1st Sunday of Advent

The first half of Advent is not about preparing for the birth of Jesus at Christmas. It is about another coming which will be that of our Lord in glory. This coming, predicted by Jesus during his earthly ministry, has some similarities with the first coming of the Messiah: first, we do not know when it will occur; second, it is being prepared for by a Chosen People, with the Jewish people for the first and the Church for the second; third, both comings are informed by the person of Jesus Christ - second person of the Holy Trinity and son of Mary. There are also, however, some differences: the first coming was in lowliness and humility in the stable at Bethlehem while the second will be in glory; the first coming came to a world with no definitive answer to sin and death while the second fulfils the victory of the resurrection; in the first coming Jesus appears as the son of a Galilean peasant while in the second he reigns as Christ the King.

What are the implications for us of this mystery? We must not live as if the world has no hope or that evil has any chance of success. We should not try to redeem ourselves from our sins through our own efforts. We, however, are not called to be passive. On the contrary, we need to work as hard as we can to prepare for that Day. This will happen either before or after our physical, individual deaths. What we do know is that both the living and the dead will be caught up in the same reality and participate in the same judgment: "For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will be no means precede those who have died." (1 Thess 4: 15) Thus, the Early Christians and ourselves live with the same hope, the same expectation, and have the same mission. We can take the exhortation of St Paul as being addressed to us in 2021: "Beloved, may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints." (1 Thess 3: 12-13)