1 December [1st Sunday of Advent] Mt 24:37-44 As the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. Years ago a friend of mine in Italy took her very simple computer to be repaired. The man in the shop glanced quickly at it and said, “That is not a computer, signora; it is a domestic appliance – è un elettrodomestico.” Today our computers and tablets and iphones, though much smaller, are thousands of times more powerful than those early PCs. They have penetrated everywhere; they have found their way into our lives to the point that we could scarcely imagine life without them. This came home to me recently when a 90-year-old lady said to me, “Why don’t you google it?” (I had just uttered the words, “I don’t know.”) There are many things, however, that we google to no avail. We can find information about every subject, but information is not the only kind of knowledge. There are other kinds of knowledge that do not come at the tapping of a few keys. There is understanding, which no one can do for you; there is wisdom, which doesn’t come to order, but comes only when we are ready for it. Jesus is called the incarnation of the Logos, the Wisdom of God. The theme of Advent is that we have to wait for him to come. Waiting is something we have more and more trouble with, and computers are driving the pace: ‘zero wait state’ is considered the goal – no waiting at all. Advent is like a four-week course on how to wait. Waiting… but not falling asleep; “Stay awake,” Jesus often said (Mt 24:42; 26:40; Mk 13:33; etc.). ‘Awake’ means attentive to what is happening – attentive to the present, not dreaming about the past or the future. This is the wisdom of the ages. I chose a few short passages from early Christian writing (3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries) in deliberate contrast to the computer age. We wont throw out our computers – I am using one to write this and you are using one to read it – but it may be helpful to dwell on ancient wisdom at the beginning of Advent. Commenting on today’s gospel reading, Origen (3rd century) wrote: “All who listen to the depths of the Gospel and live it completely… care very little about whether the end of the world will come suddenly and all at once, or gradually and little by little…. What is important is to be vigilant.” John Chrysostom (4th century): “If ordinary persons knew when they were going to die, they would surely be striving earnestly at that hour. In order therefore that they may strive, not at that hour only, the Lord does not tell them the hour or day. He wants to keep them on their toes looking for it, that they may be always striving.” And from the 5th century, the Incomplete Commentary on Matthew, a comment on the verse ‘If the head of the household had known the hour at which the thief would arrive.’ “The head of the household represents the human soul, the thief is the devil, the house is the body, the doors are the mouth and ears and the windows are the eyes. Like the thief who gains access through the doors and windows to despoil the householder, the devil also finds easy access to the soul through the mouth, ears and eyes to take a person captive. This is why Jeremiah wrote, “For death entered through our windows.”
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 03:28:33 +0000
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