Message of Advent

As we go through the holy season of Advent, one temptation we should strive to avoid is the tendency to reduce Advent to a cozy and sentimental season. In reality, Advent is preparation for revolution. It is a revolution proclaimed by Isaiah, announced by John the Baptist, which reached its momentum in Christ Jesus. About 500 years after the Israelites returned from Babylonian exile, there appeared in Judean desert a strange figure who dressed in animal skins, and ate locust and honey— John the Baptist. When people who came to listen to him asked him, “Who are you? (Jn. 1:22) he replied in the words of prophet Isaiah, “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord” (Jn. 1:23). Many centuries before him, Isaiah had said that a voice of one is calling in the wilderness and asking people to make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Is. 40:3). Upon his emergence on the public scene, John the Baptist asserts that he is that voice. Thereafter John said, “…there is one among you whom you do not recognize…” (Jn. 1:26b). He called him “the Lamb of God.” The “one among you” is a young Galilean rabbi whose message is very simple and unambiguous: Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand (Matt. 4:17). What does sin do to us? Sin distances us from God. We are meant to be close to the heart of God. According to St. Augustine, sin is a journey into the land of the unlikeness. We are made in the likeness of God, but when we sin, we wander far away from where we are meant to be. Repentance therefore is a return from a spiritual exile. To facilitate the return to our heavenly Father who is eagerly waiting for us like a good shepherd, we need to travel by God’s highway. Who is the highway? He is precisely the one that John the Baptist called “the Lamb of God,” Jesus Christ the Lord. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

On the first Sunday of Advent, our Lord urges us to “Be watchful! Be alert! Be alert to the signs of the passing of all things. Be alert to the fact that all human acquisitions, achievements, accomplishments, successes, pleasure, the joys and goods of this world will one day be taken away from us. Be alert to the futility of what St. Thomas Aquinas called the four false substitutes for God, which are wealth, pleasure, power and honor. Be consciously aware that all these vanities, all of culture, all of nature, and even the cosmos (universe) itself will come to a crashing end. Be watchful and alert to the fact that everything as we know it will definitely come to a halt. When it comes to the end of all things, even scientists, especially physicists agree that the entire universe will run out of fuel and energy to continue to exist. They tell us that one day, the universe will fade out in a great freeze or burn out like a great fry.

Now, with all these cataclysmic tale, you might be tempted to despair, and to say, “Then what the heck?” “What’s the point?” “Why bother?” You might even be tempted to fall into the existentialist philosophy of Albert Camus and his colleagues who say that “life is absurd.” That there is no meaning in life, and we can’t make a meaning out of it. Rather than submit to the meaninglessness of life, we can look to the steadfast love of God, which brought the entire universe into existence from nothing, which sustains it even now, and which will one day draw us to a life and joy that is beyond this world and that knows no bound. We can turn to the One whose love is eternal, whose patience does not run out, whose mercy is boundless, and whose power to save is mighty and persistent. This is why Advent is a preparation for a revolution. A revolution that urges us to be alert in the spirit. To wake up from our spiritual slumber. To change and repent for the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Yes, a kingdom is at hand and a new King has emerged. Change and live under his lordship.

-- Fr. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR