December 2^nd. FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Gospel: Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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The Gospel tells us to avoid gluttony and self-indulgence and to be vigilant for the coming of the Lord. We might think that these words are directed to a few people who become regularly intoxicated with alcohol, but Don Fabio says that the words are directed to each one of us personally. We are all “drunkards” in that we are all fixated with our physical wellbeing. Advent is not just about the coming of the Lord at the end of time. We must allow the Lord to erupt in our lives right now by renouncing this preoccupation with our own physical wellbeing and focussing instead on matters of the heart, the things in our lives that have real beauty.

Advent doesn’t just ask us to prepare for Lord at the end of time, it asks us to allow the Lord to erupt in our lives and our behaviour right now.

In this Gospel that marks the beginning of Advent, Luke repeats the same sentiments regarding the end of the world that we heard two weeks ago in the Gospel of Mark. Advent encourages us to raise our eyes and be vigilant for the coming of the Lord. Part of this Gospel is dedicated explicitly to telling us how to behave so that we are prepared for the coming of Jesus. Jesus comes at the end of time, but it is crucial that he also erupt in our lives and in our behaviour right now. We are told by the Lord to pay attention to ourselves so that our hearts are not coarsened with self-indulgence, drunkenness and the cares of life. Being attentive to ourselves entails taking responsibility for who and what we are. We must guard our senses so they do not darken the brightness of our hearts. True life is lived from the heart, and our hearts must be in tune with God so that God can speak to our hearts. The heart should not be viewed simply as the seat of the affections. The heart is the centre of the person himself. When we say that something is “the heart of the matter” we mean that it is the very essence of the thing. This Gospel tells us that we can damage our hearts through self-indulgence and drunkenness.

The Gospel tells us to avoid drunkenness. This doesn’t just refer to being intoxicated with alcohol, but refers to the addiction all of us have to our physical wellbeing

This particular translation of the text, perhaps, does not bring home clearly the point that anxiety for my own physical wellbeing is destructive to the wellbeing of my heart. Nowadays there is a huge emphasis in society on the care of one’s own wellbeing. We might think that the “self-indulgence” or “dissipation” spoken of in the text refers only to full-blown debauchery or drunkenness. But it does not. The word “dissipation” means to ruin one’s true wealth by spending oneself on superficial things. We might think that Jesus in the Gospel is referring to that small minority of people who get drunk and over-indulge themselves excessively. But we are all drunks in that we all preoccupied with our own pleasure and wellbeing. Gluttony is not simply the fault of one who eats too much. We all share in this vice insofar as we are excessively preoccupied or fussy about what we eat. It is manifested even by people who eat little but who are overly anxious about what they eat. Anyone who puts their physical wellbeing before the wellbeing of their heart shares this fault of self-indulgence. Our physical wellbeing in the end is of little consequence. It is simply not true that health is the primary thing in life. The first thing in life is salvation! The first thing in life is the heart. The first thing in life is to know how to love. What use is a perfect body if I do not know how to love, do not know how to behave with wisdom, do not know how to serve others? I am constantly drunk, over-indulged, with things that concern only me. My stomach is filled with many things that are good to know, music that is good to listen to, witty saying that sound good when I repeat them to others. But a world constructed with self-indulgent things collapses completely when it is challenged at all. When the moment of crisis comes, one no longer has a heart, one no longer has a sense of the true value of things. In this sense, for people whose hearts have been dulled by self-indulgence, the coming of the Lord seems like the sudden closing shut of a trap. People who believed that they were doing something wholesome, caring attentively for their own physical wellbeing, then discover that they were on the road to personal ruination.

Controlling one’s appetites and fixations is an essential element of the spiritual life

There is an absolutely essential value in the Christian life and it is called “fasting”. This does not refer only to fasting from a meal, but to the virtue of sobriety and clear-mindedness. In order to ensure that we don’t become preoccupied with self-indulgent things that have no value, we need regular recourse to a kind of fasting that involves the governance of our senses. We must work to ensure that we do not become slaves to our appetites, our minds, to what we see and what we hear. We must be in a position to decide what we consume and what we refrain from consuming, and in this way become masters of our own lives. True freedom involves the capacity to determine the course of our own lives. If I am not able to say “no” to myself, then I am not free but am a slave to my own appetites. Evil in our times devours people with the minimal promise of pleasure. We neglect the well-being of our hearts in order to pursue self-indulgent things that have are worthless. In the Old Testament there is the striking image of Esau, the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham, who swaps his privileged position of being heir to God’s promise for a plate of porridge. Esau fills his stomach with the porridge but loses his entire future. Jacob, by contrast, fasts for a day so that God’s promise will rest on him. As a result Jacob (or “Israel”) becomes the most named person in Scripture, while the name of Esau is largely forgotten.

                The Son of Man is coming. We have a future and a destiny that awaits us, and it is time for us to begin governing our lives. Sooner or later, all approaches to the spiritual life must tackle the issue of bringing order into one’s existence. We must be sober, capable of making decisions that go against the satisfaction of our own needs. We must attain the freedom to determine the direction of our own lives. I must be able to decide when something begins and when it finishes, and not be a slave to the thing, carried along by it, powerless to say no to the unfolding of circumstances that are dictated by others.

During Advent we must wake up, renouncing the self-indulgent things that lead nowhere, and being ever-attentive to the things in our lives that have real beauty

The Gospel ends by telling us to be vigilant at all times, so that we will have the strength to survive what is going to happen, and we can stand with confidence before the Son of God. The choice is ours. Will we be found asleep, indulging ourselves, so that when the Son of Man comes it will be a  traumatic awakening for us? For each of us there is a doorway in our lives that leads to dissipation. It is important to be aware of these areas in our lives where we are inclined to indulge ourselves, becoming anxious for our own wellbeing and profit, losing sight of the real sense of things. Marriages, friendships, workplaces, parenthood are all ruined when one becomes preoccupied with selfish things that are of no consequence, becoming slaves to our own fixations and losing our freedom to do the right thing. The expression “Wake up!” is the perfect motto to accompany each of us on the journey of Advent. It tells us that we exist in an arena in which we must be constantly attentive to what is going on around us. Like a shepherd who is watchful for the wellbeing of his sheep, all of us must be constantly vigilant, ever-attentive to cultivating and promoting the true beauty in our lives.