A Reflection by Fr. Donald Senior

STAY AWAKE

Advent itself is a liturgical season in which we are to intensify our spiritual alertness about God’s presence in our everyday life and also to think in a serious way about our future from the perspective of our faith.  What is our destiny as human beings?  With the calamity of the pandemic and the many other challenges in our world, it is not just religious folk who are concerned about what the future will hold.

The readings for this Advent Sunday call on us to be “alert” and to “stay awake.”  The first reading from Isaiah pleads with God not to let us “wander from your ways” or to “harden our hearts.”  When God comes for us, the prophet prays, “Would that you might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you in our ways.”  Despite the people’s going astray, Isaiah dares to remind God, “Yet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter; we are all the work of your hands.”

Responsorial Psalm 80 also pleads that we might wake up and see God’s merciful face:  “Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.”  Help us, the psalmist prays, “then we will no more withdraw from you; give us new life, and we will call upon your name.” 

Paul strikes a similar note in the selection from his First Letter to the Corinthians.  Paul assures his fellow Christians that they are “not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Jesus “will keep you firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.”  No matter what fears we have about the future, Paul strongly affirms a conviction found throughout his letters:  “God is faithful.”

Above all, the selection from Mark’s Gospel urges that we be spiritually alert so that we can respond to the moments of grace that come to us.  The setting for Jesus’ words to his disciples is on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the city of Jerusalem and its magnificent temple.

Throughout the first part of the discourse (not included in the Sunday reading), Jesus warns his disciples that the future will include some calamities and heartbreak.  Their mission of proclaiming the Gospel to the world must continue, but there will be opposition and suffering.

But the overriding spirit of Jesus’ words is that God is faithful and will not abandon them.  At the conclusion of human history, the Son of Man will send out the angels to gather his loved ones from the “four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”

In the meantime, as the Gospel passage emphasizes, Jesus urges his disciples, “Be watchful! Be alert!”  Like a sentry on the city gate, they are to be alert for God’s presence in our world.  The word “watch” used repeatedly here is actually the Greek word, “gregoreite,” which means literally, “stay awake!”

Jesus’ call to “stay awake” reminds me of Pope Francis’ frequent pleas to denounce the culture of indifference, an attitude that assumes “things that do not affect me, do not interest me.”  Yet, the pope notes, “The pandemic has highlighted how vulnerable and interconnected everyone is.”  He says, “If we do not take care of one another, starting with the least … we cannot heal the world.”  Such alert care for the needs of those around us is “staying awake.”

ADVENT CONVERSION IN 2020

Long months of the vicious COVID-19 pandemic preceded the arrival of this year's Advent season leading to Christmas.  Neither Advent nor Christmas in 2020 will escape the pandemic's shadow.

But Advent is a season for conversion, a hopeful, forward-looking period that keeps spiritual growth high in mind.  The season asks where God is found.

Was God present despite the pandemic's ravages?  It entailed real pain and proved stunningly disruptive.  Yet many attest that God-like developments occurred in all kinds of homes and communities during this time.

Conversion during Advent is, in particular, "a question of converting our idea of God," Pope Francis has said.  It is a time "to welcome not a fairy-tale character, but the God who challenges us, involves us, and before whom a choice is imposed."

How might a person's idea of God need to grow?  A speech Pope Francis gave described several ways the idea of God goes awry.  "The Bible and the church's history show clearly" how believers "can frequently come to think and act as if they were the owners of salvation and not its recipients," Pope Francis explained.  He cautioned:  "Being Christian ... does not mean acting like an elite group who think they have God in their pocket, but as people who know that they are loved by the Lord" despite their imperfections.

Clearly, disturbing events in our surrounding world can shake us and leave us asking once again where God is for us or, more simply, how life suddenly could become painfully frustrating and confusing.  Has the 2020 pandemic often been such an event?

Early in Christian history a different kind of event, but also one stemming from the early Christians' immediate world, shook believers and left them wondering if they had misunderstood a promise of God.  We hear about this on Advent's second Sunday in 2020.

A reading that Sunday from the Second Letter of Peter (3:8-14) describes a big issue that arose at that time and ultimately prompted many to refocus their understanding of God.  The issue involved Christ's second coming in glory at the end of time, which is a key Advent theme.

Many early Christians apparently expected the second coming of Christ to occur quickly.  But parents and grandparents died as time passed, and some Christians began to wonder if God had delayed the promise of the second coming.

