FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YR A
Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44
CLOTHE YOURSELVES WITH THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
Today begins our preparation for the celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus but more importantly it is a period of preparation for the coming of our Jesus as Lord, Saviour and Judge.
Paul in our second reading today gives all of us a “wake up” call because the end is near. In fact, he says our salvation is near because the second coming of Jesus is joy for us since we are joyfully hoping to be taken up into Heaven.
The Christian church, has been expecting the Lord for over two thousand years now, and in fact the early Christians thought his coming would be during their life time.
This wake-up call is a call for us to be alert as we await to embrace the coming of our Lord. For this hope, he calls us to awake. It is a significant call because today the world seems to be bent on choking the very breath of Christianity from our souls. It is therefore a call for daily alertness and a call against spiritual sloth. We must not forget that, no matter how long it takes, the Lord will surely come.
Paul describes the evil and hostility of the world towards Christianity, a darkness from which we must be awake and alert. Interestingly, however, the night he calls us from is not that which surrounds us, but that which resides within us. This is an urgent call because he says the end is nearer than ever before. Many Christians have become lukewarm and indifferent because the Lord’s second coming has delayed. Some even thinks it will never happen. In this reading Paul assures us, it will happen.
We are all therefore living on borrowed time. For this reason, he calls us to conduct ourselves as people of the light putting on the amour of light. He calls us to personal repentance. That repentance that strikes you quietly in your heart and moves you to a resolve to be faithful to God, a repentance which moves you out of your house to seek God’s mercy in the sacrament of penance. That which moves you to ask for the grace to be holy as you renounce the ways of sin, the ways of darkness.
Pope Francis noted that, this is most important because we live in a world in which we are no longer listened to. It is a world that denies, marginalizes and ridicules faith and for this reason we must bear the light of conversion and holiness in our hearts which should show forth in our relationships and families as Christian people. Paul mentions the sins we must repent from in order to embrace the light; orgies and drunkenness, promiscuity and lust, rivalry and jealousy. As you read this piece ask yourself, “What sin must I repent from? What acts of darkness am I to throw off?
The answer Jesus gave the disciples about their inquiry about restoring the kingdom to Israel, shows that we are not to concern ourselves with certain things, including when the world will end. He told them, “it is not for you to know times and seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:6-7). The end will come when the Lord decides. We should be glad however, that it is all in the hand of our God. It will come to us by a cosmos collapse or even by our own death. The uncertainty of death shows that we are on borrowed time. This should drive us to repentance.
Those who know they are on borrowed time “clothe themselves with Jesus”. To put on Christ, means that we take on the character of Christ. A reminder of our baptism and the obligation to live our lives in imitation of Christ. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to lead us in ways of holiness. May he help us to live as children of light, to be perfect as our heavenly Father (Matt. 5:48), to be merciful as our merciful Father (Lk 6:360) and to love others as Jesus has loved us (Jn 15:12).
God Bless You.
By Rev. Fr. Delight Arnold Carbonu
