Ad Jesum per Mariam - First Sunday of Advent: Preparing for His Second Coming and for Receiving the Grace of . . .

First Sunday of Advent: We are Not Preparing for the Birth of Jesus. We are Preparing for His Second Coming and Preparing for Receiving the Grace of . . . Many Christians confuse the meaning of Advent. We are not preparing for the birth of Jesus. We are not preparing for the Nativity. That happened two thousand years ago! We are Preparing to celebrate the Nativity. We are also Preparing for His Second Coming! We are Preparing to Ask for Grace. Grace for what? Listen to the Gospel and Homily of the First Sunday of Advent. Understand what we are preparing for and what Grace we ask heaven for during this season. Listen to this Meditation Media.

Duration: 33m
Broadcast on: 28 Nov 2022
Audio Format: other

The Lord be with you a reading from the holy gospel according to Matthew Jesus said to his disciples as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of man

In those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away So it will be also at the coming of the Son of man Two men will be out in the field, one will be taken, and one will be left Two women will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken, and one will be left Therefore stay awake, for you do not know on which day your Lord will come Be sure of this, if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming He would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect the Son of man will come the gospel of the Lord Every year it seems on January 1st with the turning of the secular new year One of the things that people speak about are their new year's resolutions And what normally happens by January 2nd, we've already broken them

Curiously, on this first day of the new liturgical year we speak of resolutions as well You all just did, and you did it by saying you're amen to the opening prayer Pay attention over these weeks of advent to the words of the collet, the opening prayer of our liturgies Because they're very important for understanding just how this holy season works Because we asked for the grace to be resolved to make a resolution to do something And so we begin with that idea of a resolution of being resolved

Because while we know in the world around us new years resolutions are made and set aside on a regular basis A resolution, the notion of being resolved Is not a desire to have so fragile a commitment as that To be resolved is to be firm To be resolute Is to make a commitment to something And isn't it amazing how we use these words Without the commitment that's required In fact when one reads Across the centuries different manuals of growth in the spiritual life And this is what I do in my spare time

The one of the curious things that comes up time and time again from missionaries who spent time hearing confessions and preaching for the renewal of the church Would speak about one of the single biggest obstacles That happens even in celebrating the sacrament of confession Which is not the unwillingness to confess our sins. We're actually pretty good at that

It's the fact that when the act of contrition comes we say those words. I firmly resolve to sin no more Without any firmness in our resolve And so what do we do on the one hand we repent we say we're sorry, but we make no commitment To being different No commitment to being better because our resolution isn't real. It's a word But there's no firmness of purpose And so what happens? We commit the same sins over and over and over again And we shrug our shoulders wondering why it happens that way And so note how at the beginning of the liturgical year every single year the prayer for the first sunday of advent doesn't change It begins with our asking for the grace to be resolved To make a firm commitment

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