First Sunday of Advent (Year A): Awake and Prepare for the Lord is Coming

I hope God listens to excuses. Because I have plenty!

When I go to confession, I never say “I was impatient with a parishioner.” I add “but I was in a rush.” I don’t say “I ate too much,” without adding “but that parishioner really can cook!”

So let’s hope God listens.

However, this Sunday’s Gospel clearly tells us there’s one excuse God will not buy on the day of judgement: “I didn’t know.” We Christians will not be able to face him and say, “but you never told me!”

St. Paul calls us to turn away from sin and turn to Christ. Most of us are unlikely to be surprised by his message. We already knew that being debauched and licentious was not a good preparation for Christmas! I’m not making light of the apostle’s catalogue of sins, which include things that aren’t exactly uncommon like quarreling, jealousy, and drinking too much. But it’s no revelation that these are a serious problem on our spiritual journey.

The warning Jesus gives us is more subtle. It probably targets more of us than St. Paul’s. Still, both the Gospel and second reading share a central message. In keeping with my recent resolution to sum up my homilies in a few words, that message is: wake up!

The contrast between the second reading and the Gospel is fascinating. St. Paul warns us that serious sin can put us to sleep—it can anesthetize our consciences. We become people of the flesh and not of the Spirit. Jesus warns us about another risk, which may be a greater problem because it’s so much harder for us to recognize.

That risk is allowing routine activities to distract us from the deepest realities of life. We’re not turning away from God by deliberate sin but losing sight of God because we are so busy, even with good things such as work and family life.

Johann Sebastian Bach even set that message to music in the beautiful cantata Wachet auf. It begins “Awake! the voice calls to us…” The powerful text was written by Philipp Nicolai, who was so good at writing hymns that the Lutheran Church venerates him as a saint.

Wachet auf is not based on St. Paul’s exhortations to wake from sleep; nor is it based on today’s Gospel. The hymn refers to the parable of the wise and foolish virgins which is another of the many passages in the New Testament that warn us to be prepared and ready for the coming of the Lord.

In the text, it’s the voice of watchmen calling the virgins to wake up, pick up their lamps, and welcome the bridegroom. On this First Sunday of Advent, it’s the voice of Jesus himself.

In last week’s homily I shared a vision for our parish—that Christ the Redeemer becomes ‘irresistible’ to parishioner and non-parishioner alike.

That’s a vision specific to our times. No one needed an irresistible parish in 1950—there was so much less competition for our minds and hearts. Today, we need to work twice as hard to awaken people to the vision of our first reading and psalm: becoming a joyful people journeying together to the house of the Lord.

Today’s psalm was sung by pilgrims arriving at the gates of Jerusalem. In the holy city they hear God’s word and praise him in response. And in the final verse, they pray for their family and friends.

What stops the average person in our parish from sharing all the joy and enthusiasm of those Jewish pilgrims? I can put it in one word, busy-ness.

Anyone want to guess what makes prayer difficult for me? When I was in the seminary, I would have said distraction, the universal problem when praying. Today the answer is my iPhone. Heaven forbid I would go into the church without it! I might miss a call.

You all know what keeps you from praying at home or from coming to Water in the Desert, for instance. Driving kids to soccer practice. Early morning and late-night trips to the gym. Binge watching.

These aren’t things we can entirely avoid. But as Advent begins, we can take stock and wake up to unbalanced priorities. We can stay awake, alert to the ways our busy lives may be making us spiritually drowsy. To use a very tired phrase, Advent is a wake-up call.

Effective changes in lifestyle and priorities are almost never radical. We need simple, realistic goals aimed at making some progress in our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Choosing one simple thing can help overcome our spiritual drowsiness during this sacred season and prepare us for a more meaningful celebration of Christmas.

And there’s no shortage of ideas. You’ll find a whole page devoted to Advent on the parish website with wonderful suggestions.

One of the easiest but most powerful things we can do is attending Water in the Desert on Saturday December 17. As it happens, our Advent webpage has a quote from Pope emeritus Benedict where he says that the Church, like Christ, must “lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.” That’s certainly what our evening adoration, music, and testimony can do for people wearied by the pre-Christmas rush.

Every Tuesday in Advent, there’s a wonderful opportunity to awaken our souls. We will have Mass at 7:00 pm followed by adoration and confession at 7:30.

Speaking of confession, it’s the ideal way we can, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh,” to use St. Paul’s words. There’s no better way to be ready for the unexpected coming of the Son of Man about which Jesus warns us. We will have many priests celebrating the sacrament at our penitential service on Wednesday December 21. There’s even an online guide on the Advent website to help you prepare if it’s been a while.

Needless to say, we need to be alert not only to our own spiritual needs but to the needs, spiritual and material, of our brothers and sisters. That’s why the website lists no fewer than five opportunities for service and charity in Advent.

