First Sunday of Advent Year C
Jeremiah 33.14 -16, 1Thess 3.12 – 4.2, Luke 21 .25 – 28,34 – 36
We spend enormous amounts of our resources, time, and energy on things that give us a sense of security. We buy expensive insurance policies to protect ourselves from any sort of disaster. We have high-tech alarm systems in our businesses, homes, and cars. Some of us work and even live in buildings surrounded with security fences. Closed circuit television, eyes stare at every living thing of our habitats and continually recording every movement.
And still, we are not secure. Moreover, no amount of money, protection systems, medical effort, or bodyguards can protect us from the ultimate confrontation we each will individually face. For each one of us, will one day stand face to face before Christ at the end of our earthly existence. Our eyes are torn away from what lies ahead down the road at the end of our time here on earth.
Thus, it is that Jesus gives us fair warning at the end of today’s Gospel account. Allow me to repeat the last part:
“Be on guard lest your spirits become bloated with indulgence and drunkenness and worldly care. The great day will suddenly close in on you like a trap. The day I speak of will come upon all who dwell on the face of the earth, so be on the watch. Pray constantly for the strength to escape whatever is in prospect and to stand secure before the Son of Man.”
Stand secure before the Son of Man? How can we stand secure? We will be standing there before Him without our bank accounts, our CPP retirement accounts, our alarm systems, and with no security fences surrounding us. And we will not be looking into the eyes of closed circuit television monitors. No. We will instead be looking into the eyes of the Son of God. His judgment of what we did with our lives will be upon us.
What securities will we have? What securities should we have? All you and I will have at that moment when we face the Son of God will be our memories. It is from them that we will draw up our accounts; it is in them that we will find the records of our lives.
Lesson
1) We need to prepare ourselves for Christ’s second coming by allowing Jesus to be reborn daily in our lives. Advent gives us time to make this preparation — repenting of and confessing our sins, renewing our lives through prayer, penance, and sharing our blessings with others. In Advent, we also ought to check for what needs to be put right in our lives, to see how we have failed, and to assess the ways in which we can do better.
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