Homily for 1^st Sunday of Advent 2009

Listening to the reports on the Emissions Trading Scheme last week I don't know whether to be more afraid of the consequences of global warming or the consequences of the political debate about it!

The picture painted of the dire consequences of global warming have an apocalyptic ring about them. Solutions abound it is claimed if only people could agree to them. Yet as so often it is difficulties in the area of human relationships that is the hardest to resolve. It doesn't matter whether they are international relationships or personal ones at home the same oft repeated dynamics are at play as we all know.

Jesus' words in Luke about the end of the Temple in Jerusalem and all it meant for the Jewish religion could be describing the our own hopes and fears! And it is at a spiritual level.

Whatever it is that we fear our response, Jesus tells us, is to be alert and pray. We do tend mentally to skip over Advent. Our thoughts are about what we do for Christmas and all the preparations for it. We are busy making preparations. There are Christmas parties to attend and carols to sing. We celebrate Christmas in advance. However, Advent provides the opportunity to look at our future in the present moment. It can help us discern what it is that drives us and decide what direction our lives could take. The great disorders in our world and society and politics should remind us that there is a disorder within ourselves that we need to take heed of.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser OFM wrote a reflection on part of a poem by TS Eliott. The section of the poem is:

“The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame.
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”

From the Four Quartets.

Fr Rolheiser writes in a way that captures well the reality we all experience:

"To be human is to be on fire for a consummation, a love, a restfulness, an embrace, and a symphony that, in this life, forever escapes us. In every cell of our bodies and in the very DNA of our souls we ache for someone or something that we have not yet known, ache in a way that leaves us too dissatisfied and restless to live fully inside our own skins. Our lives always seem too small for us. Moreover, and this is the key, this is God’s doing."

If that is true then we face a choice. It is not a choice between being on fire or getting rid to that fire and be at rest. Rather, it is a choice between being content with our own fire and all its limitations or being alive with the fire of God. A lot of people choose their own fire. Following our own fire only usually leads us down the road of things like an endless consumerism in an attempt to satisfy our longing. Any idea of God is too inaccessible and problematic.

That is the opportunity of Advent. Advent asks us to gaze at our own restlessness, our own fire, the things that drive us onward. We look at our restlessness and hunger, not to deny them. After all they are from God. But we do it to deepen our understanding of them to see them as a way to lead us beyond ourselves to God. It is to a God who is far from being inaccessible. But to a God whose intimate love for us is revealed at Christmas. Advent celebrates the future we hunger for right now.

St Paul turns to prayer in the second reading like the concerned pastor he is, “May the Lord be generous in increasing your love and make you love one another and the whole human race as much as we love you.” In this way we will be prepared for the coming of our Saviour in his glory and be standing erect and confident that we are being transformed.

Fr Graham.