Time for hearts to wake from sleep and turn to Jesus Christ

Published: 11 December 2011

Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett: "God's message to us is that the remedy can only begin when individual hearts wake up, rouse from sleep, turn away from self and turn to Him; conversion, trust, hope, obedience"

Apostolic administrator of Brisbane archdiocese BISHOP GEOFFREY JARRETT of Lismore delivered this homily in St Stephen's Cathedral, Brisbane, on November 27, the First Sunday of Advent

WE are Christians, we are Catholics, we are believers who have come together, as we most typically do Sunday by Sunday, to be inspired by words of divine origin and to worship the one God, living and true, in the way He Himself has given us: the offering of the Sacrifice of His Son once offered on Calvary's height to bring us once again to heaven's height, and now offered under the signs of bread and wine, that same Body and Blood, on every Catholic altar all over the world, "for all the living and the dead, for our poor lives, so badly led".

We do this once more on the First Sunday of the Advent season; our collective memory is jogged by the reappearance of the violet vestments; by the disappearance of the Gloria in the Advent Masses; by hearing the challenging demands of the Advent prophets, Isaiah and St John the Baptist; and as we sing again the themes of this season: Come, O Jesus, come, O Lord, fulfiller of the Father's Word; O Come, O Come Emmanuel; On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry announces that the Lord is nigh; Wake O wake with tidings thrilling, the watchman all the air is filling; Drop down, you heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.
That last refrain of what is called the Advent Prose is actually based on the dramatic message of today's first reading, calling on the Lord to intervene and help his people in the mess that surrounds them.

It's a mess partly of their own making and partly by their enemies who have dragged them off to exile in a foreign land.

The gentle words from Isaiah chapter 45 are interspersed with verses taken from our reading - in the more urgent, even violent tones of chapter 64: "O that you would tear the heavens and come down, at your Presence the mountains would melt.

"You were angry when we were sinners; we were all like men unclean; all that integrity of ours like filthy clothing. We have all withered like leaves, and our sins blew us away like the wind."

It's not hard to picture the world and the moral climate of today in those words of Isaiah seven centuries before the heavens opened and at last the Saviour came down into the womb of the sinless Virgin.

We know all about being blown away by sin and feeling trapped in our own modern mess.

The question is whether we know where the remedy begins - in our personal lives, in the community of the Church, in our society.

The fact is, we are powerless to save ourselves. We should find that alarming.

God's message to us is that the remedy can only begin when individual hearts wake up, rouse from sleep, turn away from self and turn to Him; conversion, trust, hope, obedience.

And I can't expect others to do it if I don't begin with myself.

The master of the house is coming; he must not find me asleep, a servant of his whom he has left in charge, with my own assigned task.

"O that you would tear the heavens open and come down! Drop down, you heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness."

How can we pray those words if we really have not opened up the mess so that mercy and grace can enter, so that straightening out and healing can commence, if we don't say honestly with Isaiah: "You, Lord, are our Father; we the clay, you the potter, we are all the work of your hand."

So the other great fact is: In all our helplessness, God is on our side, wanting to come and meet us.

Advent is not a penitential season like Lent, but it is a time of grace and a time of mercy as we await the Master's return, preparing to celebrate again the human birth the Son of God, our Saviour.

Advent is a time to wake up to ourselves.

Our Advent plea that the heavens drop down from above and the skies pour down righteousness will be especially answered in the open hearts that confess sin in the Sacrament of Penance in these weeks.

St Stephen's has always been a special place of this reconciliation, from the times when I remember the confession queues for feast days lining up out into Elizabeth Street and all the priests in the old curtained confessionals along the walls.

The place of confession is a place of meeting with the Lord who is always on our side when we are most helpless to help ourselves.

"O that you would tear the heavens and come down!" How often we wish things could change around us, the mess cleared up - in our families and relationships, in the Church, and out there in that society where political integrity is hard to find; in a moral environment so flooded with pornography, and on a precipitous slide of contempt for the value and dignity of human life, especially of those who are weak or cannot defend themselves.

Looking beyond Advent and Christmas, the Year of Grace announced today for the Church in Australia, and beginning next Pentecost is intended to be a time to wake up, to open up to the spiritual power the good Lord wishes to flood from heaven to revive and heal each of us, in His Church and beyond.

The promises and the power of grace, the real and only source of true life, are again back in focus.

You'll notice, for example, the number of times the word "grace" is now heard in the prayers of the retranslated Liturgy.

Also back in focus is the virtue of faith, and a special concern for revisiting the substance of Catholic Faith as presented to us believers in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The Catechism and its shorter Compendium have been among us for nigh on 20 years, yet strangely with minimal use and influence in certain quarters, as an essential instrument of faith education for those who teach and those who learn.

The Year of Faith recently announced by Pope Benedict will emerge from the Year of Grace, so all who hope for better things today, as Israel did of old, will find encouragement in these movements among and within us from next Pentecost to October 2013.

Mary, the Mother of the Lord, is the other great figure who stands before us during Advent.

Our Lady will appear more prominently in the later weeks, but already we turn to her to lead us to her divine Son.

The gentle dewfall of the heavens conceived Him in her immaculate Heart before she conceived Him in her womb.
She is with us now as the heavens are opened once more and He descends upon the altar of this Eucharist. Come, Lord Jesus.