HOMILY FOR MASS FOR 1ST SUNDAY OF ADVENT YEAR B – St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

HOMILY FOR MASS FOR 1ST SUNDAY OF ADVENT YEAR B
St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

The Season of Advent has been celebrated since around the fourth century AD when Christmas was fixed on 25 December. It has usually been marked by prayer and fasting – though less than in the lead-up to Easter, hence the popular name “Little Lent”. There have been special Advent prayers and music, and for the novena before Christmas, cock-crow Masses and ‘O antiphons’. Churches and priests were traditionally dressed up in penitential violet for these weeks and then decorated – the churches, not the priests – with wreathes and candles. In northern England poor women used visit people’s homes in Advent with dolls of Mary and the Baby Jesus, expecting a halfpenny from the householder and threatening the ungenerous with a year of bad luck. Throughout Italy and elsewhere, more and more elaborate nativity scenes are erected through Advent and in Calabria bagpipes are played, possibly to help bring on the Virgin’s labour!

So much for the pious customs, but what is Advent really about? Our word comes from the Latin adventus, meaning ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’, and indicating a season of waiting. The ‘Seventh Day Adventists’ famously await the Lord’s return at any moment now. We, too, sing hymns of longing like Come, O come, Emmanuel. Yet Latin scholars such as our choir-boys will immediately notice that the word adventus is in the past tense. It’s as if the One we await has already arrived. Coming or come – which is it? How do we reconcile this tension?

Well, we partly solve this paradox by acknowledging that God is not bound by sequence and duration as we are. The mystics say past, present and future are “eternally now” for God. The theologians recognize this also, as when Aquinas taught that in the one moment of the ‘Sacred Banquet’ of the Mass we remember Christ’s Passion past, we receive His grace presently, and we are promised His glory in the future.¹ The liturgy also acknowledges these multiple time-zones, as when on Easter night the priest traces a cross, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet and the current year on the new paschal candle while saying “Christ, yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, all time and all ages belong to Him, to whom be glory and sovereignty through every age, for ever.”

The secret to this season of Advent, then, lies in the tension of its very name and this in turn tells us something important about ourselves. Advent points not to one but three comings of Christ. One coming is in the past, when Christ came two thousand years ago as a helpless Babe; hence the Prophet Isaiah named Him in our first reading today ‘the ancient Redeemer’ (Isa 63:16-17; 64:1-8). One coming is in the future, when Christ will return in glory; hence that same Prophet’s prayer, “Return, O Lord, for the sake of your servants… tear open the heavens and come down.” And one coming is in the present when Christ is here amongst us in word and sacrament, in minister and community, in creation and redemption.

Three comings, then, each a divine gift, and each with its particular effects in us which, when they become habitual, are theological virtues in our character. Let me explain. That Christ has already come is something we know by faith: the more we ponder that coming in Advent and throughout the liturgical year, deepens its mystery and proclaims it to others in our words and deeds, the more faithful and faith-filled we become. That Christ will come again is something for which we hope, and the more we anticipate that coming with longing and excitement, the more we pray for it and help bring it about by making “God’s kingdom come and will be done” in our lives, the more hopeful and hope-giving we will be. And that Christ is here amongst us, come to our Church, our families, our own hearts today is something that evokes our love: and the more we know and serve Him in the here and now, the closer He comes to us, the more loving and lovely we become.

So there’s guard duty to be done, our Gospel suggests, and any guard worth his salt looks backwards and forwards (Mk 13:33-37): but only so he can see what’s right before him. Be on guard, watching and waiting, ready and willing, right now, Jesus says. Though we know not the when of that day and hour, we do know the Who that is coming, our Father-Redeemer, and so our Advent is pregnant with expectation, longing, love. Like an excited pet dog watching the door, listening for the car, awaiting the return of the Master, the Church waits with its tail wagging.

So the ambiguity at the heart of name of our season is no accident: Advent reminds us that God is eternally now, past, future, above-all present; that the life He shares with us that we call grace is therefore long ago received, long ahead promised, but above all experienced here and now, sustaining us every moment of every day, egging us on to more and better, and enabling the achievement of our holy ambitions. It takes a whole season to get into that divine relationship with time; indeed, you might say it takes a life-time. When you are young, time seems to pass slowly, too slowly, as when waiting for Christmas presents; when you get old, like me, Christmas starts coming around what seems like every six months! The child needs patience to endure the wait; the adult needs prudence to make the most of what remains; but at every stage the gift we most need is time itself. And not just any old time, but God’s good time, “as it was in the beginning… now, and ever shall be”.

