Today’s question is for those of you who are familiar with a Big city back east. No, I did not say “up east,” but “back” east, east of Houston. So, my question is not about the “Big Apple,” New York City, but rather about the “Big Easy,” New Orleans. My question is this: What motto, what saying, does New Orleans often use for itself? Yes: “let the good times roll.” And no, I won’t attempt saying it in Cajun French.
Now you might think it’s strange I’d begin today’s homily with a reference to New Orleans, a city usually associated with Mardi Gras and the beginning of Lent, not Advent. Yet, some of you may recognize there is a certain commonality between the two seasons. Just as Lent is a time of preparation for the celebration of Easter, Advent is a time of preparation for the celebration of Christmas. In fact, Advent is sometimes referred to as a “Christmas Lent.” If you look around, you can see our liturgical colors are purples and violets, the colors usually found during Lent. And the altar is very plain, with an Advent wreath, almost as simple as the rocks and branches with which we adorn our altar during Lent.
Others of you might think it’s strange I would also make use of a motto such as “let the good times roll.” On the surface, it doesn’t match the austere climate of our country. Especially now that we know “officially” we are in a Recession, one that began six months ago
On the other hand, there are those who might suggest this is the right motto for us now. After all, we are being urged to go out and shop, to buy all of those tantalizing consumers’ products offered at discounted prices for the holiday season we’re now entering. We’re encouraged to travel more and buy more, so that we can return to a time of what is called “normalcy.”
Well, perhaps, an even bigger question than one about the motto for New Orleans might be: “and just what is a time of normalcy?” What should we consider to be “normal?” Is it really “normal” to buy excessively, to grab everything you want and desire? Is it “normal” to go increasingly into debt especially for one day, for December 25, so that it takes us the next five or six months to pay off the cost of our “binge buying?”
Is it really “normal” to binge not only on our material purchases, but also on what we will be eating and drinking at all of the parties we will be celebrating in honor of the child who was born in a stable, whose birth was witnessed by poor shepherds tending their sheep in the fields?
Does it make sense in the year 2001 to listen to words written by a former maker of tents, words written some twenty years after the Passion suffered by that stable-born child? Listen again to the words Paul wrote: “Let us … throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and lust, not in rivalry and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”
If buying and consuming, if spending our money for the material things of this world is “normal,” what, then, is “abnormal?”
● Is it “abnormal” to turn swords into plowshares?
● Is it “normal” to wage war and “abnormal” to pursue peace?
● Is it “abnormal” to turn spears into pruning hooks?
● Is it “normal” to thrust a weapon into an enemy and “abnormal” to pull toward you a neighbor who needs your help?
Which is the reality of our lives and which are the dreams? Often we are urged by our contemporaries to “get real!” Stop being a “dreamer.” We are told to prepare for the future by making wise investments today. And yet, we are puzzled by just what that future might hold.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus reminds his disciples, his friends, that before the flood, Noah’s contemporaries ate and drank to their heart’s content and were not concerned with the dark clouds gathering over their heads, until it was too late. Too late for one. Not too late for another. Too late for those who are not always prepared. Not too late for those who prepare correctly, for those who stay awake, who prepare for the return of the one who left, but who will return, unexpectedly.
And that is what this season of Advent is about. It is not to prepare for the birth of the Christ Child. That event happened twenty centuries ago, some forty generations ago. No, the Advent, the Coming for which we prepare, is the return of our God.
Once again, during this season, we acknowledge that God has come to us in a very special way, incarnated as a human being. One like us in all ways except in sin. Like us in our human needs and desires, yet One who exercised his own free will as a human so that his free will was always in complete agreement with the will of the eternal Father.
Once again during Advent, we acknowledge that God not only became infleshed, but our God is still present with us in a very special way: as the Holy Spirit who strengthens us so we, too, can exercise our own, human free will, so our will becomes more in agreement with the will of our eternal Father.
Once again in the coming weeks, we acknowledge that God not only became infleshed in time and is still present with us in every moment of our human lives, but also our God awaits our reunion with him in a very special way: a time when we will once more be reunited with our eternal Father from whom we gained our life. Yes, at each liturgical gathering, we continue to say: “Christ has come, Christ is with us, Christ will come again.”
And during these next days and weeks, we will continue to prepare for Christmas, the celebration of the Mass of Christ, for that is what the word “Christmas” means: Christ’s mass. Perhaps, during this particular Advent, we might focus on December 25 as the time for the celebration of Christ’s Eucharist as well as a time for our becoming Eucharist, our becoming a true thanksgiving, and a time for sharing of our lives, our very selves, with one another.
A few minutes ago, I said the motto of New Orleans was: “let the good times roll.” Perhaps, our own motto for this season of Advent could be, not “let the good times roll,” but rather, “let the Good News roll!” Let the Good News spring forth, the Good News that the Kingdom of God is at hand.
First Sunday of Advent; December 12, 2001
Is 2:1-5; Rom 12:11-14; Mt 24:37-44