First Sunday in Advent, Cycle C. Today’s readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25-28, 34-36
A crowd of people is waiting in the arrivals lounge at an airport. There is an air of expectation in the air. Everyone’s eyes are fixed on the arrivals gate. A young woman exhales deeply, worn out by the long wait. A man nervously holds a bouquet of deep red roses in his hands. A little girl bites her nails as she stares into a distance. A man taps his fingers restlessly on the rails.
“Have you ever stopped and observed the spectacle of the arrival hall?” the narrator asks. “Look at the faces of the people waiting.”
The gate finally swings open. The expectant faces change into broad smiles. There are squeals of joy that soon turn into sobs. A couple embrace in jubilation. A tear trickles down a flushed cheek. A lady with a hijab takes a selfie with a little girl, eyes gleaming. The narrator then comments on what newly arrived people bring to those waiting for them: a new world view, new relationships, new commitments, new priorities, a new way of being.
Arguably three of the most emotional minutes on YouTube, The Arrivals is an effective promo of Scandinavian Airlines launched in 2019 and that won three Effie awards. But to my mind, it is also a metaphor of this Advent season that we begin today.
Advent is a time of active waiting and expectation. It brings home the words of Jesus in today’s gospel that we ought to stand alert and raise our heads, to be vigilant at all times.
Had the people at the arrivals hall caught by the camera in the SAS promo not waited in expectation, they would have missed not only the arrival of the loved one but also a world radically changed that that person brings.
For the mature Christian, Advent is not simply a preparation for Christmas understood as the yearly commemoration of the birth of Christ two millennia ago. Rather, Advent is a time of active waiting, of rehearsing the hope that Christ will come and renew us personally and the entire cosmos, the whole created order, in fact.
Advent is a good time to resolve to keep watch for the Lord, so that we may not miss the opportunity of participating in the renewal that Christ has brought for the whole of creation
There is no doubt that the portents described by Jesus sooner or later occur in the life of each one of us in some way or another. In such times, we cannot afford to distract ourselves with frivolities in an attempt to evade bitter truths. Neither can we be weighed down with ‘anxieties of daily life’.
It is precisely at times like these that we realise the importance of keeping watch and of adopting an attitude of prayer until it becomes a lifestyle.
The 12th century French Benedictine abbot St Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of the “third coming of Christ”. This “coming” is found between the first, which occurred in the stable in Bethlehem, and the second, which will occur at the end of time.
Preparing for the third coming of Christ, whom we encounter in our daily life, will prepare us for the final and definitive encounter. In this third coming, St Bernard writes, “Jesus is our rest and consolation”.
In the first reading, Jeremiah describes a tender green shoot that springs forth from a branch that can otherwise easily be mistaken for a dead one. So did Christ come into the world and so will he come in our world plagued with a culture of death and loss of hope that is so much in need of redemption and renewal.
At the start of a new liturgical year, Advent is a good time to resolve to keep watch for the Lord, so that we may not miss the opportunity of participating in the renewal that Christ has brought for the whole of creation.