Deacon Michael's Homily for the 1st Sunday of Advent November 28, 2021
Here's my homily for the 1st Sunday of Advent reflecting the time and history on the New Year's Day of the liturgical year.
You can find the readings on which this homily is based linked HERE
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Sometimes when you are preparing a homily some very strange things pop into your head.
This week it was a theme from a sit-com from my childhood called “It’s About Time”
“It’s about time, it's about space, it's about people in the strangest place…”
I’ll spare you the rest.
The show was about two astronauts that went back, through some wrinkle in time, to prehistoric “cave-man” times
...and get wrapped up in funny hijinx contrasting the “civilized” or “modern” with the ways of the cave-dwellers.
It only lasted a season.
A silly show, on a serious notion
...that of how the past and the present relate.
On that score, William Faulkner, the great Southern writer, a decidedly more high-brow voice, offered that
...“The past is never dead. It’s not even past”.
It has often been said that the Jews invented history
...with the real time narrative of their relationship with the Almighty God of Israel.
Their story gave meaning and direction to the passage of time itself
...making it linear, with a definite beginning and an anticipated future fulfillment
...that had implications for how they were to think and live in their present.
Christians share this sense of time and yet see its fulfillment differently.
We share the understanding, from the opening words of the Old Testament
...that God created the heavens and the earth and that it is good
...that humankind is created in the divine image and likeness
...which we reflect if imperfectly, in lives marred by sin and selfishness that we are called, in love, to overcome more and more
…and for Christians, salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, God’s grace and Divine Mercy.
We see this all ultimately destined for a new heaven and a new earth, transfigured and eternal
...anticipated in the closing words of the book of Revelation, the last book in the Christian Bible.
So it is a story with a beginning, and an end that it is moving toward, but is not yet here.
It’s a very big story, encompassing all of time and space as we know it, beginning and end, alpha and omega.
It is the story of and for all of humanity.
...and we are in it, even now as it continues to play out.
It is this story of humanity that Christians understand and see as having been entered into by God through the Incarnation
...the event in history that we remember and celebrate
...and we anticipate during Advent
...and celebrate at Christmas
...the birth of Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh, in Bethlehem of Judea, when Herod was King and Caesar Augustus was Emperor of Rome.
Saint Pope John Paul II in the opening words of his very first letter to the church referred to Jesus Christ as the “centre of the universe and of history”
...which means for Christians the birth, life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the center point on which all of the rest of history and reality turns
...more than just a fanciful “story”, “metaphor” or “myth”
...as so many modern sophisticates brush it all off as.
The Church uses real time, the passing of the 365 days, 52 weeks and 12 months, of the Church year to turn our minds and hearts to this big reality in specific ways, helping us remember and celebrate this great divine intervention
...and live out its implications
During Advent, we anticipate His coming among us as one who also shared our human nature.
At Christmas we celebrate the joy of this, and then for a few weeks we dwell on its significance.
During Lent we consider the nature of our human condition
...recalling the need for our own repentance and the great offer of our salvation
...the hope of which we see alive in the Christ’s Resurrection at Easter
...the triumph over sin and death
...so that through Him, where He is “we one day may be” also.
During the Easter Season we recall together the life of the early Christian community
...the first to live in the light of the towering reality of these events.
At Pentecost we recall and celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to us
...to dwell in with us and in so in our communities
...to help us to live out the implications of it all.
For the balance of the year
...we listen to Christ’s words and consider his example
...and as we seek to live day to day more deeply shaped by his love, conformed to his image
...so that as he became one like us we may become one like him
...a living icon of God’s love as best we can.
We come together each week, in his real presence, uniting ourselves to him in the Eucharist
...as he draws us deeper and closer to himself
...so that we maybe can one day say like Saint Paul
…”yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me…”
This is the real drama we are called to live inside of.
Like Faulkner said,
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past”.
May we, on this New Year’s Day of the church year,
...keep that realization before us in faith as we prepare this Advent
...for the deep reality revealed and celebrated at Christmas.