Wake Up, and Stay Awake!

The following Homily was given by Sr. Rosemarie Greco, DW, to the people of Milton Congregational Church in Litchfield, Connecticut, on November 27, 2022.

First Sunday of Advent   -   Season of Anticipation

Isaiah 2, 1-5  / Ps. 120 / Romans 13, 11-14 / Matthew 24, 36-44

This Sunday begins the season of Advent, the four weeks leading to the celebration of Christmas. It is also the beginning of the Christian Church's New Year – the start of the Church's year of Grace, where we Christians embark on a pilgrimage with Christ, walking with him through the mysteries of faith and life.

As a season, Advent is certainly not as well emphasized or observed as Christmas is. We may see Advent Calendars in stores – each day with candy, food or other items leading us to December 25.   (As an aside, I recently learned there are over 80 types of Advent calendars, with very few focusing on the coming of Christ! But they all have a sense of anticipation to them.)  The deeper meaning of Advent seems to escape us. Our culture says that it's time for shopping – and so it is. It is also a  time for a spiritual journey of anticipation, marking the days till the great feast of Christmas.

The word Advent is a word from the Latin "Adventus." It simply means "coming." In the 6th century, Christians began to associate this season with the coming of Christ. They had a devotion to the coming of Christ not in the Bethlehem manger but in his second coming at the end of time.

It was in the Middle Ages that Advent was linked to Christmas and Christ's first coming. This is familiar to us today. Devotion to this first coming of Christ in the manger can be credited to St. Francis of Assisi. In 1223, he created a Nativity scene in a cave in Greccio, Italy. It was here that devotion to the Christ Child touched people's hearts and has stayed with us until today. Who can resist the simplicity and beauty of a baby? Who can be untouched by the presence of God in a loving, guileless child? At the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, you can visit their Neopolitan Creche – a scene with the birth of Christ situated in a Neopolitan city. It shows that God is among us at all times, in all places, and each person can respond differently to this child. Some faces in this Nativity scene show a kind of hostility and questioning about this child's birth. Other faces and gestures show reverence, interest, and hope as they look toward this child. Everyone can find themselves somewhere in this Nativity scene.

Here, today, we focused on the Advent wreath. It is a devotion of the Christian community that began in 1839 by a Lutheran minister. The minister took a large wheel from a cart and placed four candles in the ring. As an Advent symbol, it reflected new life, new light, and the salvation offered to us in Jesus Christ. Eventually, the starkness of the wheel took on decorations from nature – greens, berries, flowers – all symbols of life that come to us in Jesus Christ. They are all symbols of anticipation for good things to come.

That is a bit of background to Advent. It leads us to the scriptures of today. We might ask how we moved from the focus on the Christ Child to the words of Isaiah, who calls us to be instructed in God's ways. Isaiah urges us to walk in God's path and make some reversals in our lives. He says the weapons of war must be transformed into instruments for good -  for plowing the fields; the spear of war must also be repurposed and used for pruning trees. There must never again be war if we walk in the light of the Lord.

In one way, we instinctively know how to transform negatives to positives in our lives. This is especially evident in this winter season, when we are able to bring opposites into harmony. Over the years, we have learned how to respond to and balance winter's challenges. Winter brings us cold weather, so we light our fireplaces and turn up the heat in our homes. Winter gives us long, dark nights, and we respond by decorating our buildings with lights.   The trees outside are bare, so we surround ourselves with blossoming poinsettias and evergreens. It might look like life is nowhere to be found, but we instinctively know how to bring forth life and transform our surroundings into a hope-filled environment.

What Isaiah asks us to anticipate is the ­transformation and harmonizing of opposites for the sake of peace.   

Isaiah offers this vision of peace because the people of his time are living in turmoil. He knows they all long for peace. Peace is the existence we all hope for, and Advent is our time now to wait for peace – for the coming of the Prince of Peace.

With the birth of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, peace and all that is good has come into the world. Now we wait for the second coming of Peace – but not necessarily at the end of time. So much depends on us and our relationship with God and the creation all around us. We must commit ourselves to peace now, this Advent.

We don't just wait passively but need to be actively involved with bringing about peace that will permeate all living beings from the ground up – from the soil right under our feet to the air we breathe. These past weeks' terrible national and international events have made it more urgent for us to be united with Christ in bringing peace to our world.

These weeks of Advent can be a time of pilgrimage for us. Pilgrimages usually involve walking – they are not static experiences. The whole person is involved. Mind, body, and spirit are on the move. We walk through days of light and darkness; we commit ourselves to works for peace and harmony. By so doing, we can make our world, neighborhood, and families a real welcoming home of God and for God. Our words and deeds are actually the ways we can put away instruments of war and hatred and transform them into words and deeds of healing.

Advent is a pilgrimage to change our hearts, be alert, wake up, and discover God in our midst.   We are called in Advent to be alert, wake up, and discover God among us. To wake up from our sleep is a way to move from being satisfied with life as it is now. A new vision awaits us.

Advent can truly be an adventure- Advent- ure – a time to try new ways of thinking, loving, and doing things. It is a time to get out of a rut and look for the coming of Christ in our lives. It is Christ who will be born in us and make us a new person. To reference the Gospel: Wake up and stay awake!

And so, why wake up and anticipate something new?   What is the emergency? Our salvation is at hand! 

We all have hopes and yearnings for Christ's presence to be visible in our midst. What do we need from our Saviour? What do we need to be saved from? What does our world need?  O Come, O Come, Emmanuel….

Together, then, let us wake up and stay awake!     

The Lord is coming!

Sr. Rosemarie Greco, DW