A week ago today I went on a KAIROS retreat with some of the students from Lansing Catholic as an adult leader, as well as to take some retreat time for myself. It’s a great retreat, focusing on the love of God, and from my time spent with the students, I know it was very beneficial to them. I was a little nervous, however, that, in leading the retreat I wouldn’t get time to get spiritually refreshed myself. How wrong I was!!
We all need times to refresh, to charge our batteries, to start over anew. Today marks the beginning of the Advent season, the time of preparation for the coming of Christ. Besides beginning with the new translations, we are also beginning a new liturgical year, a new year of grace. While I doubt that anyone stayed up late last night, waiting for midnight and the new liturgical year to come, and we certainly didn’t have a ball of lights at the top of the bell tower, we should be excited about this new liturgical year, because it is another chance for all of us to refocus ourselves on knowing that we are loved by God and loving God in return. It is a chance for us to make a new liturgical year resolution to grow closer to God, through His Son, Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is our chance to recognize that, over the past year, we have wandered away from God, and not been as loving and faithful to Him as we should have been. In our first reading, Isaiah asks why this should be so. He writes, “You, LORD, are our father, our redeemer you are named forever. Why do you let us wander, O LORD, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?” Maybe we have asked this question ourselves after sinning. Maybe we have wondered why God lets us turn away from Him. The answer is simple, and yet profound: because God loves us.
It might seem strange and counterintuitive to think that the reason God allows us to turn away from Him is because He loves us. But, what is love if it is not free? We don’t love because we are forced to. We love because we make a choice to, even when that choice is very difficult. Real love includes the possibility that the other will not return that love back, with all the pain and heartache that can bring. But, because there is always the option of not having that love returned, when that love is returned, it makes the recipient even more grateful that the beloved chose to return that love to the lover. God, as our ultimate lover, allows us the freedom, something only humans have, to say yes or no to Him, to return that love, or hold it back.
It is that love which increases the anticipation of waiting for the beloved to return. Now, it’s pretty easy to tell that we’re waiting to celebrate Christmas during this Advent season. We are preparing our hearts, allowing them to expand with more love, so that we might recall Christ’s birth with even more joy than last year. You can’t help but notice this, as the Mall fills with holly and ivy, statues of Santa Claus, and nativity scenes. We are waiting to celebrate Christ’s first coming.
But we are also waiting for Christ to return again at the end of time, to create a new heaven and a new earth, so that Christ’s victory over sin and death might be manifest, not just in our souls, but in the whole created order, including the natural and supernatural. That is why, during these first few weeks of Advent, we will hear readings about Christ returning in glory. That is why we hear today, “‘Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.’” It is not because the Church wants to scare you into doing what’s right. The end of the world should not be scary for us, unless we are not returning the love that the Father has given us through our words and actions. The time of Christ’s return in glory should be a time that we anticipate, as much as a child anticipates the celebration of Christmas. It should excite us because that is the time when Christ, the first love of our hearts, will return to unite His faithful to Himself to be one with Him forever. The words of a beautiful Advent hymn, “Wake, O Wake, And Sleep No Longer” help us to understand this, as the Church is personified in Zion: “Zion hears the sound of singing; Her heart is thrilled with sudden longing: She stirs, and wakes, and stands prepared. Christ her friend, and lord, and lover, Her star and sun and strong redeemer—At last his mighty voice is heard.” Are our hearts filled with sudden longing for Jesus? Do our ears long to hear His voice?
Advent is the time to start anew in this new liturgical year; to reaffirm our love for Christ. Will this be just another Advent like so many before, where we are just concerned with getting ready for the parties and the family coming over and buying all the right presents, or will we use this season to renew our love for Christ, and take time for Him as we celebrate with friends, co-workers, and family? Will our greatest desire be for the newest toys, the newest things, or will it be for Jesus, our friend, and lord, and lover? “‘May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.’” “Wake, O wake, and sleep no longer, For he who calls you is no stranger: Awake, God’s own Jerusalem.”
