3rd December >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflection on Mark 13:33-37 for the First Sunday in Advent, Cycle B:  ‘Be on your guard, stay awake’. (2024)

3rd December >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflection on Mark 13:33-37 for the First Sunday in Advent, Cycle B: ‘Be on your guard, stay awake’.

First Sunday in Advent, Cycle B

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Mark 13:33-37

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Be on your guard, stay awake, because you never know when the time will come. It is like a man travelling abroad: he has gone from home, and left his servants in charge, each with his own task; and he has told the doorkeeper to stay awake. So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, co*ckcrow, dawn; if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake!’

Gospel (USA)

Mark 13:33–37

Be watchful! You do not know when the Lord of the house is coming.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come. It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch. Watch, therefore; you do not know when the lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at co*ckcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”

Reflections (3)

(i) First Sunday of Advent, Year B

As we enter the month of December, as we pass from Autumn to Winter, the trees have lost most of their lives by now. There has been a lot of sweeping up of leaves in recent weeks. Trees can be beautiful when they are in full leaf, but they have a different kind of beauty when they have shed all their leaves. It is only then that the full extent of the trees’ branches can be seen, with their intricate shapes. I have a rather large shrub at the end of the garden. It is lovely when it is in full leaf. Yet, even now when all the leaves are gone, it has a different kind of beauty. The dark red colour of its many small branches becomes visible, as does the movement of the birds within it as they hop from branch to branch. When we think of Winter’s impact on nature, we generally think in terms of loss, the loss of foliage, the loss of colour, the loss of texture. Yet, all of that loss reveals other attractive qualities and features of nature that are not so evident when nature is in full bloom.

Just as nature has its seasons, our own lives can have their seasons as well. What could be termed a winter of the spirit can come over us. It can often be associated with some experience of failure or loss. The first reading today from the prophet Isaiah seems to reflect a kind of communal winter of the spirit. It springs from an awareness of personal and communal failure before God. ‘We have all withered like leaves, and our sins blew us away like the wind’. The image of personal failure or sin blowing us away like withered leaves is quite striking. There are times when we may feel that there is something withered about us; we are not as alive as we sense we could be. We may be quite well physically but our spirit seems poorly. Whenever we have that sense of ourselves, what matters is how we respond to it. We can allow the realization that we are not as spiritually alive as we desire to be to get us down. We get discouraged about ourselves. However, today’s readings invite us to respond rather differently to that sense of ourselves as withered leaves.

Just as nature’s winter can have its own beauty, so the winter of our spirit can contain within it reasons for hope and, even, joy. Our winter of our spirit can create an opening for God to work within us in new and creative ways. In our first reading, after the prophet Isaiah acknowledges, ‘we have all withered like leaves, and our sins blew us away like the wind’, he then immediately goes on to proclaim, ‘and yet, Lord, you are our Father, we the clay, you the potter, we are all the work of your hands’. He has shifted his field of imagery from the withered leaves of winter to the potter’s workplace. Isaiah’s message is clear. When we seem to be at our weakest, when our spirit is at its most withered, when we are most aware of our failings, the Lord remains our loving Creator who can create something new out of what appears to be very unpromising. We are being invited to begin Advent with that sense of our need of the Lord’s creative coming into our lives, prompting us to pray the simple Advent prayer, Come Lord Jesus.

Isaiah concludes that reading with the declaration, ‘We are all the work of your hand’. It goes without saying that we are all a work in progress. We remain a work in progress until that eternal day when we see the Lord face to face and the Lord brings to completion the good work he has begun in us. In the meantime, we acknowledge to ourselves and before the Lord those areas of our lives that are somewhat withered, but we also recognize the ways that the Lord is, nevertheless, creatively at work in our lives. In today’s second reading, Saint Paul tells the church in Corinth, ‘I never stop thanking God for all the graces you have received through Jesus Christ’. It is clear from the rest of the letter that all was not well in this church. There was much about this church that could be categorized as a winter of the spirit. Yet, Paul begins his letter to them by thanking God for all the graces they have received and he goes on to assure them in that reading, ‘you will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit while you are waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed’. We too will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit. Even in our winter of the spirit, we lack no spiritual gift, because the Lord is always coming towards us to renew us. That is why the refrain of Jesus in the gospel reading is ‘Stay awake’. We are to be awake, alert, to the Lord’s coming, the Lord’s presence. We are to be like the doorkeeper in the parable in today’s gospel reading, attentive to the familiar footsteps of the returning beloved.

