1st Sunday of Advent C
Readings: Jeremiah 33:14‑16 1 Thessalonians 3:12‑4:2
Luke 21:25‑28,34‑35
In our activist culture waiting is something we grudgingly endure, but rarely do well. Yet during Advent, we are asked to wait, not in meaningless boredom, but with active hope. Today's readings proclaim the promises of the Messiah's coming to complete God's kingdom. Let us pray in the words of the responsorial psalm: “To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul/. . . . Guide me in your truth and teach me,/ for you are God my savior,/ and for you I wait all day.” (Ps 25:4‑5)
In the Old Testament reading, Jeremiah's oracle promises a Messiah, a just shoot from the royal line of David who will do what is right and just in the land. His rule will bring safety and security for Judah and Jerusalem. The land will be renamed: "The Lord our justice." “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah. In those days, . . . I will raise up for David a just shoot;he shall do what is right and just in the land. In those days Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem shall dwell secure; this is what they shall call her: ‘The Lord our justice.’” Jeremiah spoke this prophecy in the darkest hours of Judah's history. Its recent kings had been corrupt and ineffectual, and now Jerusalem is under siege from Babylonian armies and is about to be destroyed, along with the Temple. The prophet himself is imprisoned for warning of these disasters (see Jeremiah 32‑33). Despite the bleakness of Judah's hopes, he boldly proclaims the nation will be reborn after its destruction and exile. He even enacts this hope in symbol by buying a plot of land that he had the right to purchase in the tribal system of family land inheritance in order to say to discouraged in Judah: "homes and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land" (Jer 32:15).
In the reading from Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, the apostle prays that this struggling young Christian community will endure in faith by living a life of love for one another, as it awaits "the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones." Paul is trying to correct two extremes in the Thessalonian community. Some are living morally irresponsible lives by indulging "lustful passion as do the Gentiles who do not know God" (1 Thess 4:4). Others have neglected the needs of the poor and their daily duties of supporting themselves, because they believe that Jesus' triumphant return in glory is near (see 1 Thess 4:9‑12). Paul exhorts both groups to conduct themselves "in a way pleasing to God" (1 Thess 4:1).
The Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Advent always picks up the themes of the last Sundays of the previous church year by speaking of Jesus' second coming to complete God's kingdom. During this year's C cycle of readings, we will be reading Luke's Gospel, and so this Sunday presents us with Jesus' apocalyptic discourse from the end of Luke.
Luke's version of Jesus' warnings about the apparent terrors of the apocalypse is consoling, rather than frightening. He assures the disciples: “When these things (the signs of the end time) begin to happen, stand up straight and raise your heads, for your ransom is near at hand.” Only if the community lapses into a life of indulgence, drunkenness and worldly cares will the day come upon it “like a trap.” If the disciples live watchful and prayerful lives, they will have the strength ‘to stand secure before the Son of Man’ (Lk 21:36). “Be on guard lest your spirits become bloated with indulgence and drunkenness and worldly cares. The great day will suddenly close in on you like a trap. . . . Pray constantly for the strength to escape whatever is in prospect, and to stand secure before the Son of Man.”
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