Fr Aidan's Sermon – Sunday 30thNovember 2003

I was in Boston in the States recently staying with a family with four young children and the great event whilst I was there was Lizzie the youngest having her 6th birthday, and it was exciting. Everyday the countdown, two days, one day, tomorrow. And then the day of her birthday and the breakfast table littered with presents. She opened them all and her eyes danced with delight and then off to school. It was an ordinary school day.

Do you remember the time when birthdays were like that - when you get a bit older you are not too bothered about birthdays. But our lives are marked out by horizons. When I was a child I can remember not being able to wait to be grown up, to be older so I can have my say, go to bed when I want and not when my parents want me to, and get up when I want. It doesn't happen like that because as you get older you get greater responsibilities, waiting to go to the big school and then waiting to leave school. I remember that great song "School's Out Forever" and when you are old enough you have your own job and your own money and then again you get married and have your own children and they keep you awake at night and you wish they would get older so they can put themselves to bed and bath themselves and clean their teeth without having to be told. Of course when they grow up parents say its worse "I wish they were young again". They leave home, but they never leave home in some ways. In some ways they do but in other ways they never leave, they are always in your hearts and mind. So life is a series of looking forward for something that is coming. If we get cynical it's a series of false dawns. Reality turns to ashes and like with the rugby that four years of preparation the intense preparation the four to six weeks in Australia and it's all over now. So a great moment. In an interview they were talking about the Six Nations Trophy - the next thing!

What happens in Advent is the church catches hold of that and says "The excitement of preparing for Christmas, or for some the burden of preparing for Christmas, it's that feature in our life saying don't you know what is happening as we look forward with excitement to great events?" With a mixture very often of excitement and fear. A mixture of apprehension and anticipated joy. Our feelings are so often mixed as we look forward and God is saying to us "Don't you realise that those rich human experiences I give you are tasters", that is what they are, a fore-taste of what is to come. And what is to come is the coming of the Son of God and for you and for me the coming of the Son of God is when we die. So strangely enough, Advent is preparing for birth as it is preparing for death too and the people who are most important in Advent are the old people. Because old age is a wonderful blessing - it's a curse as well - it's a mixture, but it is a wonderful blessing because at last we can take time to look back through our lives to gather together all those anticipations of looking forward to learn; and we gain wisdom from that, and to see the wisdom of looking forward to birthdays, of growing up, of having our own children, our own house, being in charge of our lives, are all about the coming of the Son of God for me. So they are all about preparing for death and preparing for death is a mixture of exultation for the followers of Christ, a mixture of joy and apprehension. But ultimately the joy is overridden and the holier we get the better we see it, the wiser we become.
All the false dawns will give way to a real dawn. The only real dawn is the presence of Christ, the coming of Christ. That is the only real fulfilment of all our human yearnings and desires and aspirations. All the human hearts are looking forward to is Christ, and Christ is the only fulfilment of them. The union of ourselves with God - our immersion into the inner life of God; that's what it's all about. That is what Advent says very powerfully to us. So Advent is a time for preparing both for life and for death and how do we prepare for death? Our Lord says "Don't resign yourselves, don't sit back and wait for it to come." No, stay awake! Stand up with your heads held high because the hour of liberation is at hand; that is the hour of freedom. Freedom, the aspiration of every human heart in every human being, is only fulfilled in the freedom of the presence of God. That is true freedom, the freedom of heaven. So our liberation is at hand and for a follower of Christ that is what death is. Death is not the end, the final curtain. Don't cremate me, for God's sake; I hate those curtains coming across! Burn me if you like but on a big bonfire where everyone can see my body being consumed by the flames - otherwise bury me. You know it's the culmination; it's everything they are waiting for, and you know that all our dreams, all our wishes, all our aspirations, will be fulfilled in the communion of saints and the fullness of life in heaven. So in Advent we are asked to look at that and to reflect on it very seriously as we prepare for the coming of our God.

How do you do it? I think it's wonderful that this Advent we have the opportunity to do it in what we call 'watching', watching before the Blessed Sacrament. On the three Friday's of Advent try to make time on one of those Friday's at least, to come so that we can respond to our Lord's invitation to stay awake, to watch before the Blessed Sacrament, gazing into the eyes of our redeemer, into the heart of our Lord and realising that all the excitement, all the tinsel everywhere, is a pale shadow of the eternal life in heaven that Christ prepared. Christmas is the celebration which is prepared for each of us and because of that then we are invited to use the time, not waiting doing nothing but to grab every moment that is given to us and use it to prepare for the coming of our God. The first prayer at today's Mass says it all "All powerful God increase our strength of will for doing good, that Christ may find an eager welcome at His coming and call us to His side in the Kingdom of Heaven where He lives and reigns forever. Amen".

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