Advent 1C: a new year, a new Gospel, a new synodal adventure (1 December 2024; 1 Thess 2:12-4:2 and Luke 21:25-28, 34-36)

A reflection based on 1 Thess 2:12-4:2 and Luke 21:25-28, 34-36. Written and spoken by Kieran J. O'Mahony OSA

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Gentle piano music to close the meditation

Transcript

Advent 1C24
John’s Lane
D08 F8NW

1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2
Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

Welcome
Today is the first Sunday of a new church year and it marks several beginnings. 

Topic
We begin the countdown to Christmas; we start reading from the Gospel of Luke; we are invited to recognise again the longings of the heart. Also, 2025 is a Holy Year, as we continue on our synodal pathway in the Irish church. 

Steps

1. The word advent simply means arrival or coming and in this season we undertake a journey towards Christmas, the birth of Jesus. This happens every year but every year it is different because we are different. You may like to cast your mind over the past year — what were the gains and what were the losses. We are very aware of global issues: climate change, migration, the apparent unravelling of democracy, not forgetting the ongoing wars.  A personal inventory is also essential: how am I — simply as a human being, as a family member,  a life-partner and parent, as someone in society as large, and also as a believer, a member of the community of faith. 

2. For the next year or so, we will be hearing from the Gospel of Luke, a beautiful and rich presentation of the Jesus story. If we did a vox pop in the church right now, my bet is that the best remembered Gospel stories would be from Luke — he alone has the Annunciation, the shepherds at Christmas, the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, Zacchaeus and the Good thief, the disciples on the road to Emmaus. If this Gospel had somehow not survived, we would be missing a rich inspiration for Christian imagination and living and encouragement. 

Luke presents a joyful picture of Jesus, spirit-driven, focussed on the compassion of God. Like Matthew, Luke is a second, expanded edition of Mark. The editorial adjustments can be revealing. Today’s Gospel, for example, is substantially taken from Mark 13 — with a few additions which shed light. First of all, he takes some of the “fright” out of Mark by adding the encouraging words: 

“When these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand.”

He also adds the warning against sleep-walking through life. 

“Watch yourselves, or your hearts will be coarsened with debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life.”

Like a good pastor, he affirms and he encourages. Nowadays, we live with a fairly high level of stress — the cares of life — and Luke invites us to go deeper for our source of inner peace and personal resilience. 

In fact, Luke is a great teacher of spirituality. If someone were to say to me, where would I find in the New Testament, the best teaching on prayer, I would unhesitatingly say the Gospel of Luke, the letters of Paul and the Gospel of John. It is no accident that these writers are especially rich on the Holy Spirit, joy and the spiritual journey, a kind of holy triad. If you’ve never read the Gospel of Luke from beginning end, what not set that as an Advent project for yourself?

3. 2025 is a Holy Year. These are held every 25 years and represent an opportunity to engage more deeply with the faith. This is particularly true for 2025 which marks the 17th centenary of the creed we recited every Sunday, the Nicene creed. It was the fruit of a church council in 325 in Nicaea (modern Turkey). We shouldn’t overstate the value of Holy Years — God’s love and grace are constant. Such “events” are really opportunities to take a deeper look, even to take stock.  More locally, in the next two years, 2025 and 2026, the Irish church will embark on a National Synod. Our Synod follows on the two year assembly, completed recently in Rome. In itself that was a vast consultation of the entire membership of the Catholic world, a huge venture, an adventure never undertaken before. It also bore fruit. The question before us in Ireland is a good one: What is God asking of his church at this moment in our shared history? In a word, how can we as a community of faith offer the word of life, the Gospel, in our time? And accordingly, how should we be, how should we live our faith as individual and as church, so we can serve that greater vision? 

The words of St Paul may encourage us: 

Finally, brothers, we urge you and appeal to you in the Lord Jesus to make more and more progress in the kind of life that you are meant to live: the life that God wants, as you learnt from us, and as you are already living it.  

Conclusion
So, not just the first Sunday of Advent, business as usual! Instead, we have before us an occasion of grace, an opportunity for new life, both personally and as a community of faith. Let’s all pray that we truly listen together to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.