Homilies

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT: BE VIGILANT AND PRAYERFUL!

TODAY is first Sunday of Advent. Perhaps, many of us are now planning and preparing for an advent retreat, Christmas reunions, or pilgrimage in sacred places as a way to having a meaningful Christmas celebration this year. This gives us an opportunity to have a meaningful Christmas celebration because along the process one can recollect the past experiences in life, can resolve past issues, and hopefully can renew one’s life. It is a process of “becoming.” By making amends to one’s life, one can become a better person in the future.

In the Gospel today, we heard the word of our Lord Jesus to his disciples cautioning them about the ‘imminent cosmic tribulations.’ These tribulations that he mentioned do actually happen in our time. In fact, very recently, we experienced successive cosmic tribulations, not only the devastating typhoons in the Philippines, but also the destructive tsunami in American Samoa and the dreadful earthquakes that hit Sumatra Island in Indonesia. These calamities claimed a lot of lives of people and properties. Like others, who were in the situation, we also experience the temptation to be hopeless and doubtful about the goodness and the providence of God. Yes, we surely ask, ‘Why does God allow these things to happen to us?” The victims of these calamities all cried for help in order to survive. However, it is also unfortunate that there were people who took advantage of the situation by hoarding commodities and gained unreasonable savings for themselves. Is this not also a ‘moral tribulation’ on the part of men and women in doing such things? Is this not the “self-carousing” which Jesus meant? Perhaps, this is a good point for us to reflect in this season of advent. 

The First Sunday of Advent reminds me also of my flight to Bangladesh twenty years had passed. I was one of the MSP seminarians who were sent to Bangladesh for the Overseas Training Program, the purpose of which is to get a foretaste of missionary life among our Hindu and Muslim brothers in that country. During the flight, I was so excited and curious to watch and do every detail of instructions inside the plane since that was my first international flight. Likewise, I enjoyed eating the food, and drinking coffee and wine that were served to us while cracking jokes with the other passengers in the course of our flight. After a while, an hour or so, the atmosphere was changed from smooth flight to a turbulent one. It was an experience of a kind of rough and bumpy sky due to inclement weather condition. That experience of turbulence had led me to silence myself and I then offered a short prayer for a safe arrival to our place of destination. In spite of the excitement in my heart, I realized that there was no way for us to survive if in a flash our plane will not be able to keep its balance and lose control. It was a flight which made me reflect that life here on earth is so fragile and vulnerable as we set on a life’s journey.

In today’s gospel, the Lord Jesus exhorted the disciples to ‘be vigilant and to be prayerful’ in order to be saved. To be ‘vigilant’ means to be capable of discerning the transcendent and hidden realities of the promised eternal life in the Kingdom of God. Moreover, to be vigilant entails an untiring practice of prayer. It is in the practice of prayer that one can comprehend the requirements for inner peace and trust in the truth of the promised eternal life and to be in union with God in His Kingdom.

May this advent season will help us to be ‘vigilant’ with joyful expectation for the coming of the Lord Jesus in our hearts, not only this Christmas and the coming ‘Christmases,’ but also in the ‘here and now’ as we continue to encounter turbulent situations in our journey of life. May we become firm in our resolutions this advent season’s activities to nurture our moral and spiritual strength for the betterment of our lives and society in witnessing justice and God’s commandment of love. Amen. 

                                 [Fr BEBOT GALO MSP
                                   Diocese of Kyoto, Japan]

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