First Sunday of Advent

This Sunday we begin the short season of Advent. The green vestments of ordinary time give way to the purple vestments of Advent. The Advent wreath and the Jesse tree appear in our sanctuary. The gradual lighting of the Advent wreath and the gradual dressing of the Jesse tree reminds us that we are on a journey towards the great feast of Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Word who is God becoming flesh. The church’s season of Advent is so short that it risks being swallowed up by Christmas, because of the strong focus on Christmas in the commercial world around us. Yet, it is worth holding on to Advent and to enter into the spirit of Advent.

What is the spirit of Advent? It is simply expressed in the short Advent prayer, ‘Come, Lord, Jesus’. This ancient prayer is to be found towards in one of Saint Paul’s letters, and he writes it in the Aramaic language of Jesus and the first Christians, ‘Maranatha’. It is a prayer which gives expression to the longing deep within us for the coming of the Lord, his coming at Christmas, his coming at the end of time, and his daily coming into our lives. Advent reminds us that the Lord is always coming towards us and our calling is to be open to his coming. The Lord is never moving away from us or hiding from us. He is always journeying towards us and seeking us out. What Jesus said to Zacchaeus in the gospel of Luke he continues to say to us all as risen Lord, ‘The Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost’. The Lord who seeks us out invites us to seek him out in response. The Lord who journeys towards us calls on us to journey towards him. Our baptismal calling is to keep journeying towards the Lord who is always journeying towards us.

This image of journeying towards the Lord is very strong in today’s first reading and responsorial psalm. In the psalm, the tribes of Israel go on pilgrimage to the house of God, the Temple of God, in Jerusalem. In the first reading, Isaiah gives us an even grander vision of the nations, peoples without number, going on pilgrimage towards the Temple of God in Jerusalem, where they believed God was present. They are journeying towards God so that God may teach them his ways and they may walk in God’s paths. They come to recognize that the way God wants them to take is the way of peace making, which will involve the hammering of their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles, transforming weapons of war into implements for harvesting the land. This text was one of the Scripture texts that inspired the establishment of the United Nations after the Second World War.

As Christians we recognize the risen Lord as the new temple of God. He is the one in whom God is present and towards whom we journey. The Lord isn’t stationary in a religious building in some city but is a living presence who journeys towards us as we journey towards him, just as the father journeyed towards his prodigal son who was journeying towards him. Like the pilgrims in our first reading, we journey towards the risen Lord so that he may teach us his ways and we may come to walk in his paths. During his public ministry on earth, the Lord revealed his paths to be paths of loving service of others. He called us to be peace makers, people who work to be reconciled with those who have something against us. He urged us to love God with all our being and to express our love of God by loving others, including even our enemies, those who persecute us. Our journeying towards the Lord will always entail a journey into his values and attitudes, into his whole way of being. As Paul expresses it in our second reading, ‘Let your armour be the Lord Jesus’. This is the Advent journey.

If we are to journey into the Lord and all he stands for, we will need the Lord’s help. We will need him to journey into our lives more fully. The prodigal son may not have completed the journey home if his father had not journeyed out to meet him. Zacchaeus may not have completed his journey to Jesus if Jesus had not looked up at him in his sycamore tree and journeyed back with Zacchaeus to his home. If we are to truly meet the Lord and be transformed by our meeting him, we need not only to seek him out but we also need to allow ourselves to be found by him who seeks us out. This is one way of hearing the call of today’s gospel reading to ‘stay awake’ and to ‘stand ready’. We are to be spiritually awake to the various ways that the Lord wishes to come into our lives on a daily basis. We are to stand ready to welcome him when he stands at the door of our lives and knocks. The call of Advent is to be attentive to the Lord’s daily coming from within the heart of our lives. The simple Advent prayer, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’, can help to cultivate this spirit of daily attentiveness to the Lord.