Stay awake

First Sunday of Advent Year B

I’m a light sleeper. The slightest disturbance, faintest noise, or tiniest sliver of light would usually awaken me. Perhaps, I am suffering from what doctors call “exploding head syndrome”, imagined loud noises in my head when I am transitioning from consciousness to sleep. Or maybe, I’m just wired to expect the Lord’s unexpected arrival, as He Himself had warned: “So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn; if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep.”

But let’s be honest, staying awake for most of us can be exhausting. We need our rest. We need to sleep. We need to regenerate. We have seasons of excitement and whole-hearted devotion, and we have seasons where we fall asleep, even in church. And for many, the homily is as good a time to sleep as any. Perhaps, even the most ideal moment. But today, our Lord issues the warning that we should “Stay awake”, or else suffer the dire consequences of our lack of vigilance. And being caught by the priest is the least of your concerns. Life is short so stay awake for it.

The same requests from the Lord would be made on the night of His betrayal, on the eve of His crucifixion and death. In the garden of Gethsemane, our Lord was deep in prayer, anguished by the “cup” of suffering He was about to drink. He took His inner circle of disciples (Peter, James and John) with Him and told them to “remain here and watch.” Then, while the Lord was in agonising prayer, His closest companions couldn’t stay awake. Three times the Lord returned from praying to find His disciples falling asleep. Three times the Lord orders them to “stay awake.” Three times His disciples fell asleep. It may be some weak consolation in knowing that the Apostles were not immune from dozing off on the job. One could only imagine the frustration and disappointment of the Lord.

Of course, the Lord was talking about more than just avoiding falling asleep while praying. He was giving instruction about our spiritual readiness for His coming. With the repetitive command to stay awake, our Lord spoke to all His disciples throughout the ages, including our generation, about the need to remain alert. I think for us it can become easy to lose our spiritual edge and focus. It is easy to grow complacent, lazy and careless. It doesn’t take much of a lapse in alertness to become desensitised to the spiritual reality upon us by the pseudo-comforting distractions around us. Staying awake spiritually involves looking past the clamour of worldly attractions. It’s about perceiving the presence of the kingdom of heaven growing up quietly and silently after the seeds have been scattered in the garden. It’s about resisting the cultural malady of practical atheism – living as if God did not exist or even if we were to accept that He did, it did not matter in our lives. This is what Advent is meant to accomplish for us - to transform us from spiritual sleepy heads to vigilant stewards, always alert and ready for the master’s return. The question left to consider is how: how can we stay awake?

First, we need to take the words of Christ seriously that He is returning. Many don’t believe in the Parousia, in the return of the Lord. Many believe that this is a bogey man invented by the Church to scare her members into submission. Many leave without giving serious thought that there would be a Day of Judgment, a day where we will be called to account for our actions and decisions. To stay awake means to listen to the Lord and His warning and to take Him seriously at His word.

Second, the Apostle Paul tells us to pray without ceasing. This was the Lord’s exhortation to His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus tells us to “watch and pray.” If we are to stay awake in the midst of a world in a spiritual stupour, then we need to be diligent in prayer. No wonder Paul advises to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). In fact, we should be constantly praying for the Lord’s Second Coming as we do whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done!” There must be urgency in this prayer as Isaiah expressed with these powerfully vivid words: “tear the heavens open and come down!”

Third, staying awake means faithfulness and commitment to the task that has been placed before us. The second parable in today’s gospel reminds us that readiness is measured by people diligently doing their job. The wisest ones are those who consistently try to seek and serve their Lord at every moment of every day. The familiar Advent message to ‘stay awake’ invites us to live humanly to the best of our ability, continuing to do the necessary mundane things faithfully but always with a genuine care for unexpected surprises. We should be striving and praying, as St Paul did in the second reading, that our Lord will “keep you steady and without blame until the last day.”

The person who stays awake and remains faithful is the one who accepts the invitation to keep watch, that is, not let himself be overpowered by the listlessness of discouragement, by the lack of hope, by disappointment; and at the same time it wards off the allure of the many vanities with which the world is brimming and for which, now and then, time and personal and familial peace is sacrificed. It is the painful experience of the people of Israel, whom the Prophet Isaiah was sent to awaken. We too often find ourselves in this situation of unfaithfulness to the call of the Lord: He shows us the good path, the way of faith, the way of love, but we seek our happiness elsewhere.

Listening, praying and remaining faithful won’t tell us when the Lord is coming again, but they will get us ready to receive Him when He comes. Hopefully none of you out there are asleep yet. Hopefully you’ve managed to stay awake through my homily. But if you are asleep, know that God loves you and has sent Christ into the world to save you all the same. But for those who are asleep, He comes as Judge. And if you are asleep, or falling asleep, or peaceful and secure in your faith life, well, it’s time to wake up and come alive. Because what the Church needs are not people who are sleeping on the job but those who are alive and kicking, ever ready to preach the Gospel of Christ through the testimony of their words and actions. So, stay awake!

