The time has come, our salvation is near. Therefore, wake from your sleep and live honorably. Today, being the First Sunday of Advent, marks the beginning of the season in which the Church, through the celebration of her liturgy, renews her ardent desire for the second coming of the Messiah by preparing to celebrate his first coming (Christmas). The commemoration of the Messiah’s first coming (Christmas) for which the faithful prepare during this season is such an important event in the history of the universe because of the implication it has for the created world. The first coming of the Messiah fulfilled the promise that God had continuously made through his messengers the prophets, a promise of sending a savior who would lead God’s people to the enjoyment of the fullness of life.
While the season of Advent has always been rightly understood as a waiting season (waiting for Christmas; waiting for the second coming of Christ), there is an aspect of the season that always gets overlooked: the manner of the waiting. Yet, it is something to which all the readings that we hear throughout this season point. And I am not referring to the expectant nature of the waiting (for waiting is by definition expectant). Advent as a time for preparation calls the faithful to active waiting (the time has come, wake from your sleep). Whereas it is a fact that the faithful need to always be awake and alert at all times, the call is heightened during the season of Advent, and rightly so. For as St. Paul does well to remind us in today’s Second Reading, the Advent celebrations are an indication that the time for our salvation has inched closer.
In the First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the prophet has a vision in which he sees the Lord God re-creating the universe by gathering all the nations of the world into one fold. According to the vision, the re-created world shall be one in which the inhabitants shall know only peace and fear of the Lord. Occasions and instances of division, disorder, and disharmony which have come to characterize the present world shall not exist in this re-created world. Isaiah’s vision is of a new world order, a world whose Lord and Savior is the Creator God. It is a vision of a world whose salvation has come.
In the Second Reading, St. Paul exhorts the members of the Roman Christian community to be on their guard because the day of their salvation has dawned. Consequently, they need to start living as a people at whose doors salvation is knocking. As a demonstration of their readiness for salvation, the members of this community have to let go of the works that are not compatible with a ‘saved’ world: carousing, drunkenness, sexual immoralities, quarreling and jealousy. Such are the behaviors that indulge men and women even as it blinds and prevents them from remaining alert and cognizant of the hour of their salvation. As a people who had become members of the body of Christ, staying alert and vigilant needed to form part of their new identity. This need to remain vigilant by being prepared at all times is what Jesus addresses in the Gospel Reading.
After ‘reiterating’ the unknowability of the coming of the Son of Man (vs. 36), Jesus proceeds to remind his disciples of the need to remain ever vigilant in order that they are not caught unawares at the coming of the Son of Man. To ensure that his warning hits home, he uses an example that he knew the disciples would be familiar with: the great flood at the time of Noah. Like the great flood, the coming of the Son of Man will both be a surprise and not a surprise at the same time. While no one will know the exact time and day, there will nonetheless be a ‘general’ knowledge about it (cf. Matthew 24:28: where the body is, there the vultures will be). During the days of the great flood, men and women were busy living their lives until they forgot to notice Noah building the ark. Had they paused even for a minute from their revelry, curiosity might have prompted them to inquire from Noah what was going on. Had this happened, perhaps they might have escaped the floods. In like manner, the coming of the Son of Man will be dismissed by men and women in their busyness of life. ‘One more day and I will stop; one more week and I will turn around,’ men and women will find themselves saying and before they realize it, the unprepared will find themselves left behind. ‘The time to turn your lives around is now,’ Jesus says, ‘do not delay it for another minute.’