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It is that time of the year again when we reach
out to you for help. Our weekly e-mailings now go to almost 4,000 recipients.
Our webpage, “Preacher Exchange,” has had 11 million “hits” since last Advent.
We have kept these Spanish and English resources free so those in poorer
parishes and the developing world can have access to them. Judging from the
emails I get, that is exactly what is happening. We can’t continue this service
without your help – so will you? “First
Impressions”
Or: For a secure online donation go to:
During Advent we are posting reflections on our
webpage drawn from the daily Mass Scriptures. They are written by friars,
sisters and laity of the Dominican Family. WELCOME: to the latest email recipients of “First Impressions” the Dominican Sister retreatants of Springfield, Illinois. This Sunday begins a new liturgical year during which Luke will be the featured gospel. We have posted an essay overview of Luke on our webpage for preachers. But Sunday worshipers will also find it useful. Go to: https://PreacherExchange.com/ and click on “Preaching Essay.”
I find Advent a wonderful time to preach from the prophets and so that is where I begin today. We preachers need a little encouragement to branch out from automatically turning to the gospel selection for our preaching – maybe these following thoughts will help us take the plunge and preach from the first reading. You might even want to try that throughout Advent – it's a good stretching exercise.
Through Jeremiah, God promises, "...I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah." Naturally, I want to ask, "What promise was that?" What was the promise God made and intends to keep? I first notice that there is a strange mix in this statement from Jeremiah: "I will fulfill...." It sounds very definitive, no doubts about God's intention. But it has an ambiguity as well – when will this happen? We are not given a clue. That's the way the Bible is when it talks about the future. We don't get to know the date a promised event will happen; what we do get is a definite promise that it will. Jeremiah, like other prophets, isn't talking about the future; not "prophesying" in the popular sense of the word. Even when they mention a future event, prophets are addressing the present. It is in the present that we need reassurance; need to hear a word of encouragement from God – especially in arduous times.
The promise is spelled out in the next verse: God promised David (through Nathan cf. 2 Sam 7: 8-16) that his line would last forever. Now Jeremiah repeats that promise: a new ruler in David's line is coming – a "just shoot". The people came to identify this "just shoot" with the messiah. When the messiah came, righteousness would be declared upon the land, justice would be the rule. Then, "Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem shall dwell secure...." You can see why this reading was chosen for the first Sunday in Advent. The people are yearning for what we all yearn. We want to live together in peace and security. We want good leaders, men and women we can trust to guide us in being just; leaders who will see to the needs of all, not just those who can buy patronage through contributions to campaign funds. We want a nation where there are none left out; where the weak and vulnerable are counted as important; where no one lacks, but all have what is needed for a full life. This is a reading for a desolate people living in exile, who need to know that God has not abandoned them. To have hope in the future can make the hard present bearable. Hope can also fortify our intentions to hasten the future by doing something about present inequalities. To repeat: the prophets are more concerned about the present than the future.
We believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise God made through Jeremiah. He is the one who has come and has yet to come. With Jesus' arrival God's justice, peace and security has been declared. Now we know what the fulfillment of the promise looks like—it looks like Jesus. In him we have our ultimate safety; all other securities will prove to be fickle and false. In Christ, the "just shoot", we are called to be signs of God's promise in the world. We are invited to act as Jesus did; to speak out against injustice, stand on the side of the outcast, forgive those who offend us, protect life in all its forms, feed the poor, etc.
There are three cycles in the Lectionary. In each of the first Advent Sundays, the gospel selections are apocalyptic, they are about the end of the world and the coming of Christ – as Luke puts it today, "in power and great glory". The message is straight forward and a mood is set: the beginning of Advent is not yet about cribs and shepherds. Advent starts with the reminder that God will make a powerful intervention into human history. While our faith assures us that Christ will return, it doesn't tell us when. Luke says that Christ's coming will dismay and frighten people; but believers are to have courage---- "your redemption is at hand."
But the passage hints that the delay in the Parousia has caused some in Luke's community to slacken in their faith, have anxieties and turn to "carousing and drunkenness". Luke's community was undergoing suffering and injustice. Maybe people had grown so discouraged they had turned to other outlets ("carousing and drunkenness" can be applied to myriad avoidance activities). Maybe too, they had given up on God's ability to keep the promises God had made to prophets like Jeremiah and through Jesus. Luke is trying to encourage a beleaguered church and remind them that God is still sovereign and has a time set for the great events that herald the "Son of Man's" return. Luke wants believers to say, "We are ready to meet the Lord when he comes, and in the meantime, we are standing firm witnessing to his name.
What an awkward topic! Try talking of the second coming at your next dinner party. That is a sure-fired way to kill a conversation and earn weird looks. Indeed, it is hard to see Good News in the destruction of the world as we know it, even if it does mean that "redemption is at hand". Who could possibly hear Good News in today's gospel? We seem so enmeshed in the way the world is, talk of its ending sounds very threatening.
But we preachers need to probe more deeply and ask: What distress and discontent lie below the exterior "happy face" people show to the world? What pain do people silently endure? For what healing touch do they yearn? What can the preacher say to stir up the hungers we all feel— no matter how comfortable we appear on the outside? In addition, we mustn't forget that we in the first world are privileged. (Though even in our comfortable land there are people suffering deprivation.) Those in lands where survival is the issue; where daily life feels like the world is shattering and collapsing--- these are the very people who long for the end of the world they know. There is a man I know doing hard time in a maximum security prison who cheers for the Parousia. "End it all!", he tells the Lord. So, in one way or another, we all hunger for a new world. Today we name the hunger and pray we can have some part in God's plan to bring about a new world order.