Wait and Pray

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year A

The first reading situates us within this week that lies between the Ascension of the Lord and the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Nine days of waiting. Nine days of continuous prayer - the first novena of the Church (the word “novena” is actually derived from the Latin root which simply means nine). After the rigours of the Lenten fast and penance and the feasting of Easter, these nine days seem to be a most welcomed respite from all the liturgical hustle and bustle for those who have been engaged but it can also be annoying for those who feel an itch for more activity and hate the idleness which they associate with prayer and all things churchy. For the latter, prayer doesn’t seem to count as a fruitful activity. Real Christians should be out on the streets working, not confined to their rooms like cowards praying.

But is prayer a cop out for those who shirk their social responsibilities? Is it idle activity for those who are unable or unwilling to take responsibility to resolve their own issues? Why would our Lord ask these disciples to wait and pray? Let’s go back to that first novena between our Lord’s Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Put yourself in the middle of this frightened and confused band of apostles and disciples. They had seen the Lord suffer and die, but then He rose and appeared to them, demonstrating His power. He commissioned them to carry the message of eternal and abundant life before ascending into heaven, leaving them with marching orders. Icons of this scene show the disciples with their feet and bodies facing outwards, ready to take the gospel beyond the borders of Judea, to Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. But then the Lord also told them to take pause, to not “leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for what the Father had promised.” If some of you may think that novenas are superstitious activities for the simple-minded who still believe in tooth fairies and Santa Claus, remember that the first novena was ordered and instituted by none other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. That first novena would be the prototype for all other novenas.

What would have happened if they had given up and left? We can only speculate. If they had left, they would never have been present to experience the Pentecost. And without the Pentecost, the gospel would not have been carried to the ends of the earth. In fact, the entire New Testament may never have been written and the Church would not exist today. Imagine that! But, the persistence of Christ’s followers and His mother to wait for the promise, ended in fulfilment. On the Feast of Pentecost, tongues of fire appeared on each of their heads declaring the coming of the Holy Spirit and the Church was born.

The lesson learnt from the first novena instituted by the Lord is that prayer is about waiting. Prayer requires faith; faith requires patience; and patience requires waiting upon the Lord. To wait patiently for God is to trust in God’s unfailing love for us. To wait upon the Lord is to recognise that He is our Lord and Master. How God does His will is up to Him. We cannot control God or tell Him how to accomplish His plan. He will do His will in His way. Prayer is not a sign of weakness. Prayer is a conscious choice of admitting that we can’t do it alone. It is an act of vulnerability that connects us to God and others. It puts us in a position of strength, not weakness. One of the greatest and most damaging lie we can believe is that we can do it on our own. Prayer dispels that lie and frees us to lean on someone else when it seems unbearable or impossible.

But waiting on God can be the most difficult, and perhaps the most confusing part of the prayer process. We live in a world of instant everything. We value speed. This is true not only in our culture at large, but in our spirituality and prayer. We rush through our prayers because we have other more urgent matters to attend to. We look for the shortest masses. The quicker, the better. Many rush off immediately after communion or before the final blessing and announcements. Yes, waiting in prayer is not an easy kind of prayer to practice. When we pray, we want to see results; and we want to see them now! And if that answer doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, we begin to wonder if God has abandoned us or if He really cares about us at all. We fail to recognise that when you treat prayer as if you have the right to tell God how to do His work, you will be disappointed. God does not take instructions. We wait, He doesn’t. But when you realise that God’s ways are not your ways, that His ways are superior to your ways, you will not be thrown off balance when circumstances seem to be leading you away from God’s will rather than toward it.

Something happens to us in this kind of waiting. There is purpose in waiting. Waiting on God forces us to look to Him. We are brought to attention. The prayer of waiting draws us into a place of stillness and quietness before God where we open our hearts to listen and receive the good gifts of guidance, wisdom and blessing. Waiting in prayer expands our hearts to accept God’s will instead of pushing for our own agenda. When we wait with hope it is like sitting in the dark of night before the first rays of dawn appear. We know that dawn will come, yet we cannot hurry it. We can watch and wait with hope to receive the first lights with joy.

Waiting gives God the opportunity to redefine our desires and align our purposes and vision with His. What appears from the earth-perspective to be a delay on God’s part is really the time when God is working behind the scene, beyond our senses. During the waiting time, we are operating by faith. Trials cause us to persevere by deepening our knowledge of God and relying on Him more intentionally. That is why in the midst of our daily frenzied activities, our Christian life needs to include times of contemplation and prayer to simply be with God in the stillness and to wait upon Him in loving anticipation of what He would do with us.

