On this Third Sunday of Advent, let us revisit the Fr. Lou’s homily from the First Sunday of Advent.
1st Sunday in Advent – November 28, 2021 – Homily
The season of Advent, upon which we now embark, taps into perhaps our single, deepest and most persistent experience as a human being – the experience of Longing. Of yearning. Of desire.
As a quick test of this claim: Can any of us think of a day, or even an hour, when, at some point, we have not wished that some aspect of our life – or some aspect of the world in which we live – was different, improved, reconciled?
We all, constantly, long for our lives and our world to be better.
We all long for fulfillment in different ways.
We all want greater happiness, a deeper and more lasting experience of joy.
When we open our Bible, and read its first pages, we realize this must be the case – for every human being, given the story of the origin of the human race we find there.
The Book of Genesis begins with the claim that, once upon a time, we had lives of perfect happiness.
We lived in perfect contentment in the Garden of Eden – no discord, agitation, let alone a corona virus, or global warming.
But a snake and an apple later, and it was all gone.
And, as we know only all too well these days, Paradise ended – And we found ourselves on the outside, looking in.
And ever since then, the deepest roots of our faith tell us, we have lived with a burning and gnawing desire to get back – to that place of wholeness.
And as Catholic Christians, we believe this foundational story – that we are incomplete as humans, individually and as the human community – is true for every human person.
The Church is not the only one to make this foundational claim.
In our own time, consumerism makes this claim on us every day.
The marketing industry is premised, in part, on the entirely correct insight that none of us is perfectly happy or fulfilled yet.
And it’s their proper job to help us feel the itch,
And seek its relief.
It is, in part, in response to this very same reality, that the Church celebrates the Season of Advent over the next 4 weeks.
For deep in the heart of our spirituality is the realization that we as human beings have an incompleteness at the very center of our being.
And that emptiness – which we experience individually and collectively – longs to find completion, longs for fulfillment.
In fact, as Catholic writers from St. Augustine (who wrote “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you”) to Dorothy Day (who entitled her autobiography The Long Loneliness) have shown us, this longing for completion is the central force of our entire being.
All our wants, all our needs – the need for nourishment, the need for companionship, the need to love and to be loved, the need for healing, where that love has been ruptured – all of these longings are various expressions of that hole in the very core of our being, seeking for fulfillment.
From the very beginning, we have identified ourselves as a people who are lost – and longing to be back home again.
All the Hebrew characters we will hear from in these next 4 weeks:
Ruth, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Judith.
Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Daniel.
We hear in all their stories and all their words –
a desperate longing for fulfillment – a longing that, for them, glimpses a distant, but approaching, satisfaction – the Messiah.
In the end, it’s the same itch we each experience every day – That what we have now is not enough; that there is a fulfillment that awaits us elsewhere.
And this is one of the most important reasons we must have a Season of Advent.
Advent is 4 weeks where we allow our deepest longing to be completely on display. It’s funny – the Church sometimes gets accused of repressing our deepest desires. But in fact, at its best, the Church takes our deepest desire – this desire to be whole again, and the hope-filled knowledge that we will – and proclaims it from the mountaintop!
And the Messiah, when he finally arrives, warns us at times, like in the Gospel today, against allowing that desire for wholeness to get confused with, or covered over by, attempts at more temporary fulfillment – attempts we all make. That is why Jesus warns us today: “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy, or overcome by the anxieties of life. Stay vigilant, don’t ever lose touch with your DEEPEST desire – to be whole again, which will be ours on the day we stand before the Son of Man.”
This is the first message of Advent each year – before Elizabeth and John the Baptist, before Gabriel and Mary, before the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger:
First, always, the message: “Stay awake Be alert! Don’t get bogged down.
For the fulfillment of our deepest desire is on His way!”