First Sunday of
Advent
|
"So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men
will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be
left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be
taken, and one will be left. Therefore, stay awake! For you
do not know on which day your Lord will come."
Saint
Matthew 24:39-42 |

ADVENT
A Time for Change ...
Advent
comes from the Latin Adventus, arrival. It is a season of
great hope, anticipation, expectation: the arrival, the birth of the
long promised Redeemer. We know this.
But it
is also a penitential season, a season of metanoia,
of repentance, a change of mind, a change in thinking, that is a
turning away from sin – in preparation for the arrival of the
Christ-Child, the Innocens Patri, the Innocent of the Father,
the Sinless One.
In this
sense we know – not when Christ will come – but when He came.
We also
know that He will come again.
We
simply do not know when. And so Christ admonishes us
today to be mindful of this reality, a reality we have all painfully
experienced in the death of some we have loved. Yesterday we broke
bread, today we parted ways.
We know
what it is like to stand in that fallow field from which one loved
has been taken ... the summer sun bronzed our faces in our youth ...
and a breath of winter, out of season, out of time, swept through,
all the flowers withered ... the soil that we had sown with
dreams, now falls from our hands on wreathes of memories that fall
lastingly into a sad earth, dark with the death of dreams.
But a
breath separates our joy from sorrow.
Christ
has come. Out of time. Out season. Out of place. And at a time we
knew not, nor could have begun to anticipate.
Adventus ... arrival – not as past but as present.
We
prepare for His birth ... but not for our death. We rejoice in His
having come ... but not in His coming.
Yes, let
us prepare for His coming. As having come ... and as yet to come.
If we
love truly and well, we will rejoice in both.
Is it
not beautiful that Mary laid Him lovingly in a Manger of straw? The
Field, after all, is His.
And we
are the harvest.
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