So, it begins… our journey toward Christmas and our year-long journey through Matthew’s Gospel. However, we begin by reading near the end of the Gospel, which I don’t know about you, but I find that strange. Why prepare for Christmas, remembering Jesus’ first coming, by reading about the second coming? Why not start in chapter 1 of Matthew with the genealogy of Jesus.

Because Christmas is about the beginning of the process of transformation of earth into heaven. Jesus taking on human life, the incarnation, began this process, and it continues to this day until it is complete, and you and I are involved directly in this process primarily through the Eucharist. Jesus told us that as we gather to receive this sacrament, something was going to be happening to us: we would become, i.e. be transformed, into His Body.

We understand heaven as the unification of all things in Christ, and the Eucharist is the means by which that happens. That is what makes the Church, as we reflected all last year, the sacrament of union with God and humanity. Now we focus on the Church as that place where heaven and earth converge, the fulfilment of what we pray when we say: thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

To grasp this new reality, it does require that we enter into God’s time while still experience our own. For example, Advent is the season we prepare for the first coming of Jesus. Then we also talk about the second coming of Jesus, when He will come to judge the living and the dead. Our experience of time and space tells us these are two distinct events.

However, the New Testament never talks about two different comings of Jesus. The word for “Advent” is parousia, which means “coming,” in the singular. What for us seems like two different events, in God’s space and time, it is just one. It began in the incarnation, it is ongoing right now as we speak because we are being transformed in this very moment, and it will be made fully visible at the end of the ages. This is how the infinite presence of God, heaven, which is beyond the grasp of our perception of space and time, is made present on earth.

This is the same reality that governs the sacraments and why we need them. All of the sacraments are earthly: water, oil, bread, wine, the body, these are things that belong very much to earth and are governed by physics and undergo the corruption of space and time. At the same time, the sacraments are heavenly; through them, the transformative power of the Holy Spirit is constantly being poured out into the world through our continual participation.

The season of Advent is meant to remind us that we are in the midst of this process, yet there are many who are either ignorant of it or forget. So, today Jesus says, “Stay awake.” Paul tells the Romans, “It is the hour now for you to wake from your sleep.” Meaning, wake up to the fact that Jesus has started a process of transformation, and it requires your willing cooperation, otherwise earth will remain just earth… which at it’s worse it is hell. But you were made for more, destined for heaven, and “heaven can’t wait” as St. Carlo Acutis would say… it is already here.

So, how do we wake up? The readings tells us of two ways. First, we need to wake up to why we desire what we desire.

Paul describes being asleep as being controlled by the desires of the flesh, giving the body what it wants without reflecting more deeply on why and how it effects the spiritual dimension.

Over the past century, social science has helped us understand that what we desire is heavily influenced on the envy we have of others. Philosopher and social theorist René Girard described this as “mimetic desire.” We humans learn by imitation, mimesis. We mimic the sounds others make to learn to speak, we mimic the movements of others to learn how to walk. The downside is that it also results in wanting, desiring, what others have.

Behavioral scientists will do things like put two babies in a room with a ball, the babies will often just sit there and show no interest in the ball. But if someone takes the ball and gives it to one of the babies, the other baby will instantly desire that ball and begin to cry, or try to take it away. We tend to desire what others have, not so much because of the object itself, but by the simple fact that someone else has it, it seems to give them some sort of value, and we want that for ourselves.

This is how marketing works, which we see a lot of it right now during the holiday season. An ad for an expensive car or a watch always shows how happy a person appears to be with that object. What you are attracted to is not so much the object itself, but what you perceive the object is doing to the individual that has it. You are buying perceived success, and we all want success.

This is what Paul says it means to be asleep, it is a very earthly way of living, the materialists of the world. To be awake is to realize that man does not live by bread alone (Matthew 4:4).

So, if part of our earthly experience is desire, we cannot escape it, then how can we make heaven present in our earthly desires? In Matthew 6:33 Jesus will say “seek first the kingdom of God.” Then in chapter 16, He will says, “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

If desire is part of our daily experience, then we need to learn to desire heaven, and we do that by imitating Christ. Paul in Ephesians says, “Be imitators of God… walk in love, as Christ has loved us.” We can imitate Jesus without the fear because unlike others, He is not in competition with us. Jesus came to live a human life not to take anything away, but to awaken us to the reality that we are made in the image of God. Our highest calling is to live in communion, not in competition, and if I am imitating Christ I will too learn to stop seeing others as competition.

Advent is a time to examine my relationships: Are the ways that I act really bringing me into communion with other people, or are they moving me away from it?

Second, we wake up when we are in constant communion with God. Jesus talks about His coming being like the days of Noah. In the story of Noah, God offered life in covenant communion by receiving and being obedient to the law. People kept falling asleep on this covenant communion, either ignoring the law or using it for their own gain.

In the new covenant, this life is offered in the Eucharist, the maximum expression of communion with God, yet many people are asleep with regards to the real presence – some literally are asleep during Mass.

In 2019 a poll from the Pew Research Center set off red flags in the Church when it found that only 31% of Catholics believe that the bread and wine used in communion become the Body and Blood of Christ. This is alarming, because if the Eucharist is our means of transformation, it can only transform us if we are awake to the heavenly power it contains.

The only power bread has over me is to make me gain weight. A loaf of bread will never help me be one with Christ and make me desire to be in communion with you.

The only power wine has over me is to heighten my earthly desires. A drink will never inspire me to be a willing sacrifice for others, though my dance moves do get a little better, I must say.

Since then, the Church in the United States has begun a Eucharistic revival, to wake us up to the reality of the power of Christ in the Eucharist, our source of transformation.

Friends, as we begin our season of advent, let it awaken us up. As the Body of Christ grows in the world, person by person waking up to the unifying power of God, the vision of Isaiah becomes a reality: “nations shall beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning hooks. One nation shall no longer raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.”

We are living in the Advent of Christ, awakened to the reality that heaven is here.