Archbishop
Archbishop’s Journal: Season of Advent: Lessons on time
December 2nd, 2009
By Archbishop George H. Niederauer
San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer delivered the following homily, for the First Sunday of Advent, Nov. 29 at St. Mary’s Cathedral.
In this country we have many ways of telling time, of keeping track of the days: the calendar year (32 days left after today); the academic year that begins around Labor Day; the fiscal year (often July 1st); the sports seasons. We Catholics have still another way: our “big picture” is “out of sync” with those others. Our Year of Worship begins today with the season of Advent, then comes Christmas, then Lent, then Easter (Resurrection), Ascension, Pentecost, Ordinary Time, then Advent again. Today is the Catholic Church’s “New Year’s Day.” In this season of Advent we experience and express the hope and longing for the Savior who is to come to us.
We live between the first coming of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem and his second coming as Judge at the end of the world. The readings in the past two weeks and the readings in this week and next touch on the anticipation and fulfillment of both “comings” of Christ. The message in the Gospel reading from Luke is clear: Do not run and hide in fear and dread. Instead, hold up your head in anticipation: “stand up straight, raise your heads, because your ransom is at hand.” These readings support a joyful spirit, an “attentive joyfulness”: we know Jesus is here and has won our salvation.
In one sense, then, there is another third coming of Christ, the one here and now, in each moment, each Mass, each relationship, each time of prayer. Jesus has promised to be with us all days until the end of the world. We Catholics don’t engage in fortune-telling or star-gazing about the future, or the end of the world. Instead, we take literally the last words of Jesus to his followers before he ascended to the Father: “The exact time is not yours to know. The Father has reserved that to Himself. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes down on you; then you are to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, yes, even to the ends of the earth. Our work is to live and rejoice in the “now” of the coming of Jesus the Lord. That is the Catholic’s “power”: not prognostication, but proclamation and hope.
Listen to the prayer of St. Paul in the second reading: “May the Lord increase you and make you overflow with love for each other and for all; may he strengthen your hearts, so you may be blameless and holy before the Father in the coming of the Lord Jesus.” That is what it means for Catholics to live in hope: the daily, practical love of family and friends and neighbors and strangers who need us, and whom we need. That is the effect of the power of Christian hope in our lives: we are called out of the vicious circle and dead end of self-centeredness, into a relationship of love with God, and therefore with each other, with all his children. That’s what Paul means by his exhortation to us in the second half of that reading: just as you learned from us how to conduct yourselves in ways pleasing to God, so now you must learn to make still greater progress, “because,” Paul says, “you know the instruction we gave you in the Lord Jesus.”
St. Paul is merely developing what Jesus says in his warning in the Gospel of Luke. What is the counter-sign to living as Catholic Christians who hope for the Lord’s return? It is the opposite of a life of faith, hope and love: Jesus describes it and warns us, “Be on guard lest your spirits become bloated with indulgence and drunkenness and worldly cares. Then the great day will suddenly close in on you like a trap.” And we can become as drugged and self-absorbed with worries and anxieties and ambitions and resentments as we can with alcohol or drugs!
Instead of that, Jesus says, we are to be watchful and outward-looking, rather than self-absorbed. We are to be “on the lookout” for the Lord coming to us in so many ways: we are to watch for him in prayer, in worship around this altar, in listening to his word, in our daily relationships and responsibilities. Then we will live in ways that reveal our Christian hope in the care and concern we show toward others. Listen to these words from the First Letter of Peter: “Venerate the Lord, that is, Christ, in your hearts. Should anyone ask you the reason for this hope of yours, be ever ready to reply, but speak gently and respectfully.” That is particularly good advice in a world more tuned in to Santa’s Village than Bethlehem.
That’s how we should understand our call as Catholic Christians, because of our Baptism and Confirmation. We are to be “lookouts” for the coming of Christ, watching for how Jesus our Savior is present and active and meeting us each day in our lives, because he is. There’s a fine little four-line verse: “Yesterday is history/Tomorrow is a mystery/ Today is a gift/That’s why we call it the present.”
Time is a marvelous “present” which God keeps giving us. How are we using it? Are we burying ourselves in the past, pawing over its meaning, again and again? Are we so totally distracted with our long-range plans that we miss Christ and others in the present? Or are we just mechanically going through the motions of a kind of “rut” in life? As followers of Jesus Christ we are called away from living in those ways.
As Catholics we believe that history is going somewhere, not round in circles, aimlessly. Because of that faith we are not consumed with anxieties, like outcasts in an empty universe, scratching and scrambling for survival. Remember one definition of an atheist: “a man with no invisible means of support.” In contrast, we disciples are called to depend on the Lord, to be present to him, in everything, not just in a few “great moments” in life. We Catholic Christian “lookouts” need constantly to familiarize ourselves and others with the “invisible means of support” in Christ and Christ’s Church. If we meet Jesus Christ as a friend each day–in prayer and in our neighbor–Christ our Judge will never be a terrifying stranger.
Spirituality is basically about being awake to God and what he is doing in our lives, and what he is beckoning us to do. Just because other people say things like “I don’t know where the time goes” and “Is another Christmas here already?” doesn’t mean we should say those things. As Catholics, we do know where the time goes, and where it comes from, and what it’s for. We believe there is a meaning to what is happening and that meaning is given by Jesus Christ. In this beautiful season of Advent, let’s not get hectic. Let the way we are hosts or guests be a reaching out to pull everyone inside the circle of our love and concern. The most precious gift under your tree, 365 days a year, is the “present”, the time, the Father gives you to spend in Jesus, His Son.
From December 4, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
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