First Sunday of Advent: Be Prepared... The Son of Man Will Come.

The short Season of Advent asks us to meditate upon the promised coming of our Lord. And while we’ll soon begin meditating upon the miracle of God born to us in human flesh and all the meaning it holds, Advent properly begins by focusing on his coming at the end of times. Jesus declares in clear terms: “The Son of Man will come” and furthermore, says that we are to be prepared for it. It’s with that command in mind that we do our best not to get pulled into the bright lights and the allure of our culture’s Holiday Season. When that happens, the purpose of Advent gets lost and our hearts never really have a chance to be ready for the birth of Jesus. For now, we give attention to the end of days, when Jesus will return—the Parousia, as it’s called.

While we might try to imagine out what that event will look like and to wonder when exactly it will occur, Jesus asks us only to be prepared for it. Statistics tell us that we are among the wealthier population of the world and thus we have access to the things that make for a ‘better life’. With this, we have the ability to prepare for the future, to be forward thinking: to set money aside for an emergency; to save for our children’s educational costs; to have life insurance or homeowner’s insurance; to prepare for an oncoming storm, and so on.

We prepare for our material and temporal needs, but not so much for our spiritual our eternal needs. When it comes to the Parousia, if we think of it at all, we tend to think of it as some obscure notion, that can’t possibly happen today, this week or this month. There’s an old fable about three young devils in training, discussing the best tactic to turn people’s focus from Christ’s call to be ready. The first devil suggested the best way would be to tell the people there is no God. The second proposed that it would be best to tell them that there is no hell. The third however determined the most effective approach would simply be to tell the people that there’s no hurry (i) . All three of these tactics continue to work pretty well.

And we might wonder: If we can’t know how and when, why does our Lord burden us to ponder something shrouded with so much uncertainty? There may be no entirely satisfying answer to that question, but the command is clear: Be prepared! As St. Paul declared, “throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light”. In other words, let us rid our hearts of our disordered desires; our excesses; our tendencies toward impatience and anger; our prideful tendencies to reject God’s will for our lives; and so on. Put it aside!

Jesus today calls us to it now: ”Stay awake...be prepared. For at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come”. In a short story entitled The Displaced Person, author, Flannery O’Connor, describes an elderly priest standing on the back porch of a home, somewhere in the south, observing peacocks in the back yard. Without warning—with a fluttering poof!—one peacock ”raised his tail and spread it with a shimmering timbrous noise”. Marveling at the tail in full splendor, beaming like the sun at high noon, the priest paused then declared, “Christ will come like that” (ii) .

On some level this topic fascinates us, not the way Christmas does, but instead in the way scary movies do. And I’ll admit, even the Scriptures themselves can seem a little ominous on this subject, specifically in how it speaks about what happens to those who choose not to be ready. For all the ways we might be spooked by this, we needn’t be, if we’re at least trying to make our hearts ready. I’m convinced that God is patient and compassionate and can live with our failings, as long as we’re genuinely working at it. The cause for fear is instead, when pride would lead us to not even care or try for conversion of our hearts, for God’s will for our lives. In that, we are saying yes—even if passively so—to separation from Him, saying “yes” to hell.

Jesus today calls us to keep the Parousia in mind and to at least desire to be ready for it—to declaratively say “yes” to heaven. Perhaps the greatest bluesman of all time, born in Mississippi with the name McKinley Morganfield—but more commonly known to us as Muddy Waters—in a song that has nothing to do with Advent, yet nonetheless speaks to Jesus’ call to us today, Muddy declares: “I am ready, as ready as anybody can be….I am ready for you, I hope you ready for me…” (iii)

In this Advent, slow down a little. Encounter Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Pick up either the Magnificat Advent Companion or the Little Blue Book. Get a tag from our Jesse Tree and help someone. Parents, we have a particular responsibility to help our children know that there is more to all this than the secular culture’s Holiday Season. May we all be intentional about it and ultimately, take time in Advent to evaluate where you are in life, but even more, with joyful hope, consider where God is trying to lead you and those He has entrusted to you.

(i) God Still Speaks: Listen!: Homily Reflections for Sundays and Holy Days: Cycle A, Harold A. Buetow, PhD JD
(ii) Lift Up Your Hearts: Homilies for the “A” Cycle, Guerric DeBona, OSB
(iii) I’m Ready, by Willie Dixon