The appeal Advent holds for many worshipers is that it provides the space, time, words, prayer and rituals to say what's on their minds and in their hearts. Things are not right and so the preacher names what's "not yet right" and hopes to stir up a hunger for the world God envisions for us and a desire to do what we can to set things right. We can't make it happen, we can't control when the Lord will stand anew among us. So, taking his advice, we stand vigilant, keeping our eyes awake to catch the many ways he is already present among us. While we wait for God's promise to be completed, Advent is a time to be renewed; to unplug our ears to God's voice speaking through the scriptures and in the surrounding world.
It feels strange to have Thanksgiving on Thursday this past week, followed right away by this first Sunday of Advent. Seems like a clash between our daily lives "out there" and our liturgical life "in here." Like the people of Jeremiah's time, we are engaged in daily struggle to be faithful to our God. So, we might combine the two calendar events by inviting people to give thanks for a faithful God who stands with us while we live our lives anticipating the Savior's coming.
Click here for a link to this Sunday’s readings:
At the coming of the Most High
Advent has come. . .the time of great preparation. This is the time when we must ask ourselves, for what are we preparing? For Mary, this was the last month of her pregnancy. Being totally in love with God, she had agreed to bring into the world “Emmanuel”—God with Us. How is such a love possible? Pope Benedict XVI tells us in Deus Caritas Est (God is Love, 2005, 42): “It becomes so as a result of the most intimate union with God, through which the soul is totally pervaded by him—a condition which enables those who have drunk from the fountain of God's love to become in their turn a fountain from which ‘flow rivers of living water’” (Jn 7:38)
This Advent, perhaps we should prepare ourselves to be open to the love of God all over again because, “He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. . .He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us” (Deus Caritas Est 17).
To fall in love with “God-who-is-Love” as a mature response and not one of mere sentiment, “calls into play all man's potentialities. . .Contact with the visible manifestations of God's love can awaken within us a feeling of joy born of the experience of being loved. But this encounter also engages our will and our intellect. Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the “yes” of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. . . The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God's will increasingly coincide. (Deus Caritas Est 17)
How does one prepare to receive the gift of God’s unconditional love? Perhaps, it would be as simple and as hard as our trying to practice unconditional love with those who are other. To do something from your heart for the simple joy of doing it and without seeking recompense. Truly giving away your love, prepares a space within your being to receive Divine Love. Isn’t this the most wonderful experience for which we could ever prepare?
Barbara Molinari Quinby, MPS,
Director
Mini-reflections on the Sunday scripture readings designed for persons on the run. “Faith Book” is also brief enough to be posted in the Sunday parish bulletins people take home. From today’s Gospel reading:
Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.”
Reflection:
In moments of tribulation, we can forget that Christ is present. It is the present and ever-renewing waters of baptism that enable us to respond when Jesus tells us, “Be vigilant....”
So we ask ourselves:
Thanks be to you, O God, that life is marked by
celebration, that the ordinariness
Thanks be to you, O God, that life is also marked
by transition; that we can now
Thanks be to you, O God, for life in relationship
with family and with friends,
All thanks to you, O God, for each occasion when
life is so good, so abundant,
Amidst our thanksgiving hear also our
intercession, for life too is tenuous,
We are hoping that incarnation is still a reality,
that you are still involved in our
Where are you when our talk of love and freedom is
belied in lives of insensitivity
We do not know; we are not sure. Life is not
settled, and so we must, even now,
-----James C Leach, in Pulpit Digest, NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 1988 I (477)p. 57-58.
ADVENT POSTCARDS TO DEATH ROW INMATES
This may be a good work this Advent. Write to someone on death row--- who probably feels hopeless. Let them know that: we have not forgotten them; are praying for them and their families; or, whatever personal encouragement you might like to give them.
Please write to:
----Central Prison P.O. 247 Phoenix, MD 21131
Please note: Central Prison is in Raleigh, NC., but for security purposes, mail to inmates is processed through a clearing house at the above address in Maryland.
For more information on the Catholic position on the death penalty go to the Catholic Mobilizing Network: http://catholicsmobilizing.org/resources/cacp/
On this page you can sign “The National Catholic Pledge to End the Death Penalty.” Also, check the interfaith page for People of Faith Against the Death Penalty: http://www.pfadp.org/
“First Impressions” is a service to preachers and those wishing to prepare for Sunday worship. It is sponsored by the Dominican Friars. If you would like “First Impressions” sent weekly to a friend, send a note to Fr. John Boll, OP at jboll@opsouth.org.
If you would like to support this ministry, please send tax deductible contributions to fr. Jude Siciliano, O.P.:
St. Albert Priory 3150 Vince Hagan Drive Irving, Texas 75062-4736
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2. "VOLUME 2" is an opportunity for you to hear from the readers of First Impressions. To subscribe or Send your own reflections: Send them to "Fr. John J. Boll, O.P." <preacherexchange@att.net > Your contributions to Volume 2 are welcome.
OUR WEBSITE: https://www.PreacherExchange.com - Where you will find Preachers Exchange, which includes "First Impressions," "Homilías Dominicales," and "Volume 2" as well as articles, book reviews, daily homilies and other material pertinent to preaching and Scripture reflection.
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Dear
Preachers:
May the Lord make you increase and
abound in love for one another and for all. 1 Thessalonians 3:12
