{"id":8392,"date":"2021-11-29T06:25:35","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T14:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=8392"},"modified":"2024-12-12T12:14:21","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T20:14:21","slug":"strength-to-face-the-future-homily-for-the-first-sunday-of-advent-year-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/strength-to-face-the-future-homily-for-the-first-sunday-of-advent-year-c","title":{"rendered":"Strength to Face the Future: Homily for the First Sunday of Advent – Year C"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s gospel Jesus tells his disciples
\nto \u201cstand erect and raise your heads
\nbecause your redemption is at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a bit of personal irony,
\nI woke up this weekend unable to \u201cstand erect\u201d
\nbecause of an excruciating pain in my back.
\nI guess I must have tweaked something
\nputting up the Christmas tree
\nor carrying the box of holiday china.
\nBut it\u2019s starting to feel better,
\nand I have great hope that it will continue to heal.<\/p>\n

We human beings cannot live without hope.
\nWe\u2019re unique among the animal kingdom
\nbecause we can think about the future.
\nWe can worry about what it will become,
\nand we can yearn for it to be better.<\/p>\n

Hope is so essential to being human
\nthat we can\u2019t live without something to live for,
\nwithout something look forward to.<\/p>\n

As Fr. George Haspedis used to say,
\nhope is to the heart what breathing is to the lungs.
\nStop breathing and you die.
\nStop hoping and you die.
\nKeep breathing and you live.
\nKeep hoping and you live, and live with purpose.<\/p>\n

Hope gives you strength to face the future.<\/p>\n

But there are many things in which we can place our hope,
\nthere are many things we can choose to live for.
\nWhatever we hope in shapes the way we live our lives.
\nWe can hope in the promises of God
\nor we can hope in the promises of the world.<\/p>\n

Today we begin the beautiful season of Advent,
\nand one of the blessings of Advent
\nis that it teaches us what to hope for.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one of the reasons we read the Old Testament during Advent.
\nThe people of the Old Testament knew how to hope,
\nand we can learn from their patient waiting.<\/p>\n

Today the prophet Jeremiah tells us of the Lord\u2019s promise
\nto raise up a just shoot.
\nThe Old Testament peoples had hope in the promises of God
\nso they had the strength to wait centuries
\nfor their fulfillment.<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t always faithful to the promise,
\nbut they never forgot it.
\nIt fueled their imaginations
\nand gave them something to live for
\nduring the long years of slavery, exile, and oppression.<\/p>\n

As today\u2019s psalm puts it,
\n\u201cyou are God my savior,
\nand for you I wait all the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last January 1st, Brenda and I began listening
\nto a brand new Bible-in-a-Year podcast<\/a>
\nfeaturing Fr. Mike Schmitz of Ascension Press.
\nEvery day since last New Year\u2019s Day
\nwe\u2019ve been listening to Fr. Mike read from the Bible,
\nstarting from the book of Genesis.
\nWe read through the entire Old Testament,
\nGenesis, Exodus, and Leviticus,
\nthrough Job, the Psalms, and Sirach,
\nthrough Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Malachi.
\nWe read every law and genealogy,
\ncounted every cubit and ephah.<\/p>\n

And as we listened, day after day,
\nwe waited and waited for the New Testament to come.
\nJust like the people of the Old Testament,
\nwe waited for the promised Messiah.
\nAnd we heard the promises,
\nthe same promises we will hear during Advent:
\n\u201cIn days to come the mountain of the Lord\u2019s house shall be established
\nas the highest mountain.”
\n\u201cThey shall beat their swords into plowshares
\nand their spears into pruning hooks.\u201d
\n\u201cThe Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples
\na feast of rich food and choice wine.\u201d
\n\u201cHe will destroy death forever.\u201d
\n\u201cThe deaf shall hear\u2026the eyes of the blind shall see..\u201d
\n\u201cThe tyrant will be no more.\u201d
\n\u201cStreams will burst forth in the desert\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

We finally reached the New Testament in the second week of November.
\nIt took over ten months to read the Old Testament.
\nThat\u2019s how much of the Bible takes place before the time of Christ.<\/p>\n

But as long as that seemed to take,
\nit\u2019s nothing compared to how long the Chosen People actually waited
\nfor the Messiah.<\/p>\n

But all during those long years
\ntheir hope in that promise gave them strength to face the future.
\nIn the face of disease they had the strength to hope for healing.
\nIn the face of division they had the strength to hope for unity.
\nAnd in the face of war, they had the strength to hope for peace.<\/p>\n

With the coming of Christ,
\ntheir hope was justified.
\nJesus came to be our healer,
\nJesus came to gather us all into one family,
\nand Jesus came to be peace for our souls.
\nThe Chosen People hoped, and their hope was justified.<\/p>\n

Hope for the Christian believer is more than wishful thinking.
\nHope is an unshakeable trust and assurance
\nthat the promises of God will be fulfilled.
\nIt\u2019s a trust based on what God has already done for us
\nin his son Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection.<\/p>\n

Hope is the gift of the Holy Spirit within us
\nthat yearns for the kingdom of heaven.
\nIt keeps us from being discouraged,
\nit sustains us when we feel alone,
\nit inspires us to do good in the face of evil.<\/p>\n

Christmas is coming.
\nWe are getting ready to celebrate
\nGod\u2019s entrance into the world in history,
\nhis coming to us in a more intimate way in the present,
\nand his promise to come again and redeem the world .<\/p>\n

We are given the season of Advent
\nto focus our attention on this marvelous, beautiful, mystery,
\nnot to focus on wish lists, shopping, and parties.
\nFor the next four weeks,
\nwe can choose to hope in the world,
\nor to hope in Christ.<\/p>\n

Jesus warns his disciples,
\n\u201cBeware that your hearts do not become drowsy
\nfrom carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life\u2026\u201d
\nWhere is my heart at the beginning of Advent?
\nIs it weighed down with anxieties?
\nIt is numbed by all the distractions of the culture?
\nAm I half-asleep moving through my day,
\nwith no sense of hope for the future?<\/p>\n

If so, then Advent is here just in time.
\nAdvent is here to remind us to be vigilant,
\nto pray always.
\nto teach us what to hope for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In today\u2019s gospel Jesus tells his disciples to \u201cstand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.\u201d In a bit of personal irony, I woke up this weekend unable to \u201cstand erect\u201d because of an excruciating pain in my back. I guess I must have tweaked something putting up the Christmas tree or carrying the box of holiday china. But it\u2019s starting to feel better, and I have great hope that it will continue to heal. We human beings cannot live without hope. We\u2019re unique...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Strength to Face the Future: #Homily for the First Sunday of Advent - Year C","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[349],"tags":[363,361,600],"class_list":["post-8392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homily","tag-advent","tag-gospel-of-luke","tag-jeremiah"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/prophet_jeremiah.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-2bm","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8392"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8396,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392\/revisions\/8396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}