Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, C, Vigil
November 30, 2024
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.30.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which he gives us the orientations he would like us to have as we begin the Season of Advent and a new liturgical year.
* We’ve just finished the national celebration of Thanksgiving, in which we’ve had a chance to thank God for all of the ways with which he blesses us, year in, year out. One of the sources of gratitude we should have is for the way he constantly gives us new beginnings, so that we can improve on what we’ve gotten right and learn from our mistakes in order to become more like him and take greater advantage of the gift of time we have to grow to love him and others more. Advent is the time in which we go back to the beginnings to get a fresh spiritual start.
* During Advent, we prepare for Christ’s second coming by reliving the preparation of the Jewish people for his first coming and by learning better how to embrace him in the present in the various ways he comes to us, most especially in prayer, the Sacraments and in the people he sends us each day.
* Jesus begins this Sunday’s passage by talking about the end times, which he says will feature changes in the sun, moon and stars, the shaking of the heavens and the roaring of the seas and the waves. He was describing how the things by which people at his time would get their bearings — like the sun during the day and the moon and the stars at night — would be dramatically altered and people would be like mariners on convulsing seas with think cloud cover by which they can’t get their bearings. Things in which people formerly took their security would be no more. At that time, he said, we would see the Son of Man, Jesus our incarnate Lord, coming on a cloud with power and great glory. We celebrated last week the Solemnity of Christ the King and Jesus is using a divine image taken from last Sunday’s first reading from the Book of the Prophet Daniel. Jesus was indicating that we would now have to find our bearings exclusively in him, in his divinity shining through our humanity.
* To this coming, Jesus says, we should respond in four ways.
* First, he says we should stand erect and raise our heads because our redemption is at hand. We shouldn’t try to hide. We shouldn’t run away. We should lift up our heads, our hearts, our whole existence to our Redeemer. It’s common for us to be weighed down by the things of this world. Like the woman in St. Luke’s Gospel who for 18 years was bent over and incapable of standing up straight, whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath in a synagogue, we often don’t take our eyes off the ground. We focus on our worries; we obsess about what weighs us down. As we begin this new liturgical year, Jesus tells us to get up and raise our minds to him, our hearts to him, and souls to him, with all our strength. Our redemption is at hand, it’s at arms’ reach, and he wants us to seize it. He comes precisely to redeem us and that should make us eager, not alarmed.
* Second, he tell us to be vigilant. Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus gave a parable about his second coming in which he contrasted the faithful and prudent steward who awaited his Master’s return and faithfully fed others and himself with the nourishment the Master provided with the unfaithful and stupid s...
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