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First Sunday of Advent (C)

December 01, 2024

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Introit

Collect

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,
the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ
with righteous deeds at his coming,
so that, gathered at his right hand,
they may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Reading Jer 33:14-16

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15 In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Responsorial Psalm Ps 25:4-5,8-9,10,14

R/. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.

Second Reading 1 Thess 3:12-4:2

Beloved: 12 May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. 13 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 Finally, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, as, in fact, you are doing, you should do so more and more. 2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

Alleluia Ps 85:8

Gospel Lk 21:25-28, 34-36

Jesus spoke to his disciples about his return in glory. 25 “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. 34 “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, 35 and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Catena Nova

The Lord says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” He means: “Nothing that is lasting in your world lasts for eternity without change; and everything that in me is perceived as passing away is kept firm, without passing away. My utterance, which passes away, expresses thoughts that endure without change....” Therefore, my friends, do not love what you see cannot long exist. (Pope St. Gregory the Great)

If we try to escape sadness by seeking our consolation in sleep, we will fail to find what we are seeking, for we will lose in sleep the consolation we might have received from God if we had stayed awake and prayed (St. Thomas More).

Year passes after year silently Christ’s coming is ever nearer than it was. O that, as He comes nearer earth, we may approach nearer heaven! O, my brethren, pray Him to give you the heart to seek Him in sincerity. Pray Him to make you in earnest. You have one work only, to bear your cross after Him. Resolve in His strength to do so. Resolve to be no longer beguiled by “shadows of religion,” by words, or by disputings, or by notions, or by high professions, or by excuses, or by the world’s promises or threats. Pray Him to give you what Scripture calls “an honest and good heart,” or “a perfect heart” and, without waiting, begin at once to obey Him with the best heart you have. Any obedience is better than none—any profession which is disjoined from obedience, is a mere pretence and deceit. Any religion which does not bring you nearer to God is of the world (St. John Henry Newman).

Listen to the never-pausing murmur
Of the waves that fret the shore:
See the ancient pine that stands the firmer
For the storm-shock that it bore;
And the moon her silver chalice filling
With light from the great sun’s store;
And the stars which deck our temple’s ceiling
As the flowers deck its floor;
Look and hearken while you may,
For these things shall pass away:
All these things shall fail and cease;
Let us wait the end in peace.

Let us wait the end in peace, for truly
That shall cease which was before:
Let us see our lamps are lighted, duly
Fed with oil nor wanting more:
Let us pray while yet the Lord will hear us,
For the time is almost o’er;
Yea, the end of all is very near us;
Yea, the Judge is at the door.
Let us pray now, while we may;
It will be too late to pray
When the quick and dead shall all
Rise at the last trumpet-call. (Christina Rossetti)

We persist in saying that we keep vigil in expectation of the Master. But in reality we should have to admit, if we were sincere, that we no longer expect anything. The flame must be revived at all costs. At all costs we must renew in ourselves the desire and the hope for the great coming. But where are we to look for the source of this rejuvenation? From the perception of a more intimate connection between the victory of Christ and the outcome of the work which our human effort here below is seeking to construct (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,
Skies, and be perfect! Fly, vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,
And disappear.
You moon, be slow to go down,
This is your full!

The four white roads make off in silence
Towards the four parts of the starry universe.
Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth.
We have become more humble than the rocks,
More wakeful than the patient hills.

Charm with your stainlessness these nights in Advent,
holy spheres,
While minds, as meek as beasts,
Stay close at home in the sweet hay;
And intellects are quieter than the flocks that feed by starlight.

Oh pour your darkness and your brightness over all our solemn valleys, You skies: and travel like the gentle Virgin,
Toward the planets’ stately setting,

Oh white full moon as quiet as Bethlehem! (Thomas Merton)

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child. (Archbishop Rowan Williams)

Homily

There's been a lot of excitement lately about seeing the Aurora Borealis. The Northern Lights are a rare treat but their cause isn’t something you should be too excited about – namely, a strong geomagnetic storm brought on by a significant solar flare and coronal mass ejection. As the sun has entered its regular 11-year cycle of increasing sunspot activity – the solar maximum expected to peak in 2025 – scientists worry that a sufficiently strong storm could knock out power grids, satellites, and – God forbid – the Internet. It would be catastrophic – but the light show would be spectacular! Then there was the total solar eclipse back in April to which some of us we were treated — not in sunless Rochester, of course — along with the partial lunar eclipse in September (no luck there, either).

