Sunday, Dec. 1, marked the beginning of the Advent season, a four-week period of preparation and anticipation leading up to the Christmas holiday and the new liturgical year. For the next four weeks, Dr. Dan Scholz, director of the Catholic Schools and Parishes Initiative, and Rev. Ryan G. Duns, S.J., chair and associate professor of theology, will provide personal reflections on each week focusing on hope, peace, joy and love.
In this first week of Advent, Scholz focuses on the hope Jesus brings with his ultimate return:
One of the beautiful aspects of our Catholic liturgical seasons is that it invites us to think about time differently. Each new Church Year opens not on Jan. 1, but with the season of Advent — a time of hope and longing for the Lord to come into our lives. The readings for the first Sunday of Advent animate this sense of hope.
The first reading comes from the prophet Jeremiah. He was active in the southern kingdom of Judah in the decades leading up to Israel’s captivity and exile to Babylonia in 587 B.C. Many have characterized Jeremiah as a prophet of doom. That is not an unfair assessment. He was very critical of the people’s insincere worship in Jerusalem’s Temple and often condemned what he saw as social injustices. Jeremiah implored people to repent of their idolatry and return to their covenantal relationship with God. When they refused, he spoke of God’s impending judgment and the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Babylonian Empire.
But to be fair, Jeremiah was also a prophet of hope. He spoke of a remnant of Israel that would survive captivity and exile and foresaw the restoration of Jerusalem. This is the focus of today’s reading: “Judah shall be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely.” In fact, Jeremiah’s declaration, “The Lord our justice,” was the assurance that God will one day put things right again.
Each new Church Year, the Gospel reading for the first Sunday of Advent begins with it a focus on the Second Coming of Christ. Rightly so, since the season of Advent celebrates both the historical birth of Jesus and anticipates the future return of Jesus, the Parousia. The Gospel reading from Luke 21 asks us to think about time from God’s perspective. Here Jesus speaks about the coming Son of Man, the Parousia, marking the time of his return and the complete ushering in of God’s reign in the world. Jesus draws upon the metaphoric language of the prophets in describing this age to come. Jesus assures his followers that as Son of Man, he will be present in all the turmoil and chaos, standing ready to rescue believers for the new creation that awaits us. It is the ultimate message of hope for a future still to be realized in time.
We see a similar message of hope from Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians. Curiously, Paul writes more about the return of Jesus than about the birth of Jesus in his letters. As he anticipates the Second Coming, Paul instructs the community members in Thessalonica to “increase and abound in love for one another and for all and be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.” This was the hope that grounded Paul’s missionary zeal.
The readings for the first Sunday of Advent offer an opportunity for our students, faculty and staff to think about time differently, and by extension, hope differently. We are called to live our daily lives with assurance that God alone is in control of time and history and to never lose hope even in difficult moments.
