Homily for the 1st Sunday of Advent

Dear Fellow Pilgrims:

Our hearts unite with the longing of our ancestors this Advent in a manner unlike any other we have experienced:
 

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you…” (Isaiah 63:19)

The key word for this brief season is captured by the evangelist Mark: “watch!” The theme is simply “waiting in joyful hope.” I am reminded as I reflect on this first week of Advent of an adventure from 1994 in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Generations of hikers had undertaken a familiar but challenging hike up 3,475 foot Mt. Chocorua. My mother, who had made this hike numerous times insisted that at age 75 she was in shape to walk at least some of the way. My brother Jon decided that he would accompany her while everyone else waltzed up the mountain. At one point she stopped suddenly. Jon wondered if she was in distress. After a long pause, she simple said: “If you look and listen long enough, you might just see a moose or a bear!” Our mother was filled with wonder and awe of God’s creation. More importantly, however, she was in love with the God who had become incarnate. This is the season for us all to rekindle that same fervor. Father Karl Rahner summed it all up in this little prayer:
 

“Behold, You come. And Your coming is neither past nor future, but the present, which has only to reach its fulfillment. Now it is still the one single hour of Your Advent, at the end of which we too shall have found out that You have really come.”
(Rahner, Encounters with Silence, p.87)

Yours in Christ,
Fr. Bill Foley