Christian Reflection and Prayer

Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalms 122:1-9;
Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44

"So stay awake..."     (Mt. 24:42). 

There once was a small iron-working town
where the mills were kept running day and
night. The great steam-hammers, some of
them weighing several tons, were night and
day beating out huge masses of molten metal.
All night long the sound reverberated through
the streets of the village. But the townspeople
were  so accustomed to the noise that they
could sleep soundly, despite the near deafening
noise. One night, the machinery broke down
and the hammers suddenly stopped working,
and nearly everyone in town immediately woke.
They had been awakened, unexpectedly, by
the silence.

"So stay awake... The Son of Man is coming
at an hour you do not expect," Jesus says in
today's Gospel Lesson (Mt. 24:42,44).

When would you least expect Him to come?
Could it be that you are so buried in the past,
dreaming about the way things were, or so
wedded to the future, dreaming about the way
things are going to be, that now is the time you
would least expect Him to come? But today is
the day the Lord has made. Today is the day
to be glad and rejoice in. Today is the day to
shut down the noise in your anxious hearts
and allow the blessed silence to awaken you
to the Lord's presence in your life.

Some of us may be bone tired here today.
Some of us may be ready to go to sleep.
But here is Jesus saying to us in today's Lesson,
"So stay awake! .... stand ready because the
Son of man is coming at an hour you do not
expect" (Mt. 24:42,44). This is the Message
of the Advent season. We are being called to
attention! We are being called to open our eyes
to what is going on in our Christian lives. We
are being called to a new awareness of the
reason for our Advent celebration.

We celebrate, first of all, what God our Creator
did more than two thousand years ago when he
changed the course of history by sending His
own Christ Presence -- the innermost essence
of His Loving Being into our world in the form of
a tiny Babe. Part of what this season is about
is the celebration of that Event. Already,
everywhere we look, we see the Christmas
cribs and lights and stars and candles and
other symbols of the birth of Jesus. And we
can rejoice in them. But Advent is also a
celebration of what God our Creator is doing now.
For of what avail is all this celebration if Christ
is not born in our lives now -- if we do not
prepare to receive Him in the Advent spirit of the
Gospels: the spirit of repentance?