Homily for the First Sunday of Advent (Year C)

This is because the Lord’s First Coming is all about Redemption and His Second coming is all about Judgment. But redemption and judgment are the work of the same Jesus Christ, so we look forward to the Second Coming not so much in fear (although Fear of the Lord is one of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit), but with confidence, because He who comes to judge is the same One who first came to redeem.

This being said, we shouldn’t fall prey to presumption of final salvation, but should begin to grow in confidence. Confidence differs from presumption in that presumption is based in ourselves in a self-centered sense of entitlement, while confidence is based in the Lord in a Christ-centered hope for mercy, the reason for the Lord’s Holy Birth in the first place: the beginning of Salvation.

So, while the secular society has turned Christmas into a birthday bash in which the participants receive gifts rather than the Guest of Honor, we see Christmas primarily as a celebration of Redemption’s sacred beginnings. We can lose focus of the meaning of both the Feast and the Season ahead of us, because the anxieties of life can, in some ways, anesthetize us in our spiritual awareness — thus the need for vigilance and prayer to which Our Lord speaks. 

Although thought of the coming Judgment could strike terror in even the holiest of hearts, we need not sink into fear or dread, because in the Eucharistic Presence we sink into Christ Himself who has promised to be with us until the end of time.

This awareness, this human presence to the Divine Presence, is the vigilance to which Our Lord calls us, the milieu of Divine Redemption as experienced in our humanity. Therefore, the thought of the coming Judgment doesn’t frighten us — it strengthens us because we grow not in presumption of what we might have merited, but in confidence of the Mercy of Him who has redeemed us with benignity.

This gives Advent a certain penitential character: the priest wears violet, the liturgical color of penitence, and we light violet candles on our wreath. Even on Gaudete Sunday, the color is rose — halfway between the penitential violet of Advent and the white of Christmas joy.  The hymns we sing in Advent are mostly written in a minor key, full of bridled hope and expectation. The Scriptures we hear are all future-oriented, full of promise.

Advent suspends us in a certain timelessness that reveals to us a hint of God’s eternal Being, as we simultaneously look backward and forward, uniting memory and hope, entering into a graced present moment that allows Redemption to grab hold of us so that Faith becomes a way of life lived in love for God and in the hope for Heaven. So, we look to the past with faith, not nostalgia, and we look to the future with hope, not fear — or worse — with indifference.

This makes of our life a perpetual Advent, that is, a perpetual making-self-ready to welcome the Lord into our lives. Live this Advent well, then, this season of peace and strength amid the headlong rush to Christmas. Go to Confession when you can so as not to fear God’s Judgment, but to celebrate Christmas in the State of Grace, a State of redemption.