1st Sunday of Advent | December 1st 2024

Advent is a season of hope, but not human hope. Human hope is to feel the anticipation of the possibility that what you desire to happen will happen, the anticipation that maybe your dream will come true.

Advent is about Christian hope, and that is not a dream. Along with faith and love, hope is one of the three theological virtues which means it comes from God and cannot be found within our human experience. So what is the kind of hope that we receive from God? Christian hope is the confidence to honestly face the struggles of life. Doesn’t sound as nice as human hope, does it…

 The Bible is constantly realistic about the tensions of life in which we live. The fundamental tension of life is expressed in different ways throughout scripture. In the first reading, Israel is living in the tension between exile and dwelling in the land promised to them in the covenant with Abraham. In the world of the old testament having no land was the most hopeless situation that a family or a people could be in.

The Israelite kings attempted to fulfill this promise of God to give a permanent land to the covenant people. They tried to make it happen through entering into battles with surrounding nations and the result was captivity and exile. They hoped, dreamed of a utopia, they tried to make Jerusalem according to their own image, and it failed time and time again.

And out of that failed human hope and while in exile comes the vision of God’s hope, written in the 33rd chapter of the book of the prophet Jeremiah. He looks forward in hope to the return from exile and the restoration of Jerusalem and is given the following inspiration from God: I will raise up for David a just shoot… an anointed king in the line of David will reestablish the just and peaceful use of power among the people of God and will restore their witness to the nations. Jerusalem will be safe and they shall call her the Lord our justice. The Lord will bring to fulfillment the covenant mission of the people established in the covenant with Abraham to be a blessing to the nations. In the streets of Jerusalem shall yet be heard the cry of joy: give thanks to the Lord for he is good his mercy endures forever.

Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, the shoot of David, but he is not what we hoped for, he far exceeded our hopes and expectations. Last week we remembered how as King of the Universe he established a community of priests, giving us a new way of relating with God and one another because that is how he shows us that there is a fundamental unity of all human beings, that there is no one single group of people favored by God, not even Israel. That is why his sacrifice is sufficient; it ends all other forms of sacrifice from all other religions. Humanity is drawn together in the one sacrifice of Christ, and now that we stopped trying to sacrifice each other, we can finally start working together for the transformation of the world and unification of our human family with God and one another. Again remember that is why Jesus gave us the Church: she is the sacrament of union with God and humanity through solidarity, through entering the suffering of others and raising their dignity.

 All of that is signified in the apocalyptic language we heard at the end of the liturgical year, and it is the language with which we begin the new. The gospel of Luke describes hope, Jesus, the Son of Man, coming in the midst of the deep struggles of humanity, not as something in the future, but something in the present, which is why Luke warns to be vigilant and not be caught off guard. What does that mean?

He says that many people are exhausted from partying. It’s true… the older I get, the more I am affected by staying up late. In my 20’s I could pull an all-nighter at the club, take a quick nap in the day and I would be all set. I went to bed at midnight on thanksgiving after just two glasses of wine and I still can’t recover… I am exhausted.

The point is that we are good at trying to distract ourselves from the harsh realities of life as a way of coping with them. We can hope and dream for a better future and wait for it to come all while not realizing we are in a complete mess. The excuse I sometimes hear from Christians is “well it’s all in God’s timing… everything happens for a reason… it’s all God’s will… there is not much I can do but just wait for the second coming.” This is not hope, this is often a coping mechanism to make us feel better about difficulties in our lives, or it can be an excuse to remain passive.

 We cannot think of hope as something for the future, nor can we think of hope as a feeling, a dream, or an ideal. Hope is the person of Christ, and Christ comes in solidarity into our human struggle here and now, so Luke is saying: don’t waste your life in senseless things… the future is how, hope is now, live in hope/solidarity now.

That means, dear family, that living hope is being willing to live in tension. Luke describes this tension as the powers of heaven shaken. It is the tension that you and I experience between the values of our Christian faith and the values of the world contrary to forgiveness and unity, and being willing to ask ourselves: to what extent am I complicit in the unjust treatment of others? To what extent have I tried to escape from my own reality? To what extent do I put others down for my own sake?

This gospel was written answering these questions, it was a matter of life and death. Luke says they will seize you and persecute you they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name. The attempt to establish authentic justice that is inclusive of all human persons will be an assault on the powers of the world and they will resist, but Luke says it will lead to your testimony I will give you a wisdom in speaking that your adversaries will be powerless to resist.

The power of the new age works through taking up the cross of Christ and sacrificial self giving to others. It is a power that finally cannot be resisted. The apostle Paul calls us to our mission: may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.

Advent is meant to be a time of self-examination; it’s called a penitential season. Penitential does not mean a time of self-reproach or even self-punishment, penitential refers to repentance, and the meaning of repentance is reorientation, a change of direction, the direction of love.

Advent is a time to ask ourselves what change of direction is needed in my life for love to increase in me?

 And this question is facilitated through the birth of a baby. Maybe God entered human life as a baby to get our attention, I mean, who doesn’t love a baby? As long as they are not crying nonstop, I guess. Maybe by coming to us as a baby, defenseless and cute, we would be more open to accepting the power of God and letting go of other forms of power trying to control us.

Maybe that is how I am supposed to look at you. Christ constantly used children and put them in our midst… told us we must be like children to enter the Kingdom of God. A baby, even if he is a stranger, is easy to love, but something happens to us as adults that we lose that capacity to love an adult stranger, and instead we turn each other into enemies.   

We must remind ourselves that we are the people of God, the people of hope, the people anointed in our baptism with the power of the Holy Spirit to confront the tensions of life… tensions that we would prefer not to have, it would be nicer if hope was closer to a dream-like ideal, but though Christian hope is realistic, it does not disappoint. 

Luke does not leave us Christians in a state of despair. When these signs begin to happen, when you hear of wars and divisions, when society seems to be falling into strange ideals rejecting the gospel and creating confusion, know that these are the signs that the power of Christ is here, and the power of the world are trying to resist… stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.

Christian hope then leads to confidence in the midst of suffering, putting suffering in the privileged place where the power of love can increase.

As we near the nativity of our lord, as we remember how God placed himself in solidarity with us, we have to ask ourselves if we are living in Christian hope. We cannot escape the tensions of human life, but we can persevere in hope that the power of the spirit can transform the world and that the way of self-giving love is a wisdom that ultimately cannot be resisted.

Fr. Carlos Orozco