27 November 2022
First Sunday of Advent
What Advent is certainly not, is a time of waiting. Waiting implies a passivity, a stagnation, a complacency. All of our readings for today, this first Sunday of Advent, make quite clear, “it is game time!” Our second reading, Paul’s letter to the Romans states, “Brothers and sisters, you know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light!” Now is the time. There is no more time to be waiting for anything. Jesus reinforces the urgency in the Gospel coming from the second chapter of Matthew as he says, “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come… for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” This coming is immanent! What are we preparing for?- you may ask. Well, our first reading from the prophet Isaiah makes clear that we are preparing for climbing a mountain. Whatever we are preparing for will not be easy. Isaiah proclaims what he has heard from the Lord to the people of Judah, Jerusalem, and to all of us, “Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain to the house of God that he may instruct us in his ways and we may walk in his paths…. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” It is the mountains that symbolize the places in our lives when we have met God, the places where heaven and earth merge. Scripture is always using references to mountains when humanity meets divinity. Abraham was told to climb the mountain with his son Isaac and sacrifice him on the top of the mountain, where an angel of the Lord stopped him and guided him to the Lamb of God to sacrifice instead. Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. Moses took the elders up the mountain where they met God on a floor of Sapphire. Jesus taught the people all of his great lessons on the “Sermon on the Mount”. Jesus climbed a mountain with his cross and was crucified on a mountain outside of Jerusalem. Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives. So, Advent is the time to prepare for climbing a mountain to meet our God.
What specifically can we do to prepare for the coming. All of the great saints and Christian mystics teach about the importance of silence. If I can offer any advice to prepare for the coming of the Lord, it would be to develop the contemplative practice of silence. In the midst of the chaos, noise, excessive media, and constant barrage of noise in our world and in this PTPCR(Post-thanksgiving/Pre-Christmas rush), find time for silence. Why is this an exercise of preparation for the coming of the Lord, because, as St. John of the Cross taught, “God the Father spoke one Word, which was his Son, and this Word he speaks always in eternal silence, and silence must be heard by the soul”. St. John of the Cross wrote this in his book called, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, again a reference to mountain climbing. To prepare for the coming of the Lord, we must make ourselves receptive, like a bowl or a cup, or like a gardener tills the soul and prepares the ground, hoping for the coming of the plants, or a sailor lifts and positions the sail, hoping for the coming of the wind, so we too must prepare our souls, the tender garden of our soul or the sail of our life for the coming of the master creator and source of all life, the source of all wind and the breath of life.
In this season of Advent, there is no time for waiting. This is a time of preparing and the preparing is a training for mountain-climbing, and the training consists of coming to silence so as to be receptive, able to listen, ready to receive, to make ourselves into cups and bowls and tender soil and sails. The Father does speak the Word, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Are we able to receive this word who comes to heal us and fill us up to the full?