In this Advent season, Jesus calls us to be alert to God's unexpected appearances in our lives.

Advent begins with us looking at the eventual end of the world.  The message in today’s Gospel account is taken from St. Mark’s report of Jesus speaking to his disciples about the end of the world, telling them (and us) to be watchful and alert because we do not know when the Last Day will come.  No one does.

Advent begins with us looking at the end of the world.  However, Advent ends with a beginning – the birth of Jesus.   The spirituality of the Advent season calls us to be a people who celebrate the birth of Jesus, and also it is a season of expectancy and hope as we long for the fullness of the coming of Jesus into our hearts and into our world.

It is right that we should be concerned about the judgment of God on the Day of Judgment.  But we should not be held in the grip of fear.  Why?  Because God’s judgment is that we are worth saving.  God’s judgment comes to us in His grace and mercy, His grace and mercy given us in His Son, Jesus Christ.  Jesus tells us that God sent His only-begotten Son not to condemn the world but to save it.  God’s judgment comes to us in His only-begotten Son whom HE has sent among us to bridge the chasm between us and God and thus to give us the power of salvation, a power that can be ours if only we respond to God’s love for us.  God’s ultimate judgment is His mercy.

Advent is a time of expectancy along with our waiting in hope.  Advent is forward looking.  During this Advent season, we have our set of expectations, longing for a better world.  While it is true that the reign of God has, in Jesus Christ, been established among us, it is likewise true that we humans have not responded as we should.  We long for peace.  We cry out for justice.  Yet security remains elusive.  Dishonesty, corruption, and greed beset us.  We lament that world in which we live is in the condition that it is.

In today’s first reading we hear Isaiah’s lament.  In it we hear echoed our own lamentations.

“You, Lord, are our Father, our redeemer you are named forever.  Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?  Behold, you are angry, and we are sinful; all of us have become like unclean people, all our good deeds are like polluted rags; we have all withered like leaves, and our guilt carries us away like the wind….Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay and you the potter; we are the work of your hands."

Lamentations are a part of our Old Testament heritage.  There is an entire Old Testament book devoted to them – the Book of Lamentations.  It was written in the time when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the Hebrews had been carried off in captivity to Babylon.   Their prayers there in Babylon were laments.  Laments are prayers.

We, too, can lament, cry out to God, wanting to know where He has been when calamities, injustices, and injuries have come upon us.  We cry to God and lament the fact that mean-spirited people hold their sway over us.  Where is God in the midst of so many terrorist attacks? 

Where is God when the lives of too many people have been victims of sexual harassment?  Where was God in the presence of the hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico?  Where is God’s wrath and justice when the poor continue to be oppressed by the rich and powerful in so many parts of our world?

Advent is a time to see the world for what it is, to acknowledge the mess things are in, to recognize our own failings, failings caused by our own indifference and apathy.  Yet, at the same, Advent is a season of hope and expectancy.  Please God, Advent can be a beautiful gift that allows to take time out to clearly see we need a Savior and in our hearts to listen to His voice within us.  We need God to come among us and set us back on the right path for living on this planet with each other, as the Lord Jesus intended we should.  And, of course, Christmas is the celebration of the fact that God has done just that.  In Christmas, He has given us His presence, His power, and His love.

We have so many questions we put to God.  But did you notice that Jesus has a question for us?  He has an expectation of us.  He asks:  Where is your faith?  He asked, when He comes again in glory on the Last Day, will He find any faith on earth?

In the first Scripture from the prophet Isaiah, the prophet uses the beautiful imagery of clay in the hands of the potter to describe God’s unending love for us.  God never stops working us.  We are like the clay in the hand of the potter.  When there is a crack, God can reshape us.  During Advent, we are invited to think about our human weakness, not so as to become sad or depressed, but so that we can be filled with wonder at the way God chooses to save us.

Going back to the question, Jesus is asking us:  Where is your faith.  Our faith is to surrender ourselves, to trust that we are clay in the hands of the potter.  In shaping us, God will shower us with love and will reconcile us to Himself.  Our faith leads us to the hope and the joy that Jesus will share His merciful love with us.

In this Advent season of conversion, Jesus calls us to be alert to God’s unexpected appearances in our lives.  Yes, God is already working and active in our lives. Our task of discipleship is to be alert for the signs of God’s presence in our moments of prayer and in the ways we serve one another.  This Advent alertness and watchfulness enables us to celebrate the coming of Christ in Bethlehem and in the inn of our hearts.

Be watchful! Be alert to the spiritual center that is within each of us.  To be alert is to pay attention to that which matters in life, paying attention to the relationships of our lives, paying attention to our relationship with God.  Within us, there is a deeper longing that never goes away.  It is the longing for love.  It is the longing to experience the mystery of God’s love in our life.

Be watchful – God is with us.  The light of Christ shatters the darkness of our world.