Happy Sunday!
DOCTRINE AND FAITH
(Isaiah 63,16-17.19; 64,1.3-7; 1 Cor. 1, 3-9; Mark 13,33-37: 1st Sunday of Advent Year 2, 29 November, 2020)
Advent is the time of waiting: we prepare ourselves for the Lord's coming. He will come back to us during Christmas, and we must be ready for his coming. Today's three readings speak to us, precisely, of this expectation. In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah expresses an ardent desire for the coming of the Lord: Return for the love of your servants, for the love of the tribe, your inheritance. Oh that you would tear the skies apart and come down! Before you the mountains would tremble. In the second reading Paul invites us to await the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Gospel, Jesus encouraged us to be vigilant, and ready to welcome him in the moment of his return. We were called to watch. Jesus tells us in the Gospel: Be careful, keep watch, because you don't know when the precise moment will be […]. Be vigilant, since you do not know when the master will return, whether in the evening or at midnight or at the cockcrow or in the morning. Therefore, we must always be ready. We cannot be asleep Christians, we must always be awake, watchful and eagerly awaiting for the coming of the Lord. Unfortunately, we are too often sleepy. Our spiritual life, instead of being fiery is weak. So, we are not waiting for the Lord, and ready to welcome his wills, and desires; we do not correspond to what he asks of us. We must then awake, to go out to meet the Lord who comes with good works, as today's Collect (opening prayer) of the Mass holds.
The first reading strongly expresses the desire for the return of the Lord. The prophet makes us understand that the people find themselves in a painful situation: God seems to have abandoned them and let them wander away far from his ways. The desire for the Lord's return is increased by the memory of his past manifestations: Before you the peoples trembled, when you did terrible things that we did not expect, which we have not heard of from distant times. The Lord is powerful and good, and we await the manifestation of his power and goodness. This desire arouses pain in the faithful for their infidelities. If we truly desire an encounter with the Lord, the awareness of our sins becomes very much alive in us and causes sorrow in our hearts. Isaiah says: You are angry because we have sinned against you for a long time and have been rebellious. We always find ourselves in this painful situation of unfaithfulness at the Lord’s call. He shows us the good ways, the way of faith and love, but we look elsewhere for our happiness. Therefore, as the prophet says, we have become as an impure thing, and as an unclean cloth are our acts of righteousness: we are all withered like leaves, our iniquities have carried us away like the wind. But, despite the suffering caused by sin, we can continue to trust, because the Lord is our Father. The prophet reiterates this concept twice, at the beginning and at the end of the passage: Lord, you are our Father, you have always been called our redeemer; Lord, you are our Father; we are clay and you are the one who gives us form, we are all the work of your hands. Always God is our redeemer. Therefore, sins cannot be a real obstacle to our meeting with him. As soon as we turn away from them, we are helped by the Lord and can move forward with confidence. But prayer is necessary, as Isaiah reminds us: No one invoked your name, no one stirred up to cling to you. If the name of the Lord is not invoked, his coming is not prepared, the Lord cannot grant us the graces of preparation, which are so important for our encounter with him.
In the second reading, Paul finds himself faced with a situation (that of the Christians of Corinth) most positive and demands constant thanksgiving. It says: I continually thank my God for you, because of the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus, since you have been enriched with all the gifts, those of the word and those of knowledge. The Christian situation is a situation of abundance grace. The Apostle rejoices in noting that the preaching of the Gospel has borne abundant fruits in Corinth: The testimony of Christ is so firmly established among you that no gift of grace is missing anymore. This abundance of graces arouses an even stronger expectation of the definitive manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must, therefore, commit ourselves and be irrepressible/unstoppable, to go out to meet the Lord who comes. But this commitment that is required of us must not frighten us, because the Lord will also grant us the grace to fulfil it. Paul affirms: He will confirm you to the end, irrepressible in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful: he has called us, and he will not let us lack anything to correspond to our Christian vocation to become holy and immaculate in love (Ephesians 1, 4). Therefore, with great confidence we can go to meet the Lord who comes. The word of God that we hear today must arouse in us the attitudes necessary to truly welcome the Lord, to meet him, so that our whole life may be transformed by this decisive encounter. +John I. Okoye
(graphics by Charles)
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