the Church in the Modern World: it is a text deeply imbued with Christian hope.
I am referring in particular to n. 39, entitled “New Heavens and a New Earth”. In it we read: “We are taught that God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (cf. II Cor 5:2; II Pt 3:13)…. Far from diminishing our concern to develop this earth, the expectancy of a new earth should spur us on, for it is here that the body of a new human family grows”.
Indeed, we will find the good fruits of our hard work when Christ delivers to the Father his eternal and universal Kingdom. May Mary Most Holy, Virgin of Advent, obtain that we live this time of grace in a watchful and hardworking way while we await the Lord.
Saint Gregory of Nyssa
Sermons on the Song of Songs, no. 11, 1
“Watch! for you do not know when the lord of the house is coming”
This is one of the Lord’s great precepts: that his disciples should shake off everything earthly as though it were dust… so as to let themselves be carried heavenward in one great impetus. He exhorts us to overcome sleep, to seek what is above (Col 3:1), to keep our spirits constantly on the alert and cast from our eyes seductive sleepiness. I’m talking about that torpor and lethargy that lead people into error and fabricate the images of dreams: honor, wealth, power, grandeur, pleasure, success, profit or prestige…
So as to forget such dreams, our Lord asks us to rise above this heavy sleep: don’t let us allow reality to vanish in a frantic pursuit of nothingness. He asks us to keep watch: “Gird your loins and light your lamps” (Lk 12:35).The light that dazzles our eyes casts out sleep, the belt that clasps our waist keeps our body alert. It expresses a striving that does not tolerate any torpor.
How clear the meaning of this image is! To gird ones loins with temperance is to live in the light of a pure conscience. The lighted lamp of sincerity lightens one’s face, makes the truth break forth, keeps the soul awake, makes it impermeable to falsity and foreign to the futility of our feeble dreams. Let us live according to Christ’s demands and we will share the life of angels. For he unites us to them in this precept: “Be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks” (Lk 12:36). They are the ones who are seated by the gates of heaven with watchful eye so that the King of glory (Ps 23[24]:7) may pass through on his return from the wedding.