So is this what Jesus was talking about? There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, saying, moreover, that they will imminent. Meaning right around the corner, as in pretty much all the time – constant little reminders redemption is at hand? After all, they’ve been popping up steadily for over two millennia ever since a Star guided some astrologers to Bethlehem to visit a Child — the just shoot Jeremiah foretold (I) — to an eclipse of the sun when that Child was crucified. There’s nothing at all new about signs in the sky. Any more than roaring of the sea and the waves (G). When don’t they roar?

So all these people I see on YouTube, Catholics included, who are reading the signs in the sky and are quite certain the End is near, people who are in constant communication with heaven, telling them it’ll happen "any day now," well, they’re both right and wrong. Right because signs abound along with that other telling item Jesus mentioned – tribulations. Those are never lacking in human history. Ask the people of Ukraine and Gaza. But these latter-day sky-searchers are wrong too because, well, signs are just that – signs. They aren’t really meant to pin anything down – they are meant to point us to a coming Day when we will all stand before the Son of Man.

I’m sure people who lived through the fall of the Roman Empire, or the Bubonic Plague, or two World Wars might be forgiven if they too thought theirs were the end times. I can imagine lots of people died of fright in anticipation of what was coming upon the world when Attilla the Hun was at the city gates, or a third of Europe was taken by the Black Death, or Hitler’s armies were on the march.

Now I agree that China’s saber-rattling over Taiwan and Putin's threshold-lowering threats to go nuclear are nerve-wracking. While the new ambassador-elect to Israel is the kind of Evangelical just itching for Armageddon to make way for the Second Coming of Christ. And the UN Climate Change Conference in Azerbaijan this month — did you hear much about it in the media? — hasn't allayed my fears about imminent climate disasters given its report that trillions of dollars are needed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect lives from the worsening impacts of climate change while the world's wealthiest nations agreed to pony up only $300 billion a year to developing nations who will suffer the worst and only after a lot of arm twisting. (Somehow I doubt this will figure prominently in the next federal budget.) Nor has a pandemic made me very optimistic about an extinction-level threat lurking in some exotic market or laboratory. Such tribulations, if and when they come about, will indeed assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth unlike any previous calamities in human history.

So let's not be complacent about “the End.” There's always need for vigilance, vigilance to accompany the ever-present signs and tribulations every age sees. For you never want to be asleep should the Day of the Lord catch you by surprise like a trap.

Which is why we need Advent. To keep us from becoming drowsy. From going through life half-awake, allowing the anxieties of daily life to distract our attention from One who is coming in a cloud with power and great glory. All the result of too much carousing and drunkenness (G) – meaning all those things we use to deaden awareness and dull our senses to what life is really, and finally, all about. Idle pursuits keeping us from living blameless lives in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones (II).

And this time of year has plenty of such distractions – that serve to blot out the sun and the moon and the stars, serving only to eclipse God’s Christ. So best we sober up, sit up straight, stand erect and raise our heads and let the somber, serious days of Advent unfold even as we await One who, when we least expect, arrives -- no matter how many signs have served to warn us. Who lives and reigns, world without end. Amen.

Intercessions (Joe Milner; The Sunday Website)

For the Church: that we may be attentive to God’s presence and action in our lives so that we may be ready to act when God invites.

For unending hope: that we may live with an awareness of God’s abundant compassion and look to the future with childlike expectancy for the fulfillment of God’s promises.

For courage in facing suffering: that God will fill our hearts with courage and give us the strength to remain faithful even when tragedy and suffering enter our lives.

For all who live in fear and confusion: that whether they are rich or poor, refugee or famous, they may encounter the light of Christ that will show them the way forward to a fuller life.

For freedom from numbness and self-centeredness: that God will help us understand our true calling and focus on loving and serving God each day.

For all who are experiencing the collapse of social, political, and economic structures: that they may seek first the reign of God and find their security in God.

For all who are ill: that they may know God’s healing presence and entrust themselves to God’s loving care.

For all who are traveling this day: that God will guide them on their way home or back to school, preserve them from harm, and help them arrive without delay.

Rend the heavens and come down, O God of all the ages! Rouse us from sleep, deliver us from our heedless ways, and form us into a watchful people, that, at the advent of your Son, he may find us doing what is right, mindful of all you command. Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen (ICEL; 1998).

Offertory Chant

Offertory Hymn (Richard Horn)

A shoot shall come forth out of Jesse,
And a bud shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of life shall be with him,
The spirit of wisdom and truth.
Then the lamb shall lie down with the
leopard,
And the lion eat straw with the ox,
For the hand of a Child shall lead them
To the peaceable kingdom of God.

From out of the wells of salvation
Will he draw us the water of life;
His waist shall be girdled with justice,
The heart of his heart shall be Love.
He'll come from the end of his heaven,
And the earth shall be torn from its place;
Our lives shall be filled with his radiance
As floodwaters cover the sea.

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