HAIL AND BLESSED BE THE HOUR!

A SERMON FOR ADVENT SUNDAY

It’s December already.  We stand today, on this First Sunday in Advent, at the beginning of a new liturgical year.  Like all beginnings, this one too gives us hope.  In fact, more than most beginnings, the whole theme of Advent is hope.  Hope, the cardinal virtue, sandwiched and too often forgotten between the other two cardinal virtues of faith and charity.  And yet it is a “cardinal” virtue, cardinal from the Latin word cardo, which means “hinge”.  Faith, hope and charity are the three virtues on which all the other virtues hinge, or depend.  For hope to be placed in this category along with faith and charity shows us just how very important it is.  And as the nights grow long and Nature drops her leaves and steels herself for the coming winter, as the world around us seems to fall further and further into despair (which is the vice directly opposed to the virtue of hope), now as Advent begins, we are in greater need of hope than at any other time of the year.

Our season of Advent begins four weeks before Christ is born.  This year, as Christmas Eve falls on the Fourth Sunday in Advent, the season is only three weeks long, the shortest that Advent can possibly be.  So without delay, let’s begin looking forward to what the season portends, something so good that it makes the difference to us between heaven and hell.  The birth of the Redeemer will bring us the joy that comes from knowing that the gates of heaven were re-opened.  We find peace and joy in this annual reminder of our redemption.  During the Advent season, usually four weeks long, we remember the four thousand years between the fall of Adam and the coming of the Messiah, between the closing of heaven’s gate and its re-opening.  The people who lived during those four thousand years and who had been chosen to be God’s people, they were given a glimpse into the future by the prophets of their Old Testament.  They were told of a Messiah who would come and transform their dark world of death and bring them life and peace.  The prophet of Isaiah, for example, wrote that “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light:  they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

Last week we looked at the four last things, death, judgment, heaven and hell.  We looked at them through the prism of the tragic events that will accompany the world’s end—dreadful times that fill us with fear for the future.  But today is Advent, and our fear is replaced with hope.  The events we foresee are the same, but now we look at them in an entirely different light.  Like the people of the Old Testament looking from afar as they anticipate their Redemption, we look forward to Christmas with hope.  We see the approach of our Redemption in all its aspects, not just in the birth of the Christ Child, but most importantly for the reasons why the Christ Child came, so that our own last end may be with him, that our death and judgment may be a doorway to an eternity of bliss and not suffering.  As we read in the first Responsory of this morning’s service of Matins, “I look from afar, and behold I see the power of God, coming like as a cloud to cover the land with the hosts of his people.  Go ye out to meet him and say: Tell us if thou art he, that shalt reign over God's people Israel.  All ye that dwell in the world, all ye children of men, high and low, rich and poor, one with another, go ye out to meet him and say:  Hear, O thou Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep.  Tell us if thou art he.  Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in, that shalt reign over God's people Israel.”

Let us begin our preparations today, firstly for the anniversary of his first coming, as a little Child, born to us in a stable at Bethlehem, born into this world to the great rejoicing of the Angels, the adoration of shepherds and kings, simple men and wise men, Jews and Gentiles.  Let us prepare for the great day of his nativity by decorating our towns and homes with lights and Christmas trees and manger scenes, baking special cakes and puddings, sending greeting cards, wandering round the mall shopping for gifts.  The smell of roasting chestnuts, pine trees, cinnamon and spices are in the air, the sound of a hundred familiar Christmas carols echo about us, and we are drawn with increasing excitement, like the wise men following the star, ever onwards towards the stable in Bethlehem.  Turn a deaf ear to the annual whining of the godless, those who hate the sight of the things of God and force us to hide our joy, our nativity scenes, our happy Christmas greetings.  The joy of the Christmas season is so great that it cannot be prevented.  Like a cup that runneth over, the joys of Christmas overflow into the weeks that precede it.  Like little children we can’t help anticipating that joy, even during the penitential season of Advent.  There is a magic in the air which cannot be dispelled, cannot be put off.  And I think the good Lord understands our need to hasten his coming at this time, and simply smiles indulgently at our childlike impatience.

But let’s not forget, as we prepare for the joyful anniversary of our Messiah’s birth, and today’s Gospel reminds us quite firmly of this, that we should also be preparing in two entirely different ways.  The joy of our Saviour’s birth at Christmas will eventually give way to our sorrow at his Passion and Death.  That sorrow will eventually yield to the even greater joy of Easter.  Christ came for a reason.  To die for our sins, certainly, but more importantly to conquer death by his Resurrection, and to open those gates of heaven that we may pass through them when it is our turn to die, there to enjoy forever the everlasting joy of God’s presence.

The second preparation therefore must take place within ourselves.  We must prepare our own souls to receive Our Lord, not just at Christmas, but now, before that death that must surely come one day (we don’t know when) to claim us.  We must follow the advice of St. Paul in today’s Epistle to the Romans, where he tells us that we must cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light.  We must get rid of our attachment to sin, and replace it with sanctifying grace.  Are we in a state of mortal sin?  We must do whatever it takes to get ourselves to the Sacrament of Penance.  This is the only way we will be acceptable to Our Lord at Christmas.  Do we want the Christ Child to see us clothed with darkness and sin on Christmas night?  Do we want to present ourselves at the manger, only to have the eyes of our Blessed Mother eyes fill with tears as she beholds the state of our soul?  What shame will we feel  when she turns her back on us, shielding her infant Son from the stench and ugliness of our sins.  Let’s make sure we get to Confession before Christmas.  Even if our sins are venial, let’s make our souls as white and pure, as stainless as they can be, so that the Immaculate Virgin Mary can smile when she sees you approaching the Christmas manger.  Remember that the word “manger” is in fact the French word for “to eat”, and that the Child in the manger is the same Child we receive at the Communion rail. Prepare for this.  Do whatever it takes to make your own spiritual journey to Bethlehem, a Hebrew name that means “House of Bread.”  All things point us to the Blessed Sacrament, and we must make sure we are as worthy as we can be to receive the Christ Child into our midst, into our very body and soul.

Our third preparation is described in the Gospel today, with its woeful description of the end of the world, with signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear.  We must prepare for that day.  Not in fear, but in the hope which that day brings, when Christ will come to avenge all the evil that has been done to his children, to judge the wicked and reward the good.  Any horror that accompanies these terrible times will be shortened for our benefit, and the end result shall be the coming of Christ the King in all his glory.  Yes, he came to us that first Christmas, humble, as a little infant.  But he will come again, this time in all his glory, to judge both the quick and the dead, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.  It is a picture that gives hope to this world, it gives us the meaning of life, the reason we are all here, patiently enduring all this Vale of Tears has to offer.  Last week we rightly feared for our death and last judgment, but now we have passed through the door to a new liturgical year, a door that swings on the hinges of the cardinal virtue of hope, and into a world where all things are made new.  May the doorways  of our death and judgment be a similar source of hope to our souls.

If there’s only one prayer we can find time to make during this holy penitential season of Advent, let it be the Christmas Novena that you’ll find printed in the bulletin.  In this short, but intense prayer, we accompany our Blessed Mother to that stable in Bethlehem, where at midnight in the piercing cold the Son of God was born.  May he be reborn in our souls this year in our very special Christmas Communion, and let us spend the short weeks of Advent in joyful preparation for that blessed event.  Hail and blessed be that hour and moment!