“BE WATCHFUL! BE ALERT!”

Homily for the First Sunday in Advent, Year B, 2017. Mark 13:33-37

AIM: To help the hearers understand the riches of the Mass.

 

          “Be watchful!” Jesus tells us in the gospel. “Be alert!” That is the message of Advent, a word which means “coming.” In Advent we are alert and watchful for three comings of the Lord: his first coming at Bethlehem, in weakness (as every baby is weak) and in obscurity: the only people who showed up to celebrate were some shepherds, and three crackpot astrologers from God knows where. Advent also reminds us to be watchful and alert for Christ’s final coming at the end of time, in an event so powerful that everyone will know that history’s last hour has struck. And between these there is a third, intermediate coming, here and now.

Like his first coming at Bethlehem, it is hidden and obscure. Yet like Christ’s final coming, this intermediate coming is a thing of power. It is what Jesus had in mind when he told us: “Anyone who loves me will be true to my word, and my Father will love him; we will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (Jn. 14:23).

          Let me start with the question –

Why do we worship?

          We do not celebrate the liturgy for personal inspiration or uplift; to give us or others a nice warm feeling inside or “a meaningful worship experience,” to use modern jargon. Those things may happen, or they may not. None of them, however, is the purpose of our worship. St. Thomas Aquinas places worship under the heading of justice. It is something we owe to God, who has given us everything we have and are – our sins excepted: they are all our own. The Preface to each of the Eucharistic Prayers expresses this truth when it says: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God.”

          Sometimes people complain that they don’t “get anything” out of Mass. The proper answer to that is: “So what?” We’re not here to get. We’re here to give – to give thanks, to praise and adore. The liturgy turns us away from self, toward God. And only when God is at the center of our lives can we have any chance at true happiness and fulfillment. St. Augustine tells us why when he says – and he was speaking from his own experience: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Or, to put it in terms which young people today understand best: We are hard-wired for God.

          Note how we begin Mass: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” I can never say those words without being inwardly moved. They remind us that we gather in the name of a God whose inner law is self-giving love: the Father pours out his love for the Son; the Son returns this love to the Father; and the love that binds them together is the Holy Spirit. As we begin Mass we are drawn into this love, into God.

          But which of us is worthy to stand before the all-holy God? That is why we immediately confess our sins. “Lord, have mercy,” we pray. We appeal to God because we can never rid ourselves of sin on our own. Only God can do that. After that comes every Sunday, except in Advent and Lent, the Gloria, the great hymn of praise to God. This is followed by the opening prayer of the Mass, called the Collect, because it collects the petitions of each of us, and offers them to God.

          Then we sit down to listen to the word of God, messages from a world very different from this one, our true homeland. When we come to the gospel we stand, acknowledging that now Jesus himself is speaking to us: calling us back to him when we have strayed, filling our mouths with laughter and our tongues with joy (to quote the psalmist), when the sunshine of God’s love shines upon us. In the Creed which follows we profess our Christian and Catholic faith. The Petitions which follow remind us that ours is not a private, me-and-God religion. We are members of a family, taught by Jesus in the one prayer he gave us to say not “My Father, but “Our Father.”

          We move on then to the Offertory. But what can we offer God? He needs nothing. He is, as the theologians say, “sufficient unto himself.” The fourth weekday Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer says: “You have no need of our praise, yet our thanksgiving is itself your gift, since our praises add nothing to your greatness, but profit us for salvation.” Thanksgiving profits us for salvation, because the act of giving thanks involves an acknowledgement that we are God’s creatures, dependent on him at every moment for our continued existence. And whatever we give to God, without any thought of return is not lost. It comes back to us, transformed.

          The transformation of our gifts takes place in the Eucharistic prayer or Consecration. It begins with the Sanctus or Holy, Holy, in which we pray that “our voices may join with theirs” – with the angels whom Isaiah at his call heard singing “Holy” three times over, because God, though one, is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The priest then prays for the descent of the Holy Spirit on the bread and wine we have offered. He recites the narrative of the Last Supper, using Jesus’ own words. And the bread and wine are transformed, invisibly but truly, into the body and blood of our crucified and risen Lord. Jesus himself is truly present. Present also is the sacrifice he offered at the Last Supper and consummated on Calvary. This means that spiritually we are truly there: in the Upper Room with Jesus and his apostles, and with Mary and the beloved disciple at the cross, with but one exception: we cannot see him with our bodily eyes, but we do see him with the eyes of faith – and seeing, we adore.

          Following the Communion, the Mass closes with the blessing; and then perhaps the most important word of all, apart from Jesus’ words over the bread and wine: the little word, Go.

Go forth, the Mass is ended.

Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.

Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.

Go in peace.

So much beauty, so much drama, so much holiness, so much joy! Do we ever stop to realize it, and truly worship?

          Let me close with a personal testimony. I have wanted to be a priest since I was twelve years old. I’ve never wanted anything else. What drew me to priesthood above all was the Mass. Every time I served Mass, from age twelve onward, I thought: One day I’ll stand there. I’ll wear those vestments. I’ll say those words. On the 4^th of April next year it was be 65 years since that boyhood dream was fulfilled. It was wonderful then. It is, if possible, even more wonderful today.

          When I climb the steps to the altar, I think often of God’s words to Moses at the burning bush: “Take off your shoes from your feet; for the place where you stand is holy ground.” In India, which I have visited twice, the priest does that literally. Before every Mass I celebrated in India, I removed my shoes.

I’m not ashamed to tell you, friends, that many times, as I bow to kiss the altar at the start of Mass, there are tears in my eyes, and a catch in my throat as I think: This is what I have wanted to do since I was twelve years old. If you ever notice me breaking off in the middle of a sentence, unable to go on, that’s the reason.

When I look around, I see men in their thirties and beyond who still don’t know what to do with the one life that God has given each of us. And I have the privilege of doing what I’ve always wanted to do – something of which no man is worthy – not the holiest priest you know, not the bishop, not even the Pope; a privilege extended to us not because we’re good enough, but because God loves us; and because he wants to use us to serve and to feed you, his holy people, from these twin tables of word and sacrament.

          Do you understand now why I tell you again, as I have told you so many times before, that I say every day, more times than I could ever tell you: “Lord, you’re so good to me. And I’m so grateful.”

Friends, if I were to die tonight, I would die a happy man.