For 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.
Pay attention!
Advent is here and the first thing the readings and the Church tell us is, “Pay attention!” But to what? And why? “Be ready,” says Jesus. For what? For the mother of all natural disasters? For our co-worker to suddenly disappear before our eyes? For Jesus to come one last time? We pay reverent attention to scripture but after 2000+ years of listening to ones like this week’s Gospel we can start to feel it’s a little like the fable of the boy who cried, “Wolf!” We listen to the readings and then carry on as if we’re normal.
Certainly, there is no healthy reason to wake up every day expecting it to be the last one before the world implodes and there is no great benefit to keeping fearfully awake wondering if every bump in the night of our souls is a thief or if it’s Jesus coming to either scare us, reprimand us or take us away. So, again, what should we be paying attention to? How does this Gospel apply to us every day and not just in Advent? How can it further our spiritual growth and relationship with the Lord?
Advent: the arrival of a notable person, thing or event. We’re called to pay attention to the arrival of this notable person. Naturally, at this time of year we immediately think of Christmas as the notable event that heralds the arrival of the notable person, Jesus, and Advent is the time of preparation for this arrival. But advent does not mean ‘preparation’; it means the arrival. We are encouraged to use this season to make ourselves mindful of the advent of Jesus and, in terms of our everyday life, he is coming all the time. Pay attention. Jesus comes. Now.
Yesterday has gone, tomorrow never comes and as the old song says, it’s always a day away. Yet, where do our minds most often dwell? We tend to live mostly in the past or in the future. We are rarely present to the present moment or wholly attentive to what is happening right now. Part of us is usually engaged in remembering things that happened before: old wounds and resentments, good times that no longer exist, tasks well done or poorly done, failures, etc. Another part of us is constantly exploring the future: what might happen, distinct possibilities (good and bad), hopes, fears and grim determinations. A very small part of us is in the present dealing with the demands of the moment and for most of us, that small part is very small indeed. If the task of the moment is dull routine, that small part becomes even smaller as our minds roam back and forth between the past and the future. If the demands of the moment are truly demanding and stressful, our proclivity toward visiting the past and the future increases the stress of the moment because our experiences of similar stress shoots us into worried expectations of future consequences.
The problem with this is that when you are spending time in the past or in the future, you are not spending time in God’s reality; you are living in your own past memories and in your future imaginations, which are rarely, if ever, based on the present reality of God. Even when you are remembering how he blessed you at one time or answered a prayer, instead of this memory simply instilling in you a heart of gratitude it usually pulls you into the future with the hopes that he will bless you or answer your prayer in the same way again. If he didn’t bless you or answer a prayer in the past, your future expectations are muted and maybe even hopeless. Meanwhile, God is in the present moment saying, “Look at me. I’m here. The past belongs to me and the future is actually none of your business. Be with me here, now.”
So hard, isn’t it? It’s especially difficult when the present moment is either extremely dull and lonely or else is full of maximum stress. It’s so hard to stay there and pay attention because for some odd reason, when we spend time in the past or in the future we feel we’re more in control. Or at least we feel there’s potential for control if we can get it all together and figure out exactly what should be happening and then make it happen. When we talk about trusting the Lord, staying in the moment is an act of supreme trust. It means that we leave the past in his hands and assume that he can and will create our future according to his word, not according to our limited expectations.
We need to pay attention to the present moment because that’s when and where he comes. Every moment is an advent of our God and every moment we spend in waiting and being attentive is a season of preparation for a full awareness of his presence. I totally believe that all of us continually miss a multitude of quiet but astounding advents simply because they are quiet and don’t fall within our set expectations. It’s difficult to hear a gentle whisper when your mind and heart are filled with the raucous clamor of the past and future, a clamor that forms your ideas of how God should come.
The times when I have learned best the beautiful and powerful mystery of staying in the present moment have been during some times of extreme pressure and stress where it seemed like there was far too much to accomplish in the time given, where there was no leeway in terms of deadlines and expectations and where it felt like everything was going very badly. During these times, as long as I stayed in the present moment and focused only on the immediate task at hand, and spoke to the Lord only about what I was doing in that moment even if that task was something mundane, like combing my hair, I was fine. As soon as I allowed my mind to roam and latch on to all that was left to accomplish or on to a bad turn of events or something somebody said or did that wounded me, everything inside of me would fly apart. I would immediately be completely overwhelmed, filled with either fear or resentment and sometimes frozen with no idea how to proceed in the midst of such chaos.
When I stayed in the moment, not only was I much more calm but I would continually be amazed at how well things went and how tasks that seemed virtually impossible were accomplished and accomplished well within the given time frame and in harmony with those I was working with. Was I aware in all those present moments of a distinct, strong and tangible presence of God? No, I was not. But somehow, at the end of it all there had grown within me a sense of his continual presence that is independent of what is happening or on my expectations being met or on amazing things taking place. I lose that sense whenever I visit the past or the future. He is not there. That’s not where I find him.
The Advent/Christmas season is chaotic in itself and just because it’s the Christmas season, it doesn’t mean that all the heavy expectations, wounds and struggles you’ve been dealing with recently are easily put aside so you can concentrate on the demands of Christmas. Don’t berate yourself or the world for the pressures and demands of Advent and Christmas. Embrace it. Remember that it was into a world of wounded and materialistic chaos that Jesus was born, very quietly, unobtrusively and in a way that met no one’s expectations. This Advent season, try to remember that every moment is an Advent of our God. In the midst of incredible busyness and heavy demands on your time and heart, commit to endeavoring to stay in the moment while you simply focus on the task right before you in that moment and you watch and wait for God. You will have to adjust your expectations as to how he will come – or better yet, you will have to completely lose those expectations. He comes in very surprising ways and you can miss him just because you have set ideas of how he comes or how he should come. The way he comes to one person will be completely different to how he comes to another. This is your watching and your waiting.
As the entrance antiphon (Psalm 25: 1-3) for this Sunday says:
“To you, my God, I lift my soul and trust in you; let me never come to shame. Do not let my enemies laugh at me. No one who waits for you is ever put to shame.”
Hear that? No one who waits for God is ever put to shame. Be here now. He is coming.
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