First Sunday of Advent: A New Age - CUA Office of Public Affairs

First Sunday of Advent: A New Age

by the Rev. Francis T. Gignac, S.J.

With this first Sunday of Advent, we begin a new liturgical year, the "Year of Luke." The continuous reading begins toward the end of the gospel (21:25-28,34-36), with a passage based on the one from Mark two weeks ago. The final cataclysm is portrayed with the same imagery of the sun, moon, and stars falling from the sky, storms at sea, and the Son of Man coming in power and glory.

This figure is now applied by the Christian community to Christ, our hero who was expected to come back again to lead us to victory in his heavenly kingdom.

This apocalyptic rhetoric, common in the time of Jesus, is a rhetoric of hope that the present evil age would soon be replaced by a new one in which God's will would reign supreme for all time. Before this happened, the world would revert to primeval chaos, symbolized in the Bible by a storm at sea and the heavenly bodies not yet fixed in the firmament. The passage concludes with salutary warnings: let not indulgence, drink, and everyday activities bloat our spirits. We should be awake, sober, on guard, and pray constantly for the strength to escape the forces of evil.

A new age was in fact inaugurated in those days - not with an apocalyptic cataclysm but gradually, in the person and message of Jesus. Advent and Christmas invite us to begin a new age in our own lives, to let Christ be reborn in us, so that in turn we may bring his message of hope to others and try to bring about his values of justice, peace, and love.

The first reading from Jeremiah (33:14-16) follows closely after the prophet's oracle of a new covenant, in which he pictures Yahweh, the God of Israel, saying, "This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days. . . . I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

In today's section, Jeremiah sees the days coming when the Lord will fulfill the promise he made to them that the throne and dynasty of David would be established forever. Even though the leaders of Judah had been taken off to exile, the prophet says that Yahweh will raise up a "just shoot for David," a worthy successor to the throne, who will "do what is right and just in the land," so that Judah and its capital Jerusalem will be safe and secure.

Early Jewish Christian writers read a deeper meaning into this passage and applied it to Jesus, who in their view had become a son of David and king of Israel in a way that the prophet had never dreamed of.

Perhaps the second reading today can best tell us how to prepare to receive Christ into our hearts this Christmas. It is taken from the earliest letter of Paul that has survived (1 Thess 3:12--4:2). In it he prays that the Lord Jesus might make us overflow with love for one another, and that he might strengthen our hearts to make them blameless and holy before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.

We know that God can be experienced directly. As Christians, we also believe that God is continually accessible and available to us in the person of Christ and of the Spirit dwelling within us. We also know that we cannot experience God of our own accord. But we can and we should prepare and discipline ourselves so that we may be ready for God's self-communication, that the power of the ever-present Christ may transform our nature.

This is what the liturgy is asking us to do during Advent. As we begin to prepare for Christmas, let us open our minds and hearts to the word proclaimed to us, and let us strive to make our Lord's values our own.

The Rev. Francis T. Gignac, S.J., is a professor and chairperson of the Department of Biblical Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. A photo is available.

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Revised: 11 November 1997