Fr. Jerome Pistoni sx
First Sunday of Advent Year C Reflection
We start today the new Liturgical Year with the season of Advent, a time of hope, joy and eager waiting of the Lord who is coming.
But the images portrayed today in the gospel of St. Luke, the gospel that we will read during the Year C, are very scary, they announce the end of the world in a very catastrophic way. Wasn't there a better passage of the gospel to start this season of Advent?
Saint Paul wrote in his letter to Timothy: “Fan into a flame the gift you have received” and the gift was his faith received by his mother and his grandmother.
This is the purpose of the period of Advent, it is not a season of doom and gloom, but a season of hope, during which we are invited to reawaken our faith that, due to the care and failure of life, may have cooled down.
In the gospel of this first Sunday of Advent we meet Jesus in Jerusalem, the capital city.
His life in this world was coming to an end, as he knew very well, because of the bitter opposition of his rivals, Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees. He spent each day of this week in the temple of Jerusalem and in the evenings, he went to sleep at the olive garden.
While they were inside the Temple his disciples made a comment about the beauty of that construction.
Jesus, who was not impressed by appearances, told them that, of that building there would not be one stone left on another. The disciples were sure that those words of Jesus indicated the end of the world: but which world was coming to an end?
With Jesus and his message, that was collected specially in the four gospels, a new era in the history of humanity was starting and the old world, that like the sun, the moon and the stars seemed untouchable, was crumbling down.
The old religious order was shaking, a religious world that had established a wrong relationship with God started its decline. It was the end of the belief in a touchy and cruel God and the beginning of the awareness that God did not want to punish his creatures but he came to their help like the shepherd looks for the lost sheep.
It was the end of a social world, represented by Cesar and Herod and many others and based on oppression and violence. It was the beginning of the new world, the Kingdom of God, brought by Jesus, the son of man.
We know that the old and new world live together. Goodness and wickedness are both present in our society and in our life. Sometimes the old world weighs us down, makes us feel discouraged. That’s why the season of Advent invite us to stay awake so that we may continue welcoming the new world of Jesus in our daily life.
It is the time to raise again our heads, it is the time to look up and not seeking only the things of the earth: we are invited “to fan into a flame the gift that we have received”.
First Sunday of Advent Year C Reflection
We start today the new Liturgical Year with the season of Advent, a time of hope, joy and eager waiting of the Lord who is coming.
But the images portrayed today in the gospel of St. Luke, the gospel that we will read during the Year C, are very scary, they announce the end of the world in a very catastrophic way. Wasn't there a better passage of the gospel to start this season of Advent?
Saint Paul wrote in his letter to Timothy: “Fan into a flame the gift you have received” and the gift was his faith received by his mother and his grandmother.
This is the purpose of the period of Advent, it is not a season of doom and gloom, but a season of hope, during which we are invited to reawaken our faith that, due to the care and failure of life, may have cooled down.
In the gospel of this first Sunday of Advent we meet Jesus in Jerusalem, the capital city.
His life in this world was coming to an end, as he knew very well, because of the bitter opposition of his rivals, Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees. He spent each day of this week in the temple of Jerusalem and in the evenings, he went to sleep at the olive garden.
While they were inside the Temple his disciples made a comment about the beauty of that construction.
Jesus, who was not impressed by appearances, told them that, of that building there would not be one stone left on another. The disciples were sure that those words of Jesus indicated the end of the world: but which world was coming to an end?
With Jesus and his message, that was collected specially in the four gospels, a new era in the history of humanity was starting and the old world, that like the sun, the moon and the stars seemed untouchable, was crumbling down.
The old religious order was shaking, a religious world that had established a wrong relationship with God started its decline. It was the end of the belief in a touchy and cruel God and the beginning of the awareness that God did not want to punish his creatures but he came to their help like the shepherd looks for the lost sheep.
It was the end of a social world, represented by Cesar and Herod and many others and based on oppression and violence. It was the beginning of the new world, the Kingdom of God, brought by Jesus, the son of man.
We know that the old and new world live together. Goodness and wickedness are both present in our society and in our life. Sometimes the old world weighs us down, makes us feel discouraged. That’s why the season of Advent invite us to stay awake so that we may continue welcoming the new world of Jesus in our daily life.
It is the time to raise again our heads, it is the time to look up and not seeking only the things of the earth: we are invited “to fan into a flame the gift that we have received”.