Sober and Alert

The Wise and Foolish Virgins (3) (c. 1848) by Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow

Time is a funny thing. Philosophers debate about how *real* time is – whether it is truly accurate to view it in the terms we commonly do as past, present, and future, or whether it is more accurate to see time as an uninterrupted chain or block that only appears to unfold progressively. Whatever their answer, most of us know the feeling of how time can often seem to play tricks on us. For example, I bet Thanksgiving break already feels like ages ago to many of us, but the start of the semester – comparatively – not that long ago. We have just flipped the calendar to December, and many of us may feel, “Where has 2018 gone?” The days get longer, it seems, and the years shorter.

Today we start the new season of Advent, a season very much about time, and for that reason, it’s kind of a strange season as well. For one thing, it’s short – we have only a little more than three weeks until it ends. Indeed, there is a temptation to skip Advent altogether, and just jump on ahead to celebrating Christmas. The culture around us certainly encourages us to do that. The Church, as you might guess, takes things more slowly, in their proper order. There is another reason that Advent is kind of a funny season. On the one hand, it is a preparation for the season of Christmas and the celebration of the birth of our Savior Jesus. But at its heart, Advent really isn’t about Christmas at all; instead it’s about remembering the passage of time, especially how God is its author and time is not forever.

We hear this quite clearly at the beginning of the Advent season. In the first reading today, the prophet Jeremiah foretells the days when the Lord will at last bring his justice upon the world, righting all wrongs and settling all accounts. In the Gospel, Jesus talks again about his return at the end of time, a day that will catch people off guard, and which will bring an end to time as we know it. This Gospel reading – which, let’s admit it, is a little frightening – would be out of place if this new season of Advent were only about preparing for the birth of Christ. But as I said, Advent is a little strange. In order to properly celebrate Jesus’s coming long ago, we first call to mind his Second Coming; to rejoice that he has come once, we remember that he will come again.

This may seem a little strange, but there’s a good reason for it, and it has to do with how we tend to treat time. Most of us live our day to day lives planning different things, making arrangements, and generally operating as if our lives have no end in sight. Of course, we know that we are mortal, and our time here is not infinite, but we generally don’t let that knowledge impinge too much on our way of thinking. Inevitably, then we look for fulfillment in the passing things of time – stuff, pleasure and satisfaction, career achievements, the esteem of other people. The problem, of course, is that eventually we will be caught off guard – we will be reminded of our finitude in some shocking or disturbing way, or we may even find our time drawn to a close in a far too quick way.

The followers of Jesus have to operate differently. As he tells us in the Gospel, the things of this reality are ultimately unreliable, incapable of providing us with true meaning and fulfillment. It is only when we live with a view to the coming reality – especially to him as the constant that guides and forms how we treat everything else – that we have a proper approach to the things of this world.

Jesus warns us about three things that can easily distract us from this. The first thing he mentions is “carousing,” sometimes also translated as dissipation or debauchery. Basically, it is indulgence in the pleasures and attractions of this world. We could think of a lot of examples: sex, money, entertainment, sports, politics, possessions, social media, even knowledge and curiousity – the list could go on. The second thing to avoid is “drunkenness.” It is a sin, usually a serious one, to intentionally do anything which takes away our ability to reason, our sensibility. Certainly, alcohol is a major danger in this regard, and one that our culture misuses terribly, especially on college campuses. But we can become “drunk” on things other than booze, as well – power, prestige, greed, but also anger, despair, sarcasm, and anything else that can overwhelm right judgment and sober thinking. Finally, if those don’t cover all the bases, Jesus warns us not to be weighed down by the “anxieties of daily life.” That’s something we all can take to heart. Jesus knows that we have problems and concerns in our lives right now, but we can’t become so weighed down by them that we abandon faith and hope for an attitude of worry.

In addition to warning us of what can distract us, Jesus also tells us what we can do to make ourselves ready for the Lord’s action in our lives. First, we should “be vigilant” – that is, we should watch, be on guard, and see things with a spiritual perspective. There is a great line from the First Letter of Peter: “Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith.” We should have a discerning eye toward how we view the situations, cares, and things of this world, recognizing that within them often lie temptations. We have to be on guard against whatever might disturb our relationship with the Lord, and rob us of inner peace. This leads to Jesus’s second command – “pray.” We only can be truly ready for the Lord if we are continually communicating with him, speaking to him about the circumstances and concerns of our day to day reality, lifting up what we have and who we are in a offering of love and praise, and then receiving from him the grace to keep persevering, watchful and alert.

Friends, time may be a funny thing – inevitable and yet unreliable – but Jesus is the Lord of the past, present, and future. When we recognize that – when we live now ready for his action, mindful of his coming, in whatever form that may be – then we can regard the things of this world in the proper way. Let’s use the three weeks and change of this Advent season not just to prepare for Christmas, but as a time to rouse ourselves from drowsiness, reassessing how we view all the aspects of our life and whether the Lord is at the center. Let’s keep our mind’s eye always on the coming of Christ, so that we can regard the things of the here and now with a sobriety and alertness that makes us ready for whatever life may bring.