Sermon: Advent I, Year A
Fifteen years ago this December, at the end of a year that held both my marriage to my first wife, Robin, and her death, I wrote these words in my journal. I had taken refuge for a time at the Subiaco Benedictine monastery in Petersham, Massachusetts, hoping to gather strength for the Christmas season that lay ahead.
Five A.M. I am in hope. Beneath my feet the two-day-old snow sings with each deliberate step. I walk suspended between passion and stillness, between awareness and that soft mercy called forgetfulness. Thoughts of a new day rise around me—too vast for me to hold. The wind glides, slow and cold. My breath hangs in the air, drifting before me like Vesper incense. I reach the chapel doors—heavy, reluctant to be disturbed, as though their creak might shatter the fragile silence of the earth. Luther says to sin boldly. I agree. And it is, after all, only the earth’s silence, not heaven’s.
The door yields. A dull thud welcomes me inside. The church lies in darkness, set aglow only by the tender tremble of the sanctuary lamp. Again the silence falls—this time not the earth’s but God’s. I genuflect, slip off my scarf and coat, and kneel facing the altar, signing myself. A rosary meets my hand; its wooden beads warm beneath my grip. I sign myself once more. A whisper escapes my lips—thin, fragile, but rising like a descant toward God. I stand with the Saints and with the Saints in God. I wait.
I wait for the Lord. He is here. Our life is a vigil—half silence, half song; half tears, half joy. We walk in the winter of this world, where snow crunches underfoot and our breath becomes visible prayer. And so I wait for the approaching dawn, the Day-spring from on high. Like the flicker of the lamp, Christ stands amid his Church—among his people and within his mysteries—our morning star, heralding something new and whole. The day draws near. I wait.
Suddenly the lights awaken. Bells call the brothers to prayer, turning shadow into brightness, stillness into sound. They gather in the chancel. A bearded monk rises, his bass voice steady as oak: Deus in adjutorium meum intende. The choir answers: Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina. Their work of praise begins.
And now we begin the season of Advent—a season of expectation and of hope. We remember the long centuries that leaned forward toward Bethlehem. And we remember, too, that the same Christ who came once in humility will come again in glory—to judge the nations, raise the dead, and unveil the kingdom that shall have no end. Advent teaches us to watch for light rising out of darkness and for life breaking forth from death.
It arrives in the year’s waning, when days contract and winter’s breath settles upon us. The world outside is dying into silence, as all worlds must. So too will ours. Jesus tells us that the end comes like a thief in the night—unexpected, uninvited, unavoidable. Not to frighten, but to sober. To awaken.
Ours is a culture skilled at banishing death from view. It is softened, hidden, dramatized, made to seem rare. We behave as though we were made of endless tomorrows. As Woody Allen quipped, “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Yet we will be there. Life is finite. Advent dares to speak this truth—but not to leave us in its shadow. For Christians, death is not an ending but a doorway.
We believe that Christ will rouse the dead from sleep, set justice loose upon the world, and rule a kingdom unshakable. Today’s Scriptures call us to hope in God. They tell us that the age of sin and death is passing away. That war, violence, hatred, and poverty will be gathered up and overcome by the radiance of God. Heaven will marry earth. And for those who mourn, God promises resurrection and holy rest. Hope is God’s command today.
But preparation is his command as well. “Be ready,” Jesus says, “for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” These words are not meant to terrify but to tenderize the heart—to call us out of idleness into a life shaped by the hope we profess. Holiness is not an ornament of the Christian life; it is its music.
This is why the Church exists. Her prayers and preaching, her creeds and sacraments, all train us for the dawn of Christ’s appearing. In worship, the future bends low and touches the present. Heaven rehearses itself among us. We taste what God intends for us. John Henry Newman, preaching on Advent, wondered why we must pray, fast, worship, and receive the sacraments. His answer: God commands it—and because these practices prepare us for a new mode of being. Prayer, he wrote, shapes us so that we may meet God “suitably hereafter,” and sacramental communion prepares our very nature to bear the sight of him.
Our worship is not ornament—it is preparation. It tutors our hearts for the day when we shall see God face-to-face.
So this Advent, I invite our community to live more deeply into the Church’s rhythm of prayer and discipline. Let us open the Scriptures and behold the face of God. Let us renew our life of prayer. The Book of Common Prayer, steeped in Scripture, offers a sturdy frame for daily devotion. It is not perfect, but it is wise. As we pray, let us hear what our words mean. Nothing in our liturgy is wasted. Everything is given for our shaping.
Let us give ourselves again to the Holy Eucharist, where Christ feeds us with himself for the journey. In all these things we remember his coming at Christmas and prepare for his coming again.
So, “let us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day.” For the darkness of this present hour will soon pass, and we shall dwell in the brightness of God’s everlasting light
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