So today and in the days ahead, look backwards and forwards. Look backwards to the first Christmas as you erect your cribs and decorate your trees, as you pick and post Christmas cards with the Nativity on the front, not just happy holiday cards. Look forwards to Christmas ahead, by getting in the party food and wrapping the presents, planning whom you’ll bring to the Lights of Christmas and the Midnight Mass. And as you look backwards and forwards, avoid your head spinning by doing something extra in Advent, something spiritual, and by spiritual I don’t just mean drinking more spirits at office parties! Try some extra prayer, like Mass and Confession, or our Advent prayer The Angelus each noontime. Try some fasting, perhaps in proportion to the feasting ahead or already begun. Practise your carols. Remember that the One who has long come and is yet long to come, is also here right now come to a pew, an office and a home near you!

REMARKS AT THE 12th CHRISTMAS STORY ART COMPETITION AND EXHIBITION
St. Mary’s Cathedral Crypt, Sydney

It’s a joy once again to attend the annual Christmas Story Art Exhibition, and see the truly wonderful talent developing in our schools. My thanks to Mrs Jenny Allen, Mr Peter Turner and Dr Dan White, the staff from the Catholic Schools Offices and CCD offices of Bathurst, Wollongong and Sydney, along with school leaders, teachers, catechists and parents for their support of this worthy endeavour. I acknowledge those presenting awards today, the thousands who competed, and the various organisations that support this competition. Above all I welcome our young artists, the Raphaels of tomorrow!

In 1938, the future Prime Minister of Britain, Winston Churchill, who was himself an amateur painter, noted that “It is by art man gets nearest to the angels and farthest from the animals… Here you have a man with a brush and palette. With a dozen blobs of pigment he makes a certain pattern on one or two square yards of canvas, and something is created which carries its shining message of inspiration not only to all who are living with him on the world, but across hundreds of years to generations unborn. It lights the path and links the thought of one generation with another, and in the realm of price holds its own in intrinsic value with… gold. Evidently we are in the presence of a mystery which strikes down to the deepest foundations of human genius and of human glory. Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due.”²
This same sentiment was echoed earlier this year by Pope Francis, who suggested that “The arts give expression to the beauty of the faith and proclaim the Gospel message of the grandeur of God’s creation. When we admire a work of art or a marvel of nature, we discover how everything speaks to us of Him and of His love. Artists of our time, through their creativity, may help us discover the beauty of creation.”³

Here we have two great men agreeing on the power of beauty, and art in particular, to speak to us in a way which goes beyond the power of words. Paintings are more than the paint on canvas which gives them their form; they are the expression of beauty, and to see the face of beauty is to see the face of the God who is Eternal Beauty. This is why so the Catholic Church has always been such a patron of the arts: we recognize that people are rarely won over to Christ by argument alone. But show them the beauty alongside the truth of which you speak and the goodness that you live, and they may be moved. Arguments may persuade but beauty has the power to allure, excite, inspire. To engage with a work of art is to have a conversation with beauty; to engage a work of Catholic art is to have a conversation with Christ and even conversion to Him.

Today it is my pleasure to open an exhibition of artworks by young Catholic school students or SRE students that all try to capture something of the face of that beauty that is God and His saints, depicting as they do important moments in the Christmas Story. I invite you all to take the time to enter into conversation with each beautiful work and to allow Christ to speak to your heart through them. And may He bless you all this Christmas!

Congratulations to all who have contributed to this competition and exhibition! It gives me great pleasure to declare this exhibition open today, and to announce the Archbishop’s Trophy and Award has this year been won by not one but two students, both from Year 6: Annie White, from St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Primary School, Bowral (whose work is number 82); and Jessica Schroeder, from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, Randwick – number 67. Congratulations to you both!

INTRODUCTION TO MASS FOR 1ST SUNDAY OF ADVENT YEAR B
St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral for the Solemn Mass for the first Sunday of Advent and so of the new Liturgical Year. Advent is a special time of preparation; a time when we prepare not only for the first coming of the Infant King at Christmas, but also for His Second Coming, at the end of time, and our return to Him somewhere in between!

After Mass we will bless the Christmas crib in the cathedral square and you are all most welcome to join me for that. Thereafter I will open the schools Christmas Story Art Exhibition in the crypt: to any of our Year 5 and 6 artists and their families who’ve come early: it’s great to have you here.

To everyone present, including visitors and more regulars, a very warm welcome!