Advent I (A) 2025
Is 2:1-5
Rom 13:11-14a
Mt 24:37-44
We all have the experience of waiting for someone who does not turn up. We know the special frustration it implies. In my family we used to joke about the famous occasion when my mother my mother put on a special dinner for an uncle. He was an old bachelor who had announced that he would introduce us to his fiancée. He never came. He never married either. We all had a bigger part of the cake and a good laugh.
Now should we think of Advent in the same way? Are we waiting for Jesus who might come at any point? How long shall we keep our dinner warm for Him until He finally arrives? Something tells us this is probably not the right point of view. After all, there must be some difference between waiting for a human person and waiting for Jesus who is human but God, too.
God, first of all, is always present. Jesus is with us. We may call this a spiritual presence, but that does not make it less real. Of course, since He ascended to the Father, His glorious body is in “heaven”. Here below, we have signs of His presence, but we do not see Him with our eyes. When He comes in glory, all the world will see Him at once.
Saint Paul gives us some direction with the images of night and day,. “The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.” In other words, Jesus is almost here. Advent is the season of the liturgical year when we think more especially about this ‘almost’ and all that it entails. This is a real and sure almost, not a tentative one. We already have Jesus. His spiritual presence gives joy to our hearts, His sacramental presence in the Holy Eucharist is the centre of our life. He is present among us in the Church, in each of our brothers and sisters. We have His gospel and His grace. Already, by faith we are one with Him. We have the seed and the young plant, and we are waiting for the fruit. We see the field, and we are expecting the harvest. Our nets are down, and we are about to catch fish. Already we are in movement towards Him, but not without Him; rather with His strength, in the dynamism of His life.
The Church in Advent is, as it were, Jesus-going-forward to meet Jesus-who-is-coming. Jesus is not far away since we are in Him. Each moment draws us closer to Him who is close to us all the time. We are not therefore counting the days till He finally arrives – as a child who counts the days to his birthday. Advent is not about counting the days or gauging when Jesus might eventually come but about realising how close He is. A kind of veil separates us from Him, but we are more united with Him than we are separated from Him. We go to Him through the desire of the soul. In the saints, this desire is so great that it tears apart the veil: they die out of desire of seeing His face. Advent tells us: hope, desire, love, or to put it in one word: Watch. Advent wants a watchfulness not borne of fear, but of desire and love.
Christ is the direction and the meaning of our lives. All that we do and suffer is directed towards Christ who is this Omega Point drawing to Himself the world and its history. Isaiah marvellously describes the city on the mountain which becomes an icon of eternal peace. Vision of peace: this is the translation of the Hebrew name Jerusalem. This name is a symbol and a promise. We are the people of God walking together – in a synodal fashion – towards the city which God inhabits and where He teaches us the ways of peace with Him and with one another. This is inseparably the city where He made peace through His sacrifice on the cross and the heavenly city where He went ahead of us. Mysteriously we are already citizens of this one city. In it, we wait for Jesus who will come again, and we go to Him who is always with us. He draws us to Himself by His Holy Spirit who desires in us. May this new season of Advent be for us a time when our desire for Christ grows at the same time as our union with Him.