And/Or

(ii) First Sunday of Advent, Year B

The first Sunday of Advent has come round again. The Jesse tree and the Advent wreath are in place. The green of ordinary time has given way to the more sombre violet of Advent. The liturgical mood has changed a little. We drop the Gloria from our Sunday Mass for this season. Liturgically, the church holds itself in reserve somewhat, until the great outbreak of joy at the feast of Christmas. Advent is a quiet, reflective, prayerful season. We are in a waiting, expectant mode. It is the season when we wait for the Lord, when we pray Maranatha, Come Lord.

We wait for the Lord’s coming because we know that we need the Lord’s coming. People who are waiting usually have a sense of something or someone missing. That is the case whether it is a parent waiting for their son or daughter to come through the arrival gate at the airport, or a couple waiting for their child to be born, or a sick person in hospital waiting for an expected visitor. The experience of waiting brings home to us that we are incomplete. It reminds us that at some deep level of our lives we are in need, we need others.

The season of Advent reminds us of our need of the Lord. It is the season when we stand with open hearts and invite the Lord to come and to bring us to completion. We begin Advent acknowledging our need of that completion, our need of the Lord’s coming. The first reading of the first Sunday of Advent this year gives us words to express that need, ‘We have all withered like leaves and our sins blew us away like the wind’. We have all become familiar with the withered leaves of autumn these recent months. The words of the prophet Isaiah this morning suggest that these withered leaves are symbols of all that is withered in our lives. This autumn, more than other autumns, we have become more aware of the withered areas of our church’s life. As a church, we have felt more keenly our need of the Lord’s coming. Out of that sense of need we pray with greater vigour than usual this Advent, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’, or we might pray the prayer of today’s responsorial psalm, ‘Visit this vine and protect it, the vine your right hand has chosen’. The vine is an image of the people of God, an image of the church. We pray for a fresh visitation of the Lord to his church, and a greater openness on all our parts to receive the Lord’s visitation.

That first reading of Advent this morning is a lament, a communal cry to the Lord, out of a shared sense of having failed the Lord. Yet, at the end of the reading there is the conviction that the Lord is the potter who can make something new out of his flawed people. He can take material that looks unpromising and with it create a work of art. That is also our conviction as we begin Advent. We invite the Lord to come and shape us anew. To acknowledge how out of shape we are is itself to create an opening for the Lord to come. Recognizing what is wrong, acknowledging our need, therefore, does not leave us discouraged. We are full of hope in the Lord who does not give up on his people but continues to shape and mould them. Advent is a hopeful season, a time when we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

This hopeful waiting is not in any sense a sitting back and do nothing approach, as if the Lord is going to do it all for us. People who are waiting for someone dear to them are anything but laid back. If you watch people at airports waiting for loved ones to arrive, their faces are full of alertness. That is the kind of waiting that is associated with Advent, and that Jesus calls for in the gospel reading today. ‘Be on your guard, stay awake’ he says. As we wait, we are alert and attentive. We are attentive to the task the Lord has given us. We each have been given the task of growing in our relationship with the Lord, being in prayerful communion with him, witnessing to him in our daily lives. The Lord asks us to keep to that task as we wait for him, to stay at our post as it were, not to get discouraged or to lose heart. We have the assurance of St. Paul in the second reading that as we keep to our task, the Lord provides us with the help we need to do that task well. Paul tells us: ‘You will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit while you are waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ’. The Lord gifts us for the task he gives to us, while inviting us to wait in joyful hope for his coming which is assured. That is the spirit of Advent. We pray that in the coming four weeks, we would show ourselves to be Advent people.

