First Sunday of Advent year B
29 November 2020
So, Liverpool is no longer the pariah of the covid 19 nightmare. We have been liberated and allowed to enter the 2nd tier of lockdown. We can be satisfied that the efforts of the past 6 weeks in the highest tier have born some fruit. Now we can look forward to our church being open again on Wednesday and the possibility of our meeting each other and praying together again. We still need to be wary. We are still not back to normal but at least we can meet our families again and this family of our church community is included. Thanks be to God.
On this first Sunday of Advent, at this turn of the passing Liturgical Year A to the new Liturgical Year B, we feel the sense of longing for a renewal of ordinary life as a whole and the renewal of our life as a People of God. Such a longing is a good way to start Advent, with 4 weeks before us during which we can reflect on what it is “to stay awake”. Stay awake, as we wait for Lord. Stay awake so that the Lord does not find us asleep.
It’s in the light of these words of St Mark’s gospel that I reread the Synod 2020 proposals this week. My attention was drawn to the proposition (2.5) which reads: “The Synod proposes that the Archdiocese heed the call of Pope Francis to be brave and courageous in renewing structures so that they are at the service of mission rather than of self-preservation.”
I know it sounds a bit like a communist politburo proposal, but if you take away the hyperbole we get: “We want to be courageous in changing from a church of self-preservation to a church with a mission”. Wow, I thought, “this is something worth paying attention to.
Does this mean that in the recent past, at least, we have allowed ourselves to fall asleep? Somehow, we lost the plot and allowed things to drift past us. Somehow, we allowed ourselves to be preoccupied with maintaining what we had in hand with our own security and well-being as a church. Were we perhaps preoccupied with preserving the status which we had gained in the 19th Century, while the world travelled on to the 21st?
Could this be why we have just lived through the IICSA Inquiry into the terrible abuse of children and vulnerable people by priests and those in positions of power and its total mismanagement by the leadership of the Church? Is this why so many people today are not only indifferent to the message of the Gospel but totally scandalised by the actions of the Gospel Bearers? So shocked are they by the double standards of the Body of the Church, that they no longer want to listen to the message of Good News.
We lost the plot and allowed this behaviour to go on in our midst. We lost the plot and somehow lost the message of the Gospel. Not only did our lamps go out, but the black smoke that came off them created a sooty smoke screen that covered our good deeds and our Truth like a London smog.
The IICSA report has done a service and partially restored justice for all those who are victims of abusive priests and other Church personnel. It has done us, too, a favour; we who are the Church with Jesus Christ as our Head. It has done us a favour because it is a wake-up call for us all. The report, like today’s Gospel, wakes us up to the fact that we are all sinners, and we need to care for each other and look after each other, as sinners. The report and this Gospel wake us up to the fact that we have gone wrong and need to return to being true disciples of Christ and live the mission he gave us.
Just this week, in his weekly general audience, Pope Francis said: “The Apostolic letters of the New Testament and the great narration of the Acts of the Apostles give us the image of an active Church, a Church on the move, yet which, gathered in prayer, finds the basis and impulse for missionary action. The image of the early Community of Jerusalem is the point of reference for every other Christian experience. Luke writes in the Book of Acts: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (2:42). The community persevered in prayer”.
There are 4 important phrases in that last sentence.
The first is: “They devoted themselves to the teachings of the Apostles”. In other words, they studied the Gospels and they read what the Apostles wrote to them. For us today, if we want to do as those first Christians did, we will read the Gospels and the New Testament books. We will read the catechism, we will regularly read books about our faith, about Jesus in the modern world.
The second is: “Fellowship”. By this, Luke means the disciples looked after each other. They gave more than their excess to the poor; they also shared the little they had. They looked after the sick and housebound, visiting them, bringing them the Eucharistic bread. They welcomed the stranger. We could add today; they got involved in justice and peace campaigns and work. they got involved in the life of their neighbourhood. They ensured the schooling in faith of their children.
Thirdly, “The breaking of bread”. The insecurity of those days, the hostility of society as a whole, sickness, the long hours of poor-paid work: none of these stopped them from gathering as church every Sunday. They wanted to be part of the community. The community was vibrant in faith and in works of faith. They would regularly come together to share in the Eucharist and to pray.
The Eucharist and prayer in the life of the Church are not the same but are complimentary. A disciple comes to the Eucharist because it is the action of the community gathering around the Table of the Lord. The Eucharist is the essential activity of those who are united: united as a community of believers and united with their Lord, the head of the community, the reason the community exists.
But there is more to prayer than the Eucharist. Prayer is necessarily both communitarian and personal. The disciple needs to take time each and every day in her home or in the silence of a place of prayer, to commune with God. In this communion, different to the Eucharistic Communion, she or he makes herself available to God, to listen to God’s Word, to allow God to enter into their heart and transform them into God’s own image and likeness. As Pope Francis again said at his audience: “In prayer, Christians immerse themselves in the mystery of God, that mystery who loves each person, that God who desires that the Gospel be preached to everyone.”
So, if we want to stay awake during this Advent period, in preparation for welcoming Christ at Christmas, and if we want to truly transform our Church from a state of preservation to a Church on Mission, we need to re-adopt those 4 aspects of Discipleship which the Church practised in those early years: Study of the Gospels and Spiritual Reading, fraternal mutual care and care of the excluded, the Eucharist and Prayer. Rekindle these 4 attributes of church life and we rekindle the Flame of the Holy Spirit who leads us in the establishment of the Kingdom of God.
