Today we begin a new church year with the First Sunday of Advent.  When I explain why we wear different color vestments at mass to children I tell them that the purple we wear during Advent is a sign that we are to get ready to celebrate something very special and important, Christmas.  The question is, “What do we have to do to get ready?”  That question has been and is constantly being answered for us in all the ads and commercials we read and hear - buy, buy, buy!  The gospel today is similar to the gospel of two Sundays ago where Jesus spoke of the end of the world in terms of cosmic destruction.  In today’s gospel Jesus says, “People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  And they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.  But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”

Our society calls us to prepare for Christmas with gifts, cards, decorations and gatherings, all of which point out that something very special is behind all this activity.  Children have lists of things they want for Christmas.  They do not always get what they want, but they certainly get what they need - the love of their parents.  Gifts are only a sign of an inner reality, and a true gift is a sign of the inner reality of unconditional love.  The gift we all give thanks for at Christmas is the gift every single human being needs, the gift of God himself in Jesus.  The Church gives us this season of Advent to get ready in our minds and hearts for what we could never purchase, earn or deserve.  Jesus is the gift we all long and yearn for in our hearts.

In all likelihood we will not be witnesses to the cosmic destruction Jesus speaks of in the gospel.  That is still billions of years away.  But as believers we do look for the coming of Jesus.  That coming is not on the clouds of heaven, but in the goodness and love we show one another.  We buy gifts and send cards to let people know we love them.  Our love is what they need more than any wrapped present.  Similarly, we need the love of others more than any gift.  We live in a very commerical world that has a great focus on material things.  In the book I am currently reading for spiritual nourishment, “Crossing the Desert” by Robert Wicks, he says, "According to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Needs are looked upon today as if they were holy, as if they contained the quintessence of eternity.  Needs are our gods, and we toil and spare no effort to gratify them.  Suppression of desire is considered a sacrilige that must inevitably avenge itself in the form of some mental disorder....  We feel jailed in the confinement of personal needs.  The more we indulge in satisfactions, the deeper is our feeling of oppressiveness......  We must be able to say no to ourselves in the name of a higher yes.””  The present state of the economy has brought struggle and hardship for many people, but it also offers us the opportunity to see what it is that is truly important in our lives.  We acquire a lot of stuff that we think we need, but have to find room to store for a rainy day.  We develop routines that we do not like to be broken.  Advent is our time to look beyond where we are and what we have to what it is that God came to give us in Jesus.

We look on our accumulation of goods and development of routines as the result of time and effort on our part.  That all too easily leads to a sense of entitlement and a desire to protect and guard what we have and how we spend our time and energy.  Advent is our time to stand in awe of how God did not guard his life in heaven as the Son of God, but humbled himself to come among us that we might know and share in his life and know his love.  More than anything else we need God.  That is why he came in Jesus and why it is so important to pray everyday and come to mass every week.  In his book Wicks says, “Reliance on God in our lives may be much more theortical in nature than we realize.  Perhaps this is because we have taken care of many of our own needs - or at least we think we have.  God then becomes superfluous to us without our knowing it until those times come - and they always will - when we can find no solace in our own abilities or usual supports.  Then a true realization that everything comes from God results in a sense of awe, maybe even fear of the Lord.  The Desert Fathers and Mothers and their apprentices tried to counter this tendency toward self-reliance by developing a sense of compunction (feeling of guilt) and an attitude that was based on the need for God at all times.  Yet, even in the desert this was difficult because of the natural human tendency to protect oneself.”

Father Walden