Father Tom Elliot (1st Sunday of Advent)
Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:37-44
At the beginning of the week, I had a great idea for this weekend’s homily. The theme I
was planning on preaching on was not only applicable to Advent, but it also spoke of our
school’s Trust and Endowment Fund (TEF), which we are highlighting this weekend. The theme
was “planning and preparing for the future.” That is what Advent is all about—preparation and
planning, and a school endowment is an awesome example of the importance of planning and
preparing for the future. I was proud of myself for coming up with such a subtle way to tie these
themes together with the beginning of Advent. However, God was apparently not amused. He
somehow reduced my theme to rubble and compelled me to start over! I hate it when He does
that! Even more than that, I hated
His
theme—death!
I pleaded with God. It’s the beginning of Advent—a time of joy and celebration—and
I’m supposed to preach on death?! You’ve got to be kidding me! How does death have
anything
to do with Advent?! I found myself getting angrier and angrier. In the midst of my anger, God
reminded me that our readings this weekend and next weekend are about death. Sure, the word
“death” is not used, but the readings are about the end times, which God assured me was
essentially the same as death.
So I asked God to try to explain how death was supposed to be a good theme for the
beginning of Advent. Here’s where He led my ponderings—God’s greatest desire for all of us is
that we spend eternity with Him. Sacred Scripture assures us of this fact. In the Gospel of John,
chapter three, we read, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone
who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). Knowing God’s
greatest desire is very important, not only for eternity, but for making sense of our earthly life.
In addition to knowing God’s greatest desire, it is important for us to know our greatest
fear. The greatest human fear is death. In fact, every human fear is somehow tied to the fear of
death, whether it’s the fear of snakes, the fear of heights, the fear of rejection, the fear of
vulnerability, etc. They are all rooted in our fear of death. So celebrating Christ’s first coming is
also about preparing for the Second Coming, or our death, which must entail our coming to terms
with our fear of death. This means, in some ironic way, that Advent is ultimately a preparation
for death! If our Advent preparation is only about putting up decorations, buying trees, wrapping
presents, and hosting parties, then we have missed the real point of our Advent preparation.
If we are going to let our Advent preparation truly be a preparation for death, then there
are a few things we can do in order to ensure we’re ready for Christ’s coming. The first thing we
can do is nurture our longing for heaven. There are two main paths that this can take. One, we
can embrace our infirmities. I have had many people who were sick or handicapped ask me why
God was punishing them. It is not God punishing them, but as we embrace our humanity,
especially in its sickness, brokenness, and handicaps, we are given a whole new understanding
and longing for eternity. While God does not cause our suffering, He frequently uses it to
remind us that we were not made for this earth; we are merely pilgrims here, journeying to our
heavenly homeland.
