First Sunday of Advent Yr B
First Sunday of Advent Yr B
03 Dec 2017
Homily
Have you ever to Christmas Day itself and felt – “thank the Lord it is all done”? Have you ever spent so much time and emotional energy preparing that the day itself is almost an anticlimax?
What are we actually doing during Advent and Christmas? While we are marking the birth of Jesus, we are most certainly not marking his “birthday”. For the first generations of Christians, the date when Jesus was born was irrelevant and unimportant. What was relevant and important was that he had come. His arrival, life, ministry Passion, death and Resurrection – those were what mattered.
Hence you will notice that neither Mark nor John’s Gospel even refer to his birth. Both begin with Jesus as an adult beginning his ministry.
Luke and Matthew write about the circumstances of his birth, but again, neither gives us a date or time of year.
It was only in later centuries, as Christians became settled communities that they started to wonder and speculate about the details of his birth. One thing that we can be sure of – Jesus was not born in mid-winter. The climate of Palestine is such that there is no way that shepherds would have their flocks in the fields by night. They would have lost beasts and shepherds to hypothermia! We do not know why they picked this date, although there are theories. We should take a leaf from the early Christians and not worry about it, simply celebrate the arrival of the Lord.
In today’s Readings we are called to look out, to be on our watch. In Advent we are called to look back in reflection upon what God has done, and forward to what God will do. Not a passive sit and wait, but an active watch for it.
In all the rush and stress of the leadup to Christmas, how much watching are we doing? When the “lord of the house” returns, will he find us actively looking for him, or will we be sleeping as we follow what the advertisers want us to do?