Sleeping in your blind? What about your life?

Homily Outline for the First Sunday of Advent, Year A

What will God do in your heart this Advent? What will God do in your life? Will you notice His invitation? Advent is a time of joyful expectation, hopeful preparation, and a time for heightened alertness. It’s as if our Advent wreath is the Readiness Indicator in a military planning room. The Alarm is beginning! Only, in this case, it’s not a threat level, but a heightened level of salvation, conversion, expectation. Who is coming? It’s the Lord, Jesus Christ!

Our Mother the Church puts before us two comings of Christ: His coming in time as a baby child, the Incarnation, and His coming at the end of time to judge the living and the dead. He came in silence, hiddenness – He will come again in joy and glory. In this earlier part of Advent our readings focus primarily on His 2nd coming at the end of time. The Prophet Isaiah says, “In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it.”

 So, if Christ is coming, what do we do? The Gospel puts it very pointedly, “Therefore, stay awake!” (If you just woke up, I’m sorry! The preacher isn’t helping the situation if his call to be awake is putting people to sleep!) Christ is coming unexpectedly, not just at the end of time, but every day. Now is the hour to wake from sleep, today is the day of salvation!


How many of you have ever sat in a deer stand? How are you supposed to sit? You have to be still, quiet, and ALERT! Deer move quietly, they can suddenly appear with little warning, and if it’s a buck chasing a doe, you might just have one glimpse, one shot. On Friday I went out with my dad and my brother-in-law to hunt. My mom graciously made us some nice turkey sandwiches. We got out to our blinds pretty early. The turkey was a big mistake! Even with a cup of coffee, three times I found myself slumped forward and I woke myself up snoring! I can’t imagine that helped bring in the deer! Finally, I drank another cup of coffee and prayed the rosary, that helped me to stay alert.

On the other hand, if you’ve sat in a deer blind, you know what happens when you do hear the leaves rustle, when you see the head bob behind a tree, when you hear a twig snap! Suddenly your heart races, your hands shake, every sense is focused and twitching! What is coming?

So, to stay in the analogy, Advent is meant to be a BIG twig snapping! Far more significant than any buck, Jesus is coming! Listen to Paul in Romans, “For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand.” Are we awake, alert, ready? Christ will come suddenly; He comes daily in hidden ways. Are your eyes open for Him? Do you listen with your ears, with your heart for His voice? Are you focused on the touch of His grace in your heart, in your conscience? Spiritually, don’t be like me in my blind slumped forward snoring, when Christ calls!

What preparations, then, will YOU make during this time of preparation? The decorating, shopping, cooking, are good, but do they distract you from the real hunt, the hunt for holiness? The main event is spiritual – what preparations will you make? How will you get ready?

If Christ were to arrive tomorrow morning, and you knew He was coming at 6 am, what would you put in order? Who would you forgive? From whom would you request forgiveness? Who would you call, who would you visit? What would you say to your spouse, to your children, to your parents? If we were 24 hours from judgment, what would you do to put the house of your heart in order? This is what Paul speaks of, “Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and lust, not in rivalry and jealousy.”

So, concretely, here are some ways to get ready this Advent: Make a good confession, especially if it’s been years. Why would you fight your sins alone, when God wants to do the heavy lifting? Go to confession. And don’t wait for the penance services! If anybody listens, there won’t be space! Pray every day during this Advent season. Use the Advent Wreath before dinner with your children, read the daily Gospel every day, it’s in the bulletin. Pray part of the Rosary every day, or just one decade. Use our blue Advent prayer books that are out in the Gathering Space. Finally, try to go to an extra Mass every week. We have 7 daily Masses here; there are others at the Cathedral and St. Christopher’s. Christ comes to us at each Mass, so prepare for His Final Coming by receiving Him with joy at each Eucharist.

Let me finish with the words of the Gospel, “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.”

Our king enthroned on the Cross and crowned with thorns?

God so loved the world.

Homily Outline for the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King

Today we celebrate the last Sunday of the liturgical year.  At this key moment, Holy Mother Church places before us Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of Heaven and Earth.  We offer praise, glory, and honor be unto Him, our Lord and Savior.