And/Or

(iii) First Sunday of Advent, Year B

The Season of Advent falls in the darkest time of the year, when the days are coming towards their shortest. The shortest day of the year occurs in the last few days of the Advent Season. As the light begins to diminish towards its weakest point, we might find ourselves looking forward to the days when the light begins to increase again. We start to hope for longer days and signs of new life in nature. Advent is very much a season which invites us to touch into our deeper longings also, the yearnings that we all experience within ourselves for life, light, love, truth and joy. These deep yearnings are, ultimately, a longing for God. St. Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Advent is a season when we are called to enter more fully into our longing for God.

The first reading of the first Sunday of Advent gives expression to this deeper longer in our hearts for God, for a life that is more in keeping with God’s will for our lives. That reading from the prophet Isaiah is a heartfelt cry of God’s people for a deeper relationship with God. They cry to God, ‘Oh that you would tear the heavens and come down’. They acknowledge that there is a lack in their lives that only God can fill, and, so, making use of an autumn/winter image, they cry out, ‘We have all withered like leaves and our sins blew us away like the wind’. It is as if they are crying out in the winter of their spirit for God’s coming. They know that they have not been living as God intended them to live, that much of what was good in them has withered. Yet, they also know that God remains faithful to them, that God can renew them. Like the potter, God can make something new out of the mess of their lives.

This is the frame of mind and heart in which we too are invited to begin Advent. We begin Advent acknowledging the winter of our own spirit, recognizing that in ways we have become like withered leaves blown about by the wind. More importantly, we begin Advent in the conviction that God is constantly coming towards us, and is only waiting for our call. God is coming towards us as one who can refashion our lives, and change us for the better. We begin Advent, calling on God the potter to remake us, so that we shine forth more clearly as the work of his hands. In that sense, Advent is a hopeful season, because it is a time when we celebrate the good news that God’s coming will respond to the winter of our spirit.

God comes to renew what God has already given to us rather than to give us what we have never received. Another image, this time from the New Testament, expresses this well. God comes to fan into a living flame the gifts that we have been given through his Son, Jesus. We have been graced and greatly blessed in Christ, but sometimes what we have been given comes to lie dormant within us. What St. Paul says to the Corinthian church in today’s second reading could be said to all of us here this morning. ‘I never stop thanking God for all the graces you have received through Jesus Christ. I thank him that you have been enriched in so many ways… you are not without any of the gifts of the Spirit while you are waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to he revealed’. As we begin Advent, we recognize all the ways that God has graced us through his Son. But we also acknowledge that we have allowed these gifts to die back, to wither like leaves, and, so we long for God to come and fan these gifts into living flames. Advent is a time when we cry to God out of the winter of our spirit, ‘Let your face shine on us and we shall be saved’. We long for the warmth and light of God’s presence to bring to life whatever good has died within us. Our lighting of the Advent wreath over the next four weeks gives expression to that longing within us.

Advent is a time when we are invited to become more spiritually alert – alert to how we have allowed what is best in us to wither, and alert to the Lord whose fuller coming into our lives can renew and remake us. The call to be alert is the call we hear from Jesus in the gospel reading today. Advent calls us to an alertness of the spirit. We know that certain forms of behaviour can work against that kind of alertness, such as excessive drinking and the misuse of drugs. We also know that other forms of behaviour can enhance the kind of alertness to ourselves and to the Lord that Jesus calls for. In particular, taking time and space for prayer in our lives will make us more spiritually alert.

Advent is a season when we might give a little more time to prayer than we would normally do. It is a prayerful, contemplative season, when we are invited to enter into a spirit of prayerful waiting, when we are called to make the simple Advent prayer an integral part of our lives, ‘Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus’. This prayer is the Christian version of the prayer of the people of Israel in the first reading, ‘tear the heavens and come down’. It is one of the earliest prayers of the church, and is prayed by Paul at the end of this first letter to the Corinthians. In making this prayer our own, we will find ourselves entering into that spirit of Advent longing and waiting which is the essence of this season.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

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