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Letters First Sunday of
Advent I Corinthians 1:3-9 |
The Catholic Telegraph
November 26, 1999The first Sunday of Advent is the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year. The purpose of the "liturgical year" is to keep us aware that the mission of Jesus - His life, death, and resurrection - are not just events of the past, but a life-giving undertaking that continues throughout the whole framework of time. As the Church walks us through the story of Jesus each year, it teaches us that the action of Jesus is still going on. Jesus is still teaching, healing, saving in our time just as He did during the brief years of His earthly life. Week by week the Lord is with us. Week by week the Lord is active in our lives.
As the word "advent" suggests, this season of the Church’s year has to do with "coming." During these four weeks the Church’s liturgy invites us to prepare to celebrate Christ’s first coming into the world at Christmas, but it also directs our attention toward the second coming of Christ at the end of time. In fact, the theme of Christ’s second coming is more prominent in Advent than is the Christmas theme.
There is a kind of overlap here in that the Church’s liturgical year also ends with the gospel readings that have to do with Christ’s second coming. Thus, the end of the Church year and its beginning both deal with the final victory of Christ. The implication seems to be that the basic fabric of Christian life - its end and its beginning - is hope in the final fullness of Christ’s presence which constitutes the completion of God’s plan of love for His human creatures.
Each of the four Sundays of Advent has its own specific subject, enunciated by the gospel, to which the other two readings refer. The first Sunday deals directly with the second coming. The second and third Sundays show us John the Baptist calling for repentance in view of the One still to come. The fourth Sunday deals with the events that provided proximate preparation for Our Lord’s birth.
This Sunday’s apostolic letter is from the beginning of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Paul begins most of his letters with a thanksgiving section in which he expresses his gratitude to God for the gifts that the letter’s addressees have received. Today he offers God thanks for the abundance of what has been given to the Corinthians. "You were enriched in every way. ... You are not lacking in any spiritual gift." But he is quick to suggest that they are not therefore permitted to sit back and relax. They are still waiting for "the revelation of Our Lord Jesus Christ." They would need to keep "firm to the end," so as to be "irreproachable on the day of Our Lord Jesus Christ." Their time of waiting, however, was not to be a period of anxiety and worry. They could rely on the ongoing generosity of Christ and the unswerving care of His heavenly Father. "God is faithful."
What Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians applies to us, too. We have been gifted by God in more ways than we can count, in more ways than we are even aware of. Life, faith, the Church, the sacraments, an assurance of worth and meaning for our lives, our families and friends, personal security, a standard of living that most people in the world’s history could not even imagine - all are gifts of God that come to us without any merit or deserving on our part. We are enriched in every way.
But that doesn’t mean that we can now sit back and relax. We have to be alert, alert to what uses we can make of the gifts that God has given us, alert to the fact that Christ will demand an accounting of us when He comes again in glory.
It’s easy to take everything for granted. We get so used to God’s blessings that we are sometimes not even conscious of them. Or we begin to think that they are ours by right, that we can do with them as we please. But that’s not the way it is. God’s gifts are given to be shared, not at some future time but now, today. Our faith and all that goes with it constitute a vocation to carry on the mission of Jesus and the way we have carried on that mission will constitute the agenda for determining the final worth of our earthly existence "on the day of Our Lord Jesus Christ."
Perhaps we could spend some time this week counting our blessings. We won’t be able to count them all, because they are too numerous, too diverse, too subtle. But when we have established some idea of the riches God has given us, we must then ask ourselves how we are spending them. On ourselves? On our own comfort? Are we doing anything with what we have received, anything of significance that will stand to our credit when the Master comes to settle accounts?
As Paul told the Corinthians, the Lord wants to "keep" us "firm to the end." How firm are we now? He also told them, "God is faithful." How faithful are we?
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Conversation Questions
What gifts of God am I most conscious of in my life?
How does my use of God’s gifts reflect my faith?
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