Gospel Commentary Mt
24:37-44
This Sunday begins the great season of Advent. Soon we will see
the four-candle wreaths up in our churches, Jesse trees and chocolate-filled
calendars in our homes. Already, the stores and shops are filled with Christmas
music and decorations, and soon we’ll turn our attention to the feast of the
Lord’s birth.
And yet, we would be mistaken simply to equate Advent with
Christmas preparation. The season calls us to much more, and to recognize further-reaching
spiritual realities. St. Bernard of Clarivaux, the great 12th-century monk,
reminds us the full nature of the season. We know that the word “advent” comes
from the Latin word “adventus,” or “arrival,” and St. Bernard delineates three
arrivals of the Lord for which we must prepare. In a homily for the first
Sunday of Advent, he says: “We know that there are three comings of the Lord.
The third lies between the other two. It is invisible, while the other two are
visible. In the first coming he was seen on earth, dwelling among men. … In the
final coming all flesh will see the salvation of our God, and they will look on
him whom they pierced. The intermediate coming is a hidden one; in it only the
elect see the Lord within their own selves, and they are saved.”
The Lord comes to us for the first time at his birth in Bethlehem
on Christmas night, and for the last time at the end of history, when he will
arrive as judge of the living and the dead. These two advents are clear enough.
The Lord, however, has this middle advent as well. He comes to us in the
present moment, especially through the sacraments.
The Gospel the church gives us for the first Sunday of Advent
draws our attention to that last coming of the Lord Jesus at the end of time.
Christ commands us not to lose focus but to be prepared at every moment for the
day when he will bring all things to a close. For us to be ready, as the Gospel
commands us, means not only to be prepared for the peaceful light and quiet glory
of Christmas, when the Lord comes to us in silence and humility, but also for
the triumph and decision at the end of time, when the Lord will come to us in
power and irresistible might. Even here, that middle advent has a place, and we
will find that we must be ready to meet him also at each Mass, in every
confession, tabernacle and moment of prayer.
Indeed, this preparation to meet Christ in his daily advents
perhaps captures best what it means to “stay awake,” as the Gospel instructs
us. We stay awake whenever we pay close attention to Mass, or whenever we
prepare well to make a good confession. Each visit to a tabernacle, however
brief, each reading of the Gospels, each recitation of the rosary, keeps us
attentive to the arrival of the king. Whenever, even in the middle of a busy
day, we turn our worry-clouded minds toward Christ’s presence in our souls, we
are watching the door for his return.
If we make a point this Advent, and all our lives, to meet Jesus
in every place he comes to us, then the end of all things will simply be the
fulfillment of the desire we have nurtured each day. Prepared in this way, we
will not be shocked when our Christ returns, but already will be familiar with
the sound of his feet and the tone of his voice.
Fr. Rampino is chaplain at Marymount University in
Arlington.
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