Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, Year A, 2022

Advent: Season To Finally Let Jesus Into Your Life

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, November 27, 2022

God is invisible. We can’t see him, but if you want to know what God looks like, look at Jesus. If you want to get some ideas of what God looks like, look at Jesus. Jesus is the icon, the image of the invisible God. In him the invisible God becomes visible in order  to set us free. He comes to save us from the deception and lies of Satan. He comes to save us from the seemingly glamor of wealth, power, honor and pleasure. Jesus comes to save us from ourselves. He comes to save us from the corrosion of attachment. Each of us, in various degrees, is attached to some worldly goods. We have some desires, some loves, some longings that work against our Christian commitment. Jesus wants to save us from those too. But if we deeply feel there is nothing in us that we need to be saved from, Jesus becomes a historical figure we fondly remember. If we don’t need salvation, Jesus quickly becomes one wise person among the many. He becomes a spiritual or moral teacher among the many others like Buddha, Mohammad, Aristotle etc. On the other hand, if you feel like a prisoner waiting to be released and set free, if your disposition is the same as the thief who said to Jesus, “Remember me when you enter into your kingdom,” then the ancient Advent chant, “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel…” will be on your lips. If you have checked yourself out and found out you need the Savior, you will passionately sing and pray, “Come Lord Jesus, do not delay!” 

But why do we need salvation? Why do we need the Savior? Because we regularly wander away from the Lord’s path. We are meant to walk in the spiritual order of God, sadly, a vast majority of us do not always travel along that way. And the saddest news here is that a great number of the lost do not know they are lost and do not feel and think that they are lost. When I started driving here in the USA, I didn’t use GPS because I couldn’t afford it. I relied only on printed MapQuest directions. One day, after taking a priest to Memphis Airport and was driving back to the parish, I missed turning to the right boulevard. Since I wasn’t using anything electronic that can recalculate my route automatically, I got lost. The good news was that I knew I was lost. So, the moment I saw a gas station, I drove into it to seek help. As soon as I mentioned my intended destination, the answer I got was, “You are truly lost.” In the end, I was able to get home because the man I met at the gas station knew where my church was located, he was going my way, and he also asked me to drive behind him. 

Sisters and brothers, like the man I met in a gas station in Memphis, Tennessee, Jesus knows we are lost. He knows where we are meant to be. Jesus is the Way to where we are meant to be, and he is the Savior that wants to take us there. But are we willing to travel with him? If you look at your life right now, you may be pleased at where you are. You may have attained some success in your profession. You may have a good family and your children may be doing well in life. But at the deepest level, are you happy? At the spiritual, religious and moral level, are you entirely okay? Don’t you feel lost at the core? Like me, don’t you sometimes feel like you don’t know where you are going? Outwardly, we try to put up a good show. We paint a good picture that communicates to others that all is well with us. But at the depth, we know all is not truly well. We know there is some emptiness, some incompleteness, some deficiency, some darkness, some shame. Rather than ignore them or numb them with more worldly activities, turn and cry out to the one who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). 

Advent is always the season of preparation. We prepare to celebrate Christmas. But this preparation won’t be adequate and complete if we go through the season without paying particular attention to how we conduct ourselves. Advent is a season of waking up. In our today’s second reading, St. Paul says, “Brothers and sisters: You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.” Advent is the time to “throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” It is the season to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and to make no provision for the desires of the flesh.” Therefore, let us begin this Advent by identifying those actions and attitudes that come between us and our Lord. I understand that our culture tells us in a million ways to affirm we are innocent: “I’m okay, you’re okay.” But the Word of God instructs us to be honest with ourselves, to admit and acknowledge just like the thief Jesus promised paradise to, that we have done some things sinful and criminal. Acknowledging our guilt should not be a psychologically debilitating exercise. It should not lead to self-pity or a feeling of utter depravation. It is rather a courageous willingness to offer our weakness to the divine physician. It is allowing the God of justice to set things right in us. Until we do this, we will never appreciate the one who said, “I have come that you may have life, life in its fullness” (John 10:10). To be able to celebrate Christmas with Christ, we have to take Advent seriously by coming to grips with our deep spiritual deficiencies.