1st Sunday Advent Homily 2024
He thought his marriage was over.
This young husband and father who sat before me wept as he spoke out loud the pain he was carrying within himself for months now. He hadn’t been eating; he was barely sleeping; and he drowned his troubles in work. Always work.
“How could my wife stay with someone like me?” he sobbed. “I’m just not good enough.”
I asked him why he thought that; why he let Satan speak into his life with such boldface lies.
This man who sat before me produced a litany of reasons, from jealousy to pornography-viewing; from past mistakes with other women in college to the daily ways he hasn’t always been attentive to his children. The list was pretty comprehensive, to be quite blunt.
It ended with this: “I am just so damn afraid of losing everything I love.”
It’s an awful place to live, isn’t it? Fear can cripple our minds and hearts. It often directs our daily actions; makes us skittish in relationships; causes us to doubt ourselves and our connection with God. Fear pushes grace out of the way.
Jesus says as much in this Gospel for the first Sunday of Advent: People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of heaven will be shaken.
He’s pointing to the very fact that it would seem to his disciples that evil finally won the battle as they witnessed their Savior, their best friend and their God die on a Cross outside Jerusalem’s walls. It would appear as if Satan and his demons won as the Temple was destroyed and the early Church persecuted and martyred for believing in the Son of Man. It would appear as if Satan and the forces of evil often win in every generation, even now.
Why, then, wouldn’t they – and we – live in constant fear? How could we not when evil and hate and brokenness seem to be constantly chasing us and invading our lives, no matter how busy we try to make ourselves or how far we attempt to run from our fears?
What do we do when dismay and perplexity threaten to drown us?
Jesus gives us the answer, of course – and he always does in His Word. It’s a two-word answer, one that he challenges us never to forget: Fight back.
Look at the very next line after the Lord calls out the fear. He tells us: “You will see the Son of Man coming with power and great glory.” In other words, it is exactly in those spaces when we are most afraid that we will see God show up.
What kind of God – what kind of loving Father – would leave his children to face their fears alone? What kind of God would abandon us to figure it out for ourselves? That’s not God … because that’s not Love.
You want to see God’s power and glory? Look how that glory comes – in the hidden love contained in Eucharist; in the comfort from a favorite Scripture passage; in the unbending support of a faithful community; in the loving embrace of a friend. That’s God’s power and glory helping us to fight back.
From there, Christ takes it a step further: when the world around us is crumbing, he says, “Stand tall and raise your heads high.”
What an incredible statement: Jesus is telling us to take the stance of a boxer ready to fight. At the exact moment that the enemy appears ready to pound us with deadly blows to the body and soul, stand up and fight back.
Fear can’t win and won’t win when we know for Whom we’re fighting. We’re fighting because we know Satan can’t win. We’re fighting because we trust that grace and mercy will always have the final say. We fight because we must do so for others. To show them how to fight, too.
We stand tall so others will stand with us. Isn’t that the definition of what Church really is supposed to be? Isn’t that what we are supposed to be for one another – fighters for each other in truth and mercy and love?
As the young husband and father sat before me last week, the crushing weight of fear attempting to drown him, he looked at me and hoarsely whispered fighting words that showed his spirit was not yet completely crushed: “I don’t want my wife and son to give up on me. I can’t give up on myself.”
Fighting words. Fighting back.
Maybe in the end, that’s the call of Advent. A new year, at least as the Church sees it. A new beginning filled with glimmers of light shining out into a world of darkness and fear. A Word of hope that breaks through the gloom. Love that appears in the womb of an unknown virgin which promises to save us from fear and evil and death.
Advent is the time to fight for what truly matters: your heart; your soul; your relationship with God and others.
It’s this beautiful season that reminds us as Church that God became human so that humans don’t let fear become a god.
Satan wants that more than anything, for when fear drives our hearts, sin and hate usually tag along for the ride.
So, again, the battle cry is clear: fight back.
Don’t let the daily worries of life drown your trust. Don’t try to bury your fears and anxieties under the weight of a keg or through the constant social-media scrolling. Don’t run from the fight against sin.
Fight back through prayer. Fight back through acts of service. Fight back by taking the time to speak into the fear and worry with the words that Jesus speaks to each of us, His beloved daughters and sons: you are enough. You are loved for who you are. Your sin does not define you. “I have called you by name; you are Mine.” Live it like you mean it – because God sure does. Then go, tell the others.
As that young dad left my parish office, I can’t say that all was better. It wasn’t. But I did notice this: he stood a little taller. He was still attempting to fight; to not give-up or give-in to the darkness. There was a glimmer of light beginning to shine again. It was a beautiful start; a flowering of grace.
It was an Advent moment in the midst of fear: a 27-year-old man who wasn’t done fighting for his heart, his faith or his family. And that, in the moment, was truly enough.