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| PANTOCRATOR @ Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey |
My reflection for the first
Sunday of Advent
Take ye
heed, watch and pray. For ye know not when the time is. Even as a man who
going into a far country, left his house; and gave authority to his servants
over every work, and commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye therefor,
(for you know not when the lord of the house cometh: at even, or at midnight,
or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning,) Lest coming on a sudden, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you,
I say to all: Watch. (Mark 13:33-37, Douay-Rheims Bible).
This Sunday marks the beginning of the Advent season in the
liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic church. Year after year, through our liturgy and
through the reading of the scriptures we begin our journey in waiting and we
end our journey in the recognizing the Kingship of Jesus Christ, the one who is
to come. But it is paradoxical that the reading
for this first Sunday is both a warning and admonition to watch because the
coming of the Lord is near.
In our celebration of the liturgy we anticipate the coming
of Christ in three ways: (1) In the first sense, we relive the coming of Christ
on earth two thousand years ago. As we
walk through this commemoration we renew and we refresh our memory so that from
year to year we keep our faith and we keep our hope. (2) In the second sense we are reminded that
Christ will come again for the second time as He had promised, until the consummation
of time. But as to the exact date that
the Lord is coming, no one knows. (3) In
the third sense, the end of all of us or death is also a form of encountering
the Lord for as it was written in the Bible, that it is appointed for men to
die once and after that the judgement will come. But the central message for us is to watch
and pray.
This being watchful can only be realized if we constantly
cultivate our faith in Christ. A lively
faith will only be done if we cultivate such faith and renew it every day. For indeed it is important that we realize
the transcendental nature of this watching.
At the core of this is faith in Christ who made the promise and our
faith in God who is our Father.
