Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

We are winding down another year in the Christian calendar. Our Christian new year begins Sunday with the first day of Advent, the time when we await Christ’s coming. Thinking of Advent as the “New Year” may seem a bit odd to us who are more familiar with doing a countdown and opening bottles of champagne at midnight. In my family, we have a special meal at the New Year, each food symbolically representing the kind of year we hope to have: corn for wealth, new potatoes for new endeavors, etc. Many of us write probably also write resolutions at the end of December, hoping that the next year will be a “new” year in the sense that we will become “new people” who will lose weight, go to the gym more, be more generous, and the like. In secular time, in other words, we “prepare” for the New Year with parties, special foods, and resolutions.

Advent, by contrast, seems to be no celebration of a New Year at all. It is strange to “prepare” for Advent, because Advent is itself a season of preparation for Christmas. There are no fancy meals, no breaking out the champagne. (In fact, in Eastern Christian traditions, many people fast for the forty days before Christmas, in similar manner to fasting at Lent.) And if there are advent “resolutions,” they tend to get lost in the other “resolutions” we have this time of year: “I will not eat too much at that party.” “I will make sure to get a small gift for the babysitter.” “I need to remember to pick up those items for the food pantry.”

Our scriptures today are seeking to help us prepare for the Christian New Year – they offer us a different set of “resolutions”.

1) Resolve to give over to God old problems and worries.

The Revelation passage from today (selections from Chs. 20 and 21) presents our old world at the end of time when Jesus will come again. It depicts a terrifying story of serpents, fire, and judgement. Many, many Christians have spent countless time over the years trying to figure out exactly when Jesus will come again looking at these verses.

Our Catholic tradition, though, is far less concerned with exactly how to predict the end of times, and more concerned with the bottom-line message: God will be all-in-all in the last days. God’s justice will be done, even among the dead. Death is not final, nor is Hell – for notice that both Death and Hades themselves are swallowed up in fire. So, we may not know exactly when the end of times will come – but perhaps this Advent we can practice allowing our problems and worries to be subjected to God in our prayer and in the way we live.

2)Resolve to seek out where God is in this world.

It is difficult, sometimes, to find God in our world. We live in a secular age when many people are practical atheists or agnostics. It can be easy to succumb to those sentiments ourselves unless we continually seek God’s presence. Today’s psalm (84) promises that God lives among his people.

Finding God can be difficult in our world, however, especially when our lives are surrounded by things that cover up God’s presence: desires for power, more money, more beautiful bodies, and the like. The Christian new year is a time when we can resolve to pare down our lives, and seek God.

3) Resolve to pay attention to the small ordinary things.

This resolution is related to the second one. Jesus’ words in today’s gospel (Luke 21:29-33) admonish his disciples to pay attention to when the fig trees and other trees flower, for then they will know when God’s kingdom is here. It can be difficult to pay attention to flowering trees, though. I have many plants and trees inside and outside my house and it is easy to overlook they ways they change over time because they are always there – and I tend to suppose they are always the same. But when I take time specially to watch them, I do notice changes.

This is perhaps a bit like the ordinary things of our lives – if we refocus on our ordinary acts (from saying hello, to holding open doors for people, to being mindful of what we say) we slow down by necessity. Then we have more time and opportunity to seek where God is in this world.

Let us take the time today to reflect on the ways we need to make ourselves ready for the new Christian year, and let us ask God for help in becoming ready.

- Jana M. Bennett