Unsurprisingly, there were scoffers who began to suggest not only that God had delayed the second coming, but that there might be no second coming at all.  Some insinuated that God no longer was intimately involved with this world's life, according to a note in the New American Bible.

But God's promise remained, the Second Letter of Peter affirmed.  It advised the Christian community that "with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day."  Moreover, "the Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard 'delay,' but he is patient with you" (3:8-9).

It was a disturbing moment in time among early Christians.  It seems, though, that conversion and renewed faith followed in its wake, as the author of Second Peter urged Christians to turn to asking "what sort of persons" they ought to be and to focus their energies on conducting themselves "in holiness and devotion" (3:11).

To hear God's voice, Christians pray, reflect, participate in worship or consult Scripture and the faith community, for example.  But cannot an incarnate Lord also speak within the world and through its ongoing events?

Did this occur for the ancient Christian community, or with today's 2020 pandemic?  Is God found and heard in the context of disturbing current events?

The pandemic threatened and changed human lives.  It did this in ways that felt painful.  Nonetheless, doors somehow were left open for good outcomes.

Suffering was no stranger to the pandemic.  But the online, virtual methods that emerged for fulfilling the demands of jobs, schoolwork or essential shopping frequently yielded surprising human rewards.

Then there was the simple fact that so many now spent much more time at home in the company of family members or friends.  How many of them found during this time that they were developing a renewed appreciation of each other and of their relationships?

The pandemic "has enabled us, perhaps for the first time in our lives, to recognize the deeply interconnected relationship of all living things and the urgent need for us to repent and change our lives," Fr. Michael Perry, a U.S. priest who is minister general of the Order of Friars Minor, observed in an Aug. 1 homily in Assisi, Italy.

"The call to repentance, conversion, to open our minds, hearts, and lives to a new way of living together on this planet is more urgent now than at any other moment in human history," he said.

Christians are called, Father Perry stressed, "to seek the way back toward God, toward one another, toward ourselves, and toward creation."

A Reflection by Fr. Mark Goldasich

Per volant sedem vestra Braccae.

If I had a family crest, I’d put these words on it.  I won’t vouch for the accuracy of the Latin, but it means: “Fly by the seat of your pants.”

That certainly describes how I live my life — even more so in this time of COVID-19.

In other words, planning isn’t my strong suit.  It’s usually the event that drives my response.  I don’t think I’ve ever been busier during these days of repeatedly dealing with new restrictions then emerging guidelines when certain restrictions are eased.  Unfortunately, that meant switching from one thing to another without adequate preparation on my part.  And I’m still in that pattern.

It reminds me of this story:

A male student, rather lazily inclined, noticed that a female classmate always recited her Spanish lessons well.  One day, he asked her, “How do you recite your lessons so perfectly?”

“Before I study,” she told the boy, “I always pray that I can remember my lessons and repeat them well.”

The boy thought to himself, “So, that’s her secret. Well, I’ll just pray, too!”

That night, he prayed up a storm, reciting every prayer he could remember.  However, the next day he couldn’t repeat even one phrase of the lesson.  Baffled, he looked for his friend and confronted her.

“Hey, I prayed,” he told her, “but I couldn’t repeat a single phrase from yesterday’s homework!”

“Did you take time to learn the lesson?” she asked.

“Of course not,” said the boy.  “I didn’t study at all.  I had no reason to.  You told me to pray that I might remember the lesson.”

“Well, there’s your problem,” replied the girl.  “I told you I prayed before, not instead of, studying!”

Too many times, I’m that little boy.  Prayer is wonderful, but it should be accompanied by action.  For centuries, the Benedictines have understood this with their motto: “Ora et labora,” which means “Pray AND work.”  

The season of Advent, the beginning of a new church year, is an ideal time to jettison an old and ineffective pattern of life and replace it with something better.

Usually, I’ve approached Advent by praying that the Holy Spirit would bless these days.

And that was it; I took it no further.  Perhaps the Spirit was calling me to sketch out a plan on how exactly I’d keep Advent holy, instead of doing my usual fly through it "by the seat of my pants"?  

How about you?  What would make your Advent holy and meaningful?  During Advent, we have time to pray and reflect on that question.  But don’t leave it there.  After prayer, Google “celebrating Advent,” to come up with a slew of practical ways — to make this season come alive.  Don’t be swept along by the seat of your pants and miss opportunities to prepare for a deeper coming of Christ this Christmas.

Because I’m hoping to change my ways this time around, I’ve got a new motto all ready to go on my crest:  “Tardus et stabilis vincit genus” (“Slow and steady wins the race!”).