FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT, November 30, 2008:
“Be watchful! Be alert! Stay awake! You do not know when the Lord of the house is coming…May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.”
Here is a quiz for you. Let’s say you are asleep and dreaming. In your dream, a big lion is chasing you. You try to run away from the lion, only to see a tiger coming right at you. You keep running in a new direction, but no matter where you turn, you find a ferocious animal coming after you. How can you escape? The answer is simple: Wake up.
By waking up you enter a whole new world of reality, different from that of the dream world. What was a huge problem in the dream world becomes a non-issue in the waking world. Dream world concerns lose their importance and new concerns take their place. For example, you discover that your problem is no longer how to escape from wild beasts but how to beat the morning rush and arrive early for work.
As we enter the season of Advent today, we can relate to the change that occurs between a dream state and consciousness. Advent hopes to wake us from or spiritual slumber; to effect a change so that we move from a state of being spiritually asleep to that of being spiritually awake, when the soul is awake and alert not to worldly realities, but to spiritual realities.
In today’s gospel Jesus admonishes and encourages... (Continued here)
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