I’ll end with my two-word summary of God’s words to us as Advent begins: wake up! Shake off the fog of our overly busy lives for the next four weeks. Be ready for the coming of the Lord, awake and alert as Jesus has commanded, whether that be his final coming or the arrival of the Christ child on December 25.

However important our daily routine, it cannot be allowed to keep us from what matters most. No excuses!

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe: Our Parish Feast Day! (34.C)

A friend was driving in the States recently. He spied a church where he thought he might be able to attend Sunday Mass. Sure enough, one was about to start with a priest who introduced himself as a visitor.

He then announced, “Mass this morning will be two hours long.” The congregation was still laughing when he said “No, I’m serious. Mass is going to be two hours long.”

My friend told me that the priest, an imposing African American, preached for one hour and fifteen minutes. I said, “That’s just awful!”

“No!” said my friend; “I didn’t want him to stop.”

Turns out that the priest had quite a story to tell. He’d been a successful accountant who was considering the priesthood. But he couldn’t decide. One day he was sitting in an empty church, and asked God out loud what he should do. An old Black woman sitting some distance away heard him and came over with her walker. 

She said to him, “He’s calling you, boy. You go runnin’!”

So he quit his job to enter the seminary. He went up to his old office to say goodbye to his colleagues. 

Ten days later a plane crashed into that floor of the World Trade Center, and all his co-workers died.

What would it take for parish life to be as compelling as that homily?

That’s the question God is asking each of us on our parish feast day.

And now I’m going to preach for two hours. No, I’m not.

But I could. Because there is a lot to say on this solemn celebration of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. And there’s a lot to say about our parish as it grows and adapts to meet the challenges of a changed universe.

Today we are given a vision of Christ: the King, the shepherd, the ruler—“the image of the invisible God.”

And from that vision comes a vision of Christ the Redeemer Parish.

Father Zidago and I have just got back from the annual Priests’ Study Week. And what a week it was: speaker after speaker told us, “God is calling, boys: you go runnin’.”

What the speakers were calling us to was a new vision of parish life—a vision of the future of our parish that would hold our attention even better than the most powerful preacher at a two-hour Mass.

What is a vision? A vision is a God-inspired picture of the future that produces passion.

What’s not a vision? A plan to get absent parishioners back to Mass. As one wise pastor said “Bringing people back isn’t vision; moving people forward is.”

From the Cross, where Christ seems weakest, he is calling his people to share a vision of a new world, a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love, and peace. Those are words from the Preface of today’s Mass, which begins “lift up your hearts.” But to lift up our hearts the vision has to take hold of us; it must inspire passion.

And a God-given vision must answer the question ‘what’s most important?’ We know the answer: the second reading tells us that Jesus Christ is “the head of the body, the Church.” And it is Jesus Christ who is the head and cornerstone of our parish.

Only he can renew our community, only he can attract new members, only he offers a relationship that answers every longing and heals every wound.

Over the summer, members of the parish core team and others sweated over a vision for Christ the Redeemer Parish. Well, we didn’t actually sweat, since there was air conditioning, but we did suffer from Langley’s mosquitoes. It was hard work, and it took five full days.

At the end of the process, we had a remarkable set of ideas and commitments that I’ll be sharing with you down the road. But it all boiled down to one daring goal: To become an irresistible parish.

Not to become irresistible to increase our numbers or collection, but because Jesus is irresistible. We cannot keep Jesus a secret: we are called to make him known and loved by making people feel loved and known.

We want to be a community of disciples who attract others because of the joy, purpose, and generosity that stems from a personal relationship with Jesus.

Is the idea of an irresistible parish an impossible dream? I asked myself that while writing this homily. But the Holy Spirit answered the question for me. A long-time parishioner almost tackled me in the parking lot yesterday. Out of the blue, she said, with undisguised enthusiasm, “How I love my parish! What a difference it makes in my life, and what a joy it is to serve here.”

And that’s just a quick summary of a conversation that was bursting with passion.

I’m holding here the latest edition of our parish magazine. The table of contents alone is better than any two-hour sermon I could ever preach.

My own contribution shares some thoughts about creating a culture of encounter as a way of navigating our changed world. We want our parish to be a place of encounter—with one another and with Jesus. And we want to meet Jesus in our weakness, like the good thief on the cross, sharing not only our successes but failures as well.

Listen to the titles of some of the other articles: “An antidote to loneliness in a cup of coffee,” “The oasis at Water in the Desert,” “Youth Ministry: a safe place to talk about faith.”

Of course, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. I think the joy-filled photographs alone can inspire tremendous hope for the future.

And, no surprise, there’s an article called “Becoming an Irresistible Parish.” It describes what an irresistible parish could look like; but much more important it tells us in three words how we’ll get there: pray, lead, invite.

We must pray because only fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit can bring about this kind of growth. We must lead because we need everyone if we are going to fulfill our God-given vision. You can’t create an irresistible parish without irresistible parishioners.

