Advent I Year A 2010

Advent 1 Keep Awake!

Jesus Christ is personally returning to this planet.

For now, Jesus has ascended into heaven. For now, only God the Father knows when Jesus will return. As it was is the day of Noah so it was in the day Jesus preached. People were caught up in the daily events of their lives: eating, drinking, marriage, birth and death.

As it was in the day when Jesus preached so it is now in this Church Age, the Age of Grace. People pursue their lives. We eat and drink, we work and play, we experience pleasure and pain. Marriage, births and deaths. The world goes on as it has for thousands of years.

The world goes on but one thing changes. Every day that passes brings the day of Jesus’ return to Earth one day closer.

In the First Century most people missed the Real Presence of God in Jesus Christ. Some were indifferent. Some wanted to use Jesus to advance their own plans. Some resented and rejected Jesus. Few, perhaps only four at the end, understood that faith is more important than belief. Those four: Holy Mother Mary, her sister Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the beloved apostle John had slowly come to understand that Faith is a personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ command and encouragement to his followers to keep awake is an invitation to wake up from the stories we tell ourselves and each other about life, other people and God. These stories lull us into a half life of borrowed dreams.

For many in Jesus’ day the borrowed dreams were of aggressive military conquest, power and dominance. For others, the borrowed dreams were cast in the seductive illusions of pleasure and withdrawal from the world. For others the dreams involved submission to a set of laws, rituals or philosophies.

Jesus entered into the world to call us to wake up and pay attention. Jesus is not just another religious leader who brings temporary relief from life’s trials and tribulations. Jesus is the Incarnate Word of God, the Logos, the very Pattern, Plan, and Purpose of the universe.

In Jesus Christ God offers us a new life and a new way of living. In Jesus Christ God reveals to us the essential truth of Creation. Jesus just doesn’t offer an opinion about truth, Jesus is the Truth.

Jesus just doesn’t offer us an alternative way of being religious. Jesus is the Way we can be fully alive, fully human, and fully awake. Jesus is the origin and source of life.

Jesus asks us to wake up. Observe. Question. Reflect. Pray. Engage fully in life. Receive the great blessing of God in the unconditional love of God.
During Advent, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church invites us to consider how we can respond to the gift of God in Jesus Christ. Where are you still asleep and living some one else’s borrowed dream? Where are you placing you trust? How are sleepwalking through life, living by default?

The invitation to keep awake is the invitation for each of us and all of us to make a real choice to live in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. It is an invitation to pay attention. Observe. Watch.

The invitation is to pay attention to the world as it is not as we want it to be or demand it should be.

The invitation to pay attention is to come to the altar of God regularly to immerse our minds, hearts, and wills in the eternal love of Jesus Christ in the blessed sacrament of the altar.

The invitation to pay attention is the invitation to wake up to the new Way of living, the fundamental truth of life, and to the very origin and source of life: Jesus Christ.

Two thousand years ago the co-eternal Son of God became a human being. He was born as we are born. He grew up as we grow up. He lived a quiet obscure life as most of us live. For three years he preached the Good News of the Kingdom of God. People looked at him but did not see him. People listened to him but did not hear him. People placed their hopes and fears on him without any regard for who he was. Those hopes and fears nailed him to the cross. As he died on the cross, Jesus transformed those hopes and fears by the power of unconditional eternal love.

Jesus offers us a new life and a new way of living. Have you received that new life? Are you waking up and claiming the new way of living? The Christian Faith is not a set of beliefs. The Christian faith is a personal relationship with the Living Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus invites us to wake up to the reality of his Presence and to stay awake in the new way of living he gives us. He is coming back to this planet. We have a responsibility to prepare ourselves to greet him. We have an invitation to help others to wake up into the new life of grace.

Jesus came to make a difference in our lives here and now. In the here and now Jesus invites us to wake up. Pay attention. Watch. Watch for our moment of grace. Watch for the opportunities to worship God and to help other people. Watch over the choices we make. Choose wisely. Stay awake. Jesus will make a difference in our lives as we listen to him and live fully present in the world as it is. The world “as it is” reveals the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, God with us and God for us.