Advent Hope

In this homily, Fr Richard Healey discusses the significance of Advent, addressing common questions and misconceptions. They delve into the deeper meanings of Advent, beyond just preparing for Christmas, focusing on themes of hope, sin, and transformation. He emphasises that Advent is a time for acknowledging our sins and failures, which opens us up to God’s grace and transformation. They encourage listeners to invite God into their brokenness and imperfections, where He can bring healing and redemption. The episode concludes with a message of hope and an invitation to trust in God’s transformative love.

(00:00:00) – This season of advent. I think it is one of those seasons that kind of fluffs around a lot. It’s kind of hard to make sense of what is it about? We all know that it’s kind of preparing for Christmas. That’s part of this whole season. We know that it’s purple, so it’s a bit like lent. And people are asking me, father, are we putting flowers out or no flowers? And so is it. Do we? We don’t sing the glory, but we still sing the Alleluia. And so it’s kind of this weird in-between sort of thing. It’s a bit like lent, but it’s not like lent. And then it’s this kind of what, what are we doing? It’s waiting. It’s expecting. But for what? It’s not just for the event that happened some 2000 years ago. That’s happened. Yes. But it’s not just preparing for that. Not just to remember that, not just to reenact that. And kind of Christmas also has that weird sense of what are we doing? We are just remembering what happened in the past, or is it something a bit more dynamic? What’s it got to do with me because we’re people of this generation.

(00:01:21) – So we want to know, well, what impact does it have for me, for my life? How does it impact me? And I think that sense of hope that we get in our first reading and the prophet Isaiah is, is he’s a prophet of gloom and doom, particularly in the first 40 or so chapters. But then there is this, this deep sense of expectancy, this anticipation of the Messiah actually coming. And of course, at that time, it was still this longing for the Son of Man, for the one who will fulfil their dreams, their hopes, their expectations. And so there is this sense, and I love that line that we hear in the first reading today, you know, tear the heavens and come down, Lord, you know, just do this work already know, break into our lives. We know that things are not going well. We know that all that we seem to be able to do is to sin. All that we seem to be able to do is make mistakes, to stop it up, to get it wrong.

(00:02:28) – But how do we do it right? How do we live well? How do we actually transform our experiences so that it is this sense of anticipation? And that’s what hope is about, because advent is not just an opportunity to prepare for an event in the past, or even an anticipation of the second coming. And both of those themes kind of bounce around during this season of advent, but it’s also about how we are our sins and our failures can be just a sense of just the way that we’ve got things wrong. But I love the fact that our sin also gives us that capacity, because I know that I need God. You know, when I sin and when I’m always aware of my sins. And all of those are just simply opportunities for me to say, I can’t do this by myself. I just cannot fulfil this. Even if I want to be faithful, even if I want to be good, I don’t most of the time. Some of the time I do, some of the time I get things right.

(00:03:38) – Some of the times I do things that are good and helpful, but a lot of the time it’s just missing the mark or it’s not quite on target. And I say something that is pretty okay, but there might be a little barb, there might be a little bit of my agenda, there might be a little resentment that kind of creeps in as part of of all of that. So how do we actually experience this transformation and that sin, that experience of missing the mark, of not being faithful to God allows us to remember that, hey, into that space, I can let God into that space of my failure and my sin and my imperfection, that that is actually a place where I can be open to grace. I can be open to the wonder. I can be open to God transforming me. And so this time of advent is not just about preparing vaguely for Jesus to be born, but making space in here, making space in the depths of who I am in the midst of that sin, and in the midst of that dysfunction, in the midst of that addiction, and in the midst of that gossip, in the midst of that tearing down and all those resentments that I’m holding on to and all of that unforgiveness and all of that racism and all.

(00:04:59) – Those judgments and all the ways that I get things wrong in that space. God is wanting to come and to dwell and to be Emmanuel, and it’s in that space, if I’m prepared to face it, if I’m prepared to just look squarely at my sin and my dysfunction, not to run away. Not to pretend it’s not there, but to simply say, yes, Lord, it’s in here. It’s somehow in this space of my brokenness, there’s room for you. And the Saints will tell us that it’s precisely in that space that he’s wanting to love us. He’s wanting to redeem us. He’s wanting to meet us exactly in that woundedness, not in the places where I’m well and good and functional and and everything is going Jim Dandy, those places of the broken that God is so longing to the heavens and come down into that brokenness, into that wound, into that place where I’m not achieving, where I’m not meeting my key performance indicators, where I’m not functioning at the best of of everything that I’m wanting to do.

(00:06:19) – It’s in that place, precisely that God is wanting to come. And if this season of advent is that space where we let God be present in there, that I let him do that work of healing, that I let him love me in that brokenness and in that woundedness, then advent can be the most amazing and transformative time, because it’s about acknowledging that I can’t do this. But he can. I can’t achieve all of these things, but the one I’m longing for, the one I’m waiting for, the one that I’m dreaming of coming. He can. Because hope is about a person. It’s not optimism. Optimism is about circumstance and situation. It’s about vagaries. It’s about just wanting and hoping that things will turn out in the end. But the hope is based on a relationship. Hope is based on our faith in God that we know that he is faithful. We know that he has done this in the past and that he will do this again. So hope is the first experience of advent, because it’s only as people of hope that we know that we can trust God with our brokenness.

(00:07:36) – We can trust him in our wounds. We can trust him in all of the things that I can’t trust anybody else and I often don’t even trust myself with. But it’s in that space that God can change and transform us. It’s in that space that God is wanting to come as our Redeemer, that he’s wanting to be the presence that we cannot have in any other way. So during this season of advent, let’s indeed be people of hope, people that acknowledge that I can’t, but he can. God is wanting to redeem and change and transform. To let me grow, to be the person that he’s created me to be. And he’s wanting to give me everything that I need to be able to experience that transformative love. It does indeed open ourselves to God’s goodness and his grace during these holy days of Advent.