First Sunday in Advent
December 1, 2024
Fr. Richard G. Cipolla
I knew that morning that I had forgotten something important. I had the idea that I misplaced something. I checked my phone, my ipad, no they were there, I who insisted that I would never have these devices now wedded to them as if they contained my life. My car keys, house keys, all there. But there was this stubborn thought, this feeling that I had misplaced something important. If I could remember what it was I needed to remember I could look for it. But I have done this before: I have gone to the pantry to get something to add to what I was cooking and then forgot what it was I had to get. But it always came back.
But this was something deeper. I had been distracted lately because I had so much to do, juggling those parts of my life that needed to be sorted out. So I wandered around the house, and then came the question: “What are you looking for?” My answer: “I don’t know.” “What does that mean?” “ I don’t know but my mind and stomach tell me that I have lost something important and I have to find it.” The day was waning, darkness falling, winter coming. I went outside into the cold air, now agitated, also feeling foolish, a grown man wandering around like this trying to find something he lost and not knowing what it was. I looked up and saw the stars. They glistened in the clear and dark sky. What is tomorrow, what is the schedule? I knew tomorrow was Sunday and it was the first Sunday in Advent. Early Mass, then work on talk for Monday’s big Skype conference with clients, then bringing the kids to practice, which practice? what season is it? Hockey?, I guess hockey, then a few conference calls, then dinner with some people, then back home to get ready for tomorrow. I shivered as I thought of all this this, but this made me feel better, because I knew what I had to do tomorrow and the next day, I felt better knowing that my life was filled up with things I had to do. I concentrated on these things, and even Christmas coming and all that had to be done to prepare, the lists, the places, the people, the family, the vacation to Antigua, my calendar spinning out in front of me, driving away that feeling that I had lost something. And then I looked up again, and there were the stars blinking in the dark sky, reminding me, reminding me of something I forgot, something I lost.
And out of that space a voice came: “He will strengthen you to the end.” The end. The end. Is that what I forgot, that this will all end? Yes. That must be it. I forgot the end, I forgot that there would be an end. And suddenly I was afraid, the cold of the night burrowed deep into my body and into the bowels of my mind: the end, the end. By forgetting I had assumed that the lists that made my life were my life and would never end. Is that what I forgot? If so I forgot it on purpose, for the lists and plans that make up my life assume that this will go on, for this is who I am, how I define myself. And then a voice on the wind: “We have all withered like leaves and our guilt carries us away like the wind. “ “The night is passed and the day is at hand.” No. It is still night, and I am cold, and staring into starry space I remember what I have forgotten: I have forgotten—eternity! I have forgotten the touchstone, I have forgotten the ultimate dimension that can alone make sense of my life. I have forgotten that only eternity can make sense of the moments and lists and plans and disappointments and failures and anxieties, and parading around as if I am the master of the universe, the master of my destiny, talking myself into believing that this life defines me and is all that there is. I have become so used to looking into the mirror of myself that I have forgotten, I have forgotten the divine wormhole that breaks out into the eternal, that breaking out, “Lo he comes with clouds descending, robed in dreadful majesty!”, who am I? I have forgotten who I am, confining myself to this world, a worm and no man. The night is passed. The day is at hand. Shivering I went back inside my house, into the warmth, the known-ness, the light, the comfort of knowing that tomorrow will be another day and things to do and things to plan and soon, all too soon I forgot what I had forgotten and remembered. And I locked up eternity in a place where it could not bother me.
But there was a man who did not. He was an illiterate peasant, a descendant of the Aztecs. Hecould speak some Spanish, a little, enough to get by. This was the time when he heard the words of a Catholic priest who had learned his own language to tell him about Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith, so different from what he had been taught about their god who demanded human blood to keep the sun moving across the sky and to preserve his life. Otherwise the world would end. He learned about the man Jesus Christ sent by God his father to die on the cross so that he might live and live forever, that this cross was the eternal sacrifice that had nothing to do with the sacrifice of children on an altar to appease the wrath of the god of the Aztecs. And he was baptized with his wife and came to know the Sacraments of the Church and the love of God for him. When his wife died, he turned over his life to God and went to Mass every day at a Franciscan church nearby. And then he had his Advent.
Walking to Mass one morning he went past a hill called Tepeyac. He heard song birds bursting into harmony and suddenly a woman appeared with the sweet voice of a woman who spoke to him in his own language: “Juanito, my dear Juan Diego. You are the most humble of my sons. I am the virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the true God for whom we live, Creator of heaven and earth. I wish that a temple be erected here quickly, so I may therein exhibit and give all of my love, compassion, help and protection. Go to the bishop and give him this message”
And so he went and told the bishop what happened, but the bishop was skeptical and told him to come back another day. He returned to the hill and told the Lady what had happened and said to her that she should send a better messenger. She answered that it must be he, who is the least, who must carry this message. The bishop this time asked for a sign from this Lady. Juan’s uncle was gravely ill and near death, so he went looking for a priest to give his uncle the Last Rites and he avoided Tepeyak. But the woman came down from the hill and told him that his uncle would live and that she would give him a sign to take to the bishop. The next morning when he went up the hill, he saw a great number of beautiful Castilian roses blooming. He collected a large bunch of these roses in a white cloth called a tilma and brought them to the bishop’s house. When he unfolded the tilma and let the roses fall in front of the bishop, a sacred image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the tilma, Seeing this, the bishop and everyone else fell to their knees before the tilma. The shrine church was built and Juan Diego spent the rest of his life guarding the sacred image on the tilma. And he waited there doing what he knew he had to do, and that act of waiting bore fruit, the wonderful fruit of sanctity.
And so you come here to wait, certainly not for the sermon. You come here to wait for the sacrifice, the making present of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, that sacrifice that is the only source of our hope for forgiveness of sins and eternal life. The priest consumes the sacred Host. He consumes the precious blood. The bell rings, and then we wait for the fruit of the Sacrifice in receiving Holy Communion.
But that is not the end of waiting.for us, waiting for Him who will come like a thief in the night and pierce the sky and us with eternity, and then I will remember what I deliberately forgot, I forgot that time had already been pierced by eternity two thousand years ago on a starry and cold night and I did not remember, I did not notice like the few shepherds who happened to be tending their flock. But it was too late to remember, for the hymn had already begun as the stars were falling out of the sky.
