First Sunday of Advent, Year B

Gospel: Mark 13:33-37.

Happy New Year!

It seems like only yesterday that we were embarking on another year of unfolding the great feasts and solemnities of our faith, as we prepared to move through another liturgical year. And here we are again, at the beginning of yet another year in which all those mysteries of the faith will be once again laid open before us.

As we step into a new liturgical year we enter once again into the Season of Advent, a time in our Church year when we focus our attention on the coming of Christ among us. Unfortunately, the Season of Advent, coming as it does at the end of the secular year, often gets overlooked in the round of Christmas parties, end of year functions, and the rush to ensure that Christmas is all of the celebration that it is supposed to be.

Christmas, though, is still five weeks away.

And contrary to what popular belief says, Christmas is not just one day that ends at midnight on 26th of December, but another season that starts on the 25th of December and stretches until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The Season of Advent is not a time for preparing for Christmas – despite what society and corporations might say to the contrary. The danger of the pressures we face – and the signs have been up for a month already, inviting us to “indulge this Christmas” and wishing us “Seasons Greetings” (whatever that means!) – is that the Season of Advent can be glossed over, and the significance of its meaning lost, amid all the hype and hyperbole that will be thrown at us in coming weeks.

Advent, these four Sundays that start today, throws our attention however to the coming of Jesus at the end of time, just as our Scripture readings have been reminding us over the past few weeks. This eschatological focus warns us to be ready, awake and alert, because we don’t know when Christ will come again. It could be at dusk, or midnight, or cockcrow, or at dawn – but whenever it comes we, as faithful Christians, are called to be ready to open the door and welcome Christ who comes. Our focus to the coming of Christ at Christmas, when Christ took on human flesh and became one like us, doesn’t happen until about the 17th of December. Until then, as we meander through Advent and attend to its clarion call to be watchful and alert, our focus is thrown towards the end of time, and the coming of Christ at the end of time.

This focus on the eschaton raises the question as to how we keep ourselves alert and awake, ready to welcome Christ when he knocks. The only answer is to keep doing just what we have been doing since the day of baptism, being alert to the signs of the times, doing those things that our faith demands of us, and taking every opportunity to make the Good News of the Kingdom of God known to all the world. That is our task. That is the task that Jesus has left us to undertake until he comes again at some unknown and unexpected time.

The challenge for us this Advent is to celebrate Advent as Advent, and not as some prelude to the Christmas solemnity which is yet to come. The task is a difficult one. We will be constantly bombarded by messages that are contrary to the Good News of the Gospel. Being aware, however, of the call to be constantly alert and watchful might just keep our focus where it needs to be.