Keep Calm and Stay Alert!

I love this one line from today’s first scripture reading: Would that you might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you in our ways. 

In other words, Catch me when I’m having a good day, Lord!

In other words:
– Stop by when I’m not wasting time on foolish things.
– Give me a call when I can tell you that I’m so busy helping the poor I haven’t got time to chat.
– Knock on my door when I’m really paying loving attention to my family – not yelling at someone because I’m tired or in a bad mood.
– Stop by my work place when I’m saying something nice about a colleague, not when I’m gossiping or talking behind someone’s back.

What Time Is It?

Chronos is the word from which we get chronology, which is a listing of events and intervals. Chronos is what we might call clock time. Clock time measures things…

But there is another kind of time: kairos. Kairos is not clock time. It is the right time, the time when good things happen. Kairos is the time that we are waiting for, the time when all things come together. Kairos is God’s time, the time in which we see God working….

RELATED HOMILIES

• Signs for the Season
• Trusting the Potter
• Waiting for Christ’s Return
• Watching for Jesus
• God is the Potter

Hope

We sit in the critical care waiting room of life longing to live with the Loved One. We need the Lord. We need Him in our lives to make sense of life. Without Him, our lives are chaos. Without the Lord our lives are a mad dashing about from place to place, person to person, doing for the sake of doing, wandering aimlessly only because everyone else is wandering aimlessly. But with the Lord, sin, chaos, is conquered. With the Lord, everything falls into place. Even the most difficult experiences of our lives, even suffering and death have meaning when they become an expression and renewal of the life and death of Jesus Christ.

Watch! A Homily for the First Sunday of Advent - Community in Mission

The Sunday Gospel announces a critical Advent theme: While I want to comment primarily on the Reading from Isaiah, the Gospel admonition surely deserves some attention as well. Too many today hold the unbiblical idea that most if not all people are going to Heaven. For weeks now we have been reading parables in the … Continue reading "Watch! A Homily for the First Sunday of Advent"

Community in Mission

Today’s first reading, from Isaiah, sets forth our need for a savior. Isaiah distinguishes five ailments which beset us and from which we need rescue.

1. Drifting
2. Demanding
3. Depraved
4. Disaffected
5. Depressed

Isaiah ends on a final note that takes the song from the key of D minor to the key of D major.

Dignity

Clergy E-Notes

“…if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the “property” of another human being.”

— Pope Francis

Every One of Us has a Beeper that could Go Off at Any Time

I don’t know how many of you have ever carried beepers — which I think may have pretty much gone extinct now that we have cell phones — but I can tell you that being on call like that sure changes your life.

There are some things you can’t do when on call and other things you think twice about doing because you want always to be ready to respond to whatever emergencies may occur during your watch.

Be watchful! Be alert!

Bottom line: Focus on Jesus, find time for silence. “Be watchful! Be alert!”

Jesus tells us “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.” We are like watchmen. It’s a serious duty. In the Roman army if the night watchman fell asleep, the other soldiers would place him in the middle of a circle and club him to death. He had exposed them to mortal danger. The night watch was broken into shifts like Jesus describes: “evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning.” The point here is that you and I have to establish a certain discipline of prayer. Maybe set your alarm a bit earlier so you can give twenty minutes or even an hour to pray. Best way to begin a day! Some people use part of their lunch break or before they turn in at night. Find the time – or times – that work for you. Then stick with them.

Getting in Line to See Jesus

This first Mass of the new liturgical year reminds us to look forward, to look to Jesus. Advent reminds us that God has not abandoned us; God is with us. Advent reminds us to look for God with us, Immanuel, in our lives, no matter what happens. Advent reminds us to be aware of the constant presence of Jesus with us, and when we seek solutions, to turn to Jesus.

Postponement and Repentance

In our own place and time, we have made a science of escape and sleep. Rather than live at that sharp edge of life, awake and alert, we pretend that we have no sin. There is nothing wrong with me, no change required of us. Others need the help. My coworkers, my friends and community, my family are to blame. “Evil empires,” “warlords” and “endless enemies” are the source of our problems. Bishops or feminists, conservatives or leftists, liberation theologians or curial despots are the favorite demons of choice.

We in the church are not especially noted for our willingness to confess our own sins and welcome repentance. At best, one part of the church will attack the other. But how uncommon it is to hear theologians acknowledge the sinfulness of the theologian—unless it is a theologian of the opposite persuasion. How scarce is the hierarchy’s confession of guilt. How unusual it is to hear the right wing warn us of conservatives’ sins. How rare is the liberal who admits the possible disorders of liberalism.

The Divine Sculptor

Isaiah’s analogy of the potter and the clay is a good metaphor for life, whether we are living in the Babylonian exile or in 21st century America. Everything in this life is a preparation for everlasting life. No matter who we are, or what time or place we live in, everything in this
life is a preparation for everlasting life. Life itself is a season of Advent, a time to keep vigil, a time to keep watch as Jesus invites us in the Gospel. During the times we feel like flawed marble or misshaped clay, it is good to remember that God has looked into the future of the human race and has seen a masterpiece. And no matter how you feel about your life circumstance right now, God has looked into your heart and has seen how beautiful you can be. All that is required of us is to allow God’s hands into the clay of lives and allow God to make our failures and successes an opportunity for growth. As we allow God to shape us through the Advent of life, we take up the Lord’s invitation to watch and see. God has already seen in each one of us a divine
masterpiece. All that is necessary is for the bits of rubble to be brushed away.