When we hear of a king, who comes to mind?  Do we think of Michael Jackson, the tarnished King of Pop Music?  Or King George who unfairly taxed the 13 colonies?  Do we imagine a cruel tyrant who commands all things according to his capricious will?  Or, is it the romantic king of fairy tales, dispenser of justice, commander of knights, rescuer of damsels in distress?  None of these images are all that helpful in understanding our solemnity today.

If our hearts and lives are to be converted once again by this liturgy, by this sacrament, we have to allow our image of “king” to be remolded and renewed. The Holy Word of God presents us with a more significant image of kingship.  In our first reading, we hear of David anointed by the Northern Tribes, Israel.  David is the anointed one, the “messhiac”, the cristos, the messiah.  Now King of Judah and King of Israel, he has consolidated his rule over all the 12 tribes.  God makes a promise to him later that his heir will reign forever on the throne.  The People of God hope for stability, peace, and comfort.  But this all falls apart quickly.  With David’s son Solomon’s death, merely one generation later, the kingdoms split.  In the coming centuries there will be war after war, faithless tyrant after faithless tyrant on the throne.   The people had asked for an earthly king, and that’s what they got.  For a thousand years they continued to hope in God’s promise that David’s son would reign forever.  They sustained that hope through exile, apostasy, and tragedy.  When, in the fullness of time, God did fulfill His promise, He sent a king, the son of David, but not the king they had imagined.

The Word took on Flesh and dwelt among us. God Himself came to be our king, our messiah, our savior.  The expected and yet unexpected king was born in a little hick town, fostered by a simple carpenter.  He gathered up some ex-fisherman and a reformed tax collector and began to preach the good news!  Certainly he performed some impressive miracles, but what about the Romans?  Where was his army?  Where was the strong fist holding a sword that would restore power and glory to Jerusalem?  How could He be the king?  This sense of confusion and betrayal comes to a particularly sharp point in our gospel.  The King is crucified.  Isn’t it a strange image for celebrating Christ’s Kingship?  He’s on the cross, suffering injustice, punished, bleeding, gasping, and mocked by the criminal beside him.  Ignominy, betrayal, and defeat surround him.  Our king is enthroned on a Cross crowned with thorns.  And, yet, the good thief rebukes the other, and makes a startling request, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” What kingdom could this dying man offer?  “Jesus replied to him, ‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”

Who can bring us to Paradise?  It is God who took upon his own shoulders the sins of all the world. It is God who calls us to hope and trust even in the face of weakness and defeat.  God sent no delegate, no special messenger, He raised up no merely human prophet. He sent His Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, His Very Word, the one who said, “I and the Father are One.”  Listen again to our 2^nd reading:

"For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together….For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven."

Paul leaves us in no doubt – Jesus is God, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

Today, then, we honor Christ the King, but a very different kind of king!  Each one of us by baptism is another Christ.  The Lord wants to shape and conform us in His image and likeness.  We are priest, prophet and king in the world.  

How do we live in light of Christ’s Kingship?  First of all, is Jesus the Lord of our lives?  Do we live by His commandments, by His example?  Or, have we set ourselves up as kings?  Do we march to our own drums?  No matter what your TV tells you, we didn’t create ourselves, we don’t make the rules, we don’t get to shape right and wrong to our own tastes and comfort. Rather, we are called to follow the King, to be conformed to the image and likeness of Jesus, and Him Crucified.

If we follow the king, what are we to expect?  Will everything be easy and sweet?  That is NOT the Gospel.  We face ignominy and defeat in big and small ways, but we know that our King conquered sin and death, and that He will conquer sin and death in us if we but open the door.  In Christ we are victorious, but it is a victory that comes as we struggle through suffering, pain, and confusion.

For the Church, the year ends this week, and next week we will make a new beginning, begin a new waiting, a new preparation. For now, though, let us honor and glorify Jesus, Lord of Heaven and Earth, Lord of our Lives.  May we honor Him by truly living as His disciples.  May we receive today the King’s Body and Blood with open hearts.