Thirdly we must invite. “As we begin to build an irresistible parish, others will naturally be attracted to our joy, but first they must be invited.”

When we asked members of the Parish Pastoral Council what they loved about CTR they highlighted connection, belonging, and beauty. When we asked what drives them nuts about the parish they mentioned pedestrians, people who walk in and walk out quickly but don’t engage.

And when we asked them to imagine walking into the parish three years from now, they had a vision of being known as a place where—Catholic or not—you can come and sit in peace, talk to someone if you’re down, and find people who care about you.

Each of you has a vision of what would make this parish as irresistible to you as it is to the buoyant and fulfilled woman who spoke to me in the parking lot.

You’re in church today—something is drawing you here. What is it? Do you want more of it? Do you want to be part of the irresistible parish? Think about it and pray about it this week; come back next week.

You can find the answers in a deeper relationship with Jesus, Christ our King, Christ our Redeemer.

He’s calling us, people! Let’s go running.

Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – the Lord is Coming

 

Recently one of my seminary classmates brought me up short when I called to congratulate him on his 65th birthday.

He was the youngest in our class and the most athletic. When I asked how he was doing, he said “Just fine. But thinking a fair bit about death these days.”

He has some health challenges like most people our age, but he’s not dying. Really, all he’s doing is what the Church hopes we’ll all do as the liturgical year winds down.

The readings for today’s Mass aren’t particularly subtle. The Gospel talks about the end of the world, prefigured by the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem. The first reading is a prophecy about the end of the world—the day of the Lord’s wrath.

And the end of the world is the background to the second reading, which doesn’t even mention it. St. Paul is correcting the wrong thinking of those who are convinced that the end is so near that there’s no point working!

Wouldn’t it be nice to know when the world would come to an end? The Apostles are certainly keen to know the timetable for the destruction of the temple.

But elsewhere in the Gospels Jesus makes it clear that this is not information he wants us to have. In St. Matthew’s Gospel he says, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mt 24:36)

So what’s the point of all the drama in today’s liturgy?

I think the Psalm gives us the key in one sentence: “The Lord is coming, coming to judge the earth.” What does it matter ‘when,’ if the coming is certain?

The opening prayer—or Collect—of today’s Mass tells us how to avoid fearing that day: by serving with constancy the author of all that is good. The first reading promises that even on the last day for those who revere God’s name the sun of righteousness shall rise with  healing in its wings.

Those who revere God’s name, who do their work quietly, and ultimately those who endure persecution, trials and tribulations will stand confidently before the Lord when he appears.

Given the fact that the teaching of today’s scriptures has been shared in the Church for two thousand years and the end of the world hasn’t happened I wondered whether something’s going on here that is more immediate.

It seems to me that the focus on the inevitable end of the world on an unknown day is meant to turn our minds and hearts to the inevitable end of our lives, also on an unknown day. Because the same principles apply: the day is coming, for each of us, and there will be a particular judgement that precedes the general judgement on the last day.

For some death comes gently, while for others it can be harder, but for all the promise is made: for those who revere God’s name the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.

Two weeks ago, I summarized the message of my homily in four words: pray for the dead. Today I can summarize it in three words: think about death.

On this Sunday next year, the message is quite explicit. St. Paul says that since “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night…let us not fall asleep as others do, but stay awake and be sober.”

Because what the word of God says about the world’s end applies equally to our own end. Maybe even more. It is easier to picture our own mortality than the fact that the world as we know it is passing away.

Let me end with some practical thoughts. November seems to be my month for important funerals. It began with Arlene Boreham’s, a beautiful celebration of our long-time parishioner. Yesterday morning I attended the funeral of Vito Curalli, the father of Nick, the conductor of our 9:00 am choir. And this coming Saturday I will celebrate the funeral for Connie Zweng, whose hundredth birthday party I attended not long ago.

I think that anyone, Catholic or non-Catholic would have been moved at the faith-filled funerals of Arlene and Vito and I expect the same will be true when Connie’s funeral Mass is celebrated.

The funerals of the righteous are wonderful homilies on the kind of readings we have heard today. They acknowledge the Lord as judge but show him a righteous and just judge ready not only to forgive but to reward. They are inevitably sad but are overlaid with joy and beauty.

I encourage everyone of a certain age to do some funeral planning. Practically, it can assist your loved ones. Spiritually, it can help you prepare and ponder.

And it can even have a certain element of fun. Long before her final illness, my friend and colleague Mary-lynn, Connie Zweng’s daughter, kept her funeral arrangements on her computer at work. If you annoyed her, she would take you off the list of readers or pall bearers. And you stayed off until you were back in her good graces. Not a bad way of dealing with life’s frustrations, all in all.

And also, a reminder that God never takes us off his list. Only we can do that, and we never want to stay off for long because life is short, and no one knows the day or the hour.