1st Sunday Advent A - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2007

This time last week, the issue on everyone’s mind was the election. Well, now we know.  As a nation, we expend a lot of energy on the political process.  And that’s important.  Politics has a big effect on how we experience life as a community.  There is always a hope that, if they get it right, life will be better…

I think we all yearn for something better.  Like us, Jesus, too, yearned for it.  He called it the Kingdom of God.  But, interestingly, he didn’t say: “Make me king, make me prime minister, and you will experience it.”   Rather, he said: Change! Repent/be converted! Change – radically – all of you!

There is something more basic than changing policies: and that is personal.  Without that, politics will never touch the spot.  If we just stop and think, it becomes so obvious that the need for our world to change radically is urgent.  There is a madness abroad.  - Nations have enough weapons to destroy the world a thousand times over, and still want to produce more.  - We have the intelligence to explore the galaxies, but we can’t apply ourselves to distribute the world’s resources.  - We know that our climate is changing dangerously; we know that our lifestyles contribute to that change, but no political leader seems brave enough to make a genuinely realistic response.  - The world’s populations simply could not share the standard of living adopted by the West, yet we continue to base our economies on the demand for ever more consumption.

What are we to change? Not policies, not representatives, but ourselves.  And not just once, but continually. The change that Jesus envisaged would be a major change, a change of mindset: of assumptions, the things we value, our habitual behaviours and attitudes and judgments.

You might have heard the story of the wise old Jewish rabbi discussing with his students the question: How can you tell when night has given way to dawn? One student answered: When you look out and see the shape of the tree in the yard.  Another answered: When you look out and see the colours of the flowers in the garden.  The old rabbi himself answered: Day has dawned when you look out and see that the man on your doorstep is your brother.

In today’s second reading, was Paul optimistic when he said: The night is almost over, it will be daylight soon? How do we make our own the rabbi’s insight?  In one spot in the Gospel, Jesus said: Ask, seek, knock.  I think he meant: get in touch with what you want, with your desires.  If we look hard enough, we begin to notice layer upon layer of desires, each layer expressing in more concrete shape the deeper layer beneath.  If we keep asking, if we keep seeking, we can notice ever more clearly those deeper layers.

And the deeper we go, the closer we get to our real self created in the image of God, and christed through our baptism.  The more we learn to observe - the deeper we go into our self - the closer we get to recognising ourselves caught up into that dynamic mystery of love that we call God.  Surprisingly, we find that our deepest desire is to love – inclusively and unconditionally.  So we need to learn how to notice, to observe our inner world of desires and fears, to penetrate beyond our violence, our compassion, our joys and sorrows, and to draw closer to the dynamic of love there in our deepest core.

As Jesus said in today’s Gospel: simply stay awake, stay awake, stand ready.  Paul took up the same refrain: you must wake up now.  We just need to learn to see, to be alert to the energy of love there in our deepest core.  By undertaking the inner journey; by staying stay awake and keeping our eyes open, we learn to see.  Unless the world learns to see, we run the very real danger of destroying ourselves.