1st Sunday of Advent A

1st Sunday of Advent A

1. There are a couple of expressions that stand out in the readings today and are repeated
several times in the Bible: the day of the Lord and that day.
In the Gospel, Jesus warns his disciples that the day of the Lord will arrive suddenly, without warning,
and that some people will be ready, while others will be caught by surprise.
In the letter to the Romans, Paul explains how to get ready for the day of the Lord. He urges the
Romans to live their lives imitating Jesus, avoiding darkness (vice, egoism, meanness and selfish
pleasures), and seeking the light, that is to say living virtuously.
The passage from Isaiah connects the day of the Lord not to end of the world and final judgment, but
to a reign of peace, when swords will be turned into plowshares. There is a monument in front of the
United Nations building in New York, with these words of Isaiah and with a sword being reshaped into a
plowshare

2. So, what is that day? What is the day of the Lord? It is the day when human beings
finally meet God.
a. In the Old Testament, these expressions were used by the prophets as a warning that God would
soon intervene in history and punish people for their sins of idolatry and social injustice :
b. In some passages of the N.T. these expressions carry an ominous connotation of day of reckoning, of
end of the world, of final judgment. The early Christians were being persecuted by Jews and by
Romans, and believed that the world would end soon and that Jesus was about to return in triumph to
judge the living end the dead. They were hoping that God would intervene to put an end to their
suffering and to punish their persecutors
Some people are still predicting that the world will end soon. Its been 2,000 years since Jesus spoke
about that day and every end-of-the-world prediction has been wrong thus far, so maybe this is not
what he meant by the day of the Lord
c. The early Church realized that the world was not going to end any time soon, and after a few years
stopped worrying about the end of the world, and the expression the day of the Lord took on a more
personal meaning: while we dont know when they world will end, we do know that our life is limited,
even if we live to be 100, one day we will die and we will meet God in person. That will be our
personal day of the Lord. Paul emphasizes the need to prepare for that day by living well.

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d. But the Church makes us read these passages today, because in Advent we are asked to get
ready for Christmas, the day in which Jesus was born as a human being.
So another meaning for the day of the Lord is Christmas, when human beings met God in
the person as a baby: Jesus.
e. But we dont meet God only at Christmas. We learned from catechism that we meet the Lord in
the Sacraments. A sacrament is a very special event in our life when God reaches out and
touches each of us individually and gives us his grace, his love
We met God for the first time in the Sacrament of Baptism, and we meet him every time we
participate in the celebration of the Eucharist
So, every Sunday, when we come to church and celebrate the Eucharist, is a day of the Lord.
We meet personally the same God who created the universe and who will judge the living and
the dead.
f. A final though about the day of the Lord. Is God a distant god, who ignores our lives but will
pass judgment on us at the end of our lives? Do we meet God only on Sunday when we come
to church to receive the Sacraments? No, God is everywhere in us and around us every moment
of our life. So every day is the day of the Lord.

3. We have celebrated a number of Baptisms in 2016: the last was Marges great
grand daughter Sullivan Margaret. Today will be celebrating the baptism of Favio
Enzo De Lima Alfano during the Brazilian service at 12:30.
. So today will be the day of the Lord in a very special way for Favio Enzo: he will become a
Christian, an adopted child of God. Today, he will be able to join us and call God daddy.
. By being baptized here in St. James, Favio Enzo will become one of us. Each of us will take on
the additional responsibility to love and help, and support him. Children learn to love by being
loved, learn to be good Christians by growing up among good Christians

1st Sunday of Advent A

5. The day of the Lord is an expression used in the Bible to describe various moments and
situations when human beings come in contact with God. We meet God in many ways, so
there are many days of the Lord.

The church gives us these readings about the day of the Lord on the 1 st Sunday of Advent to get us
ready to celebrate the main day of the Lord: the first Christmas, the day when God became a human
being in the person of Jesus
In 4 weeks we will commemorate the event that changed human history: the incarnation of Jesus Since
that first Christmas, Jesus has been constantly with us, even though we do not recognize him.
When Jesus was talking about God the Father, for father he used the word Abba, which literally
means daddy. Jesus taught us that God as our Father. On the day of the Lord we will met our daddy in
heaven.
The best descriptions of God the Father Jesus gave us in the Gospel are
1. The parable of the prodigal son, who could not wait for his son to come to his senses and return
home, and
2. The parable of the good shepherd who went out in the dark of night to look for his lost sheep, and
then carried it home on his shoulders. We are God's children, even when we stray and get lost like
the lost sheep.
There is no need to be afraid of God on the day of the Lord, at the end of our lives when we will meet
God face to face. Yes we are all sinners, but God is a Father always willing to forgive and embrace us,
as long as we have faith and are willing to repent from our sins and to start over again.
Remember last weeks Gospel, about the two criminals crucified with Jesus? One of them believed and
was saved, the other didn't believe and was not saved. All we have to do to be saved is to believe,
repent when we sin, and try our best to love God and love our neighbors.
If we do that, on the final day of the Lord at the end of our lives, we will hear Jesus words, welcome
into my kingdom
Please keep little Favio Enzo in your prayers and in your heart on the day of his baptism. His father
died in a car accident before his birth. Today he will become an adopted child of God and a member of
our family.