Waiting as an essential element of prayer, helps us not to treat novenas and other special prayers as quick fixes. As Jesus told His disciples, we must pray constantly and never give up (Luke 18:1). Sometimes we have to pray for a long period before we see any results. Why? We don’t know. As much as we grow impatient, we need to recognise that His timing is an astounding thing. What we do know is that Jesus always has our back and He knows what’s best. We mustn’t become disheartened or give up saying novenas because we don’t immediately see the fruits of our labour. The Blessed Virgin Mary and the apostles obeyed the Lord’s instruction to wait and pray, and scripture tells us that their fidelity and vigilance finally paid off.

May our waiting and our praying make us more open to receiving the Holy Spirit and more capable of showing the grace of God in all that we are and all that we do.

Watch

First Sunday of Advent Year A

Advent is here! As the world winds down to the close of another year, we Christians are already ahead in beginning a new one. As people around us get ready for the holidays, make preparations for their annual break, we Christians are renewing our vigilance and recommitting ourselves to the work of mission.

We begin our season of Advent, the start of a new liturgical year, with a reminder that the end times are real - it is not make belief designed to scare Christians into docile submission. We should not treat this news, however, with an alarmist state of panic nor with apathy. We should not ignore our Lord’s warning and be caught off guard, as were the people during the time of the Great Flood or the two contemporary examples He cited. The tragedy of their error is an important lesson for us in this day and age. The necessary response is wakefulness or watchfulness. “So stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming.”

Before you grab a strong cup of coffee with a double shot, you need to remember that what our Lord is referring to is a different kind of wakefulness. The wakefulness that the Lord describes is a state—a practice, a way of being—that bears little resemblance to the ways we usually try to keep ourselves (or unwittingly find ourselves) awake, methods that usually leave us less than fully functional.

Another verb could be used to describe the wakefulness which our Lord is asking from us: “watch”! This is what we hear in the First Advent Preface: “Now we watch for the day, hoping that the salvation promised us will be ours, when Christ our Lord will come again in his glory.” Advent can thus be summarised in this simple imperative: “Watch.”

Christ will come again. That Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead is an article of our faith. But He will come unexpectedly and suddenly. The fact that we do not know the time of His return means that we are to live in a state of constant wakefulness or watchfulness. Therefore watching should be our permanent disposition. “Therefore, you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

What does it mean to be ready and watchful? It means, we look beyond the present to the future coming of Christ and His kingdom. It means, the present should be understood in the light of the coming Kingdom. It means, that all aspects of the Church’s life, our personal life, should be oriented towards the coming of Christ and the coming of His Kingdom. Too often, we are too myopic in our projections and planning. We fuss over short term goals and get distressed when our targets are not met, when our projects yield results which fall below our expectations. When we have closed our vision to the coming of Christ and His Kingdom at the end of this age, it is so easy for us to become disillusioned and give up. But constantly keeping our eye on the ball – which is the Lord’s coming, will fuel our resilience and strengthen our perseverance. It’s not the end until He comes again in glory, victorious and with His enemies under His feet.

We live not only in expectation of the Kingdom, not only in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah, but our whole life at present should be oriented towards the Kingdom of Christ. The second coming is not simply a future event but an event which controls, shapes and directs our life at the present. It is an event which transforms our view of life. To be oriented towards the coming Kingdom means that we live today as if we were already in the Kingdom of God. This is what St Paul tells us in the second reading, reminding us that as people who live in the daytime and not like those who live under the cover of night, we must live virtuous lives, free from vice, because “the time has come,” and that “our salvation is even nearer than it was when we were converted.”

If watchfulness is a permanent attitude and disposition of every Christian as we sojourn this earthly life on our way to the heavenly Kingdom, how can we make it a “way of life”? St Hesychios sets out different levels of watchfulness:

1. We must watch our thoughts. This is a watchfulness that guards against enticing mental images and thoughts, for these are the precursors to temptations and sin.

2. We must watch the desires and movements of the heart. This kind of watchfulness “frees the heart from all thoughts, keeping the heart profoundly silent and still in prayer.”

3. We must acknowledge our neediness and vulnerability. This is a watchfulness that “continually and humbly calls upon the Lord Jesus Christ for help.”

4. We must watch and prepare for death. Death is the universal equaliser which humbles the proud, reminds us of the fragility of our projects and impermanence of our possessions. Therefore, an attitude of watchfulness should always keep the remembrance of death in mind.

5. Lastly, watchfulness should fix our gaze on heaven rather than on the world.

As catechumens today take their first step to become full members of the Church, the liturgy exhorts you to watch your thoughts, watch your desires and the movements of your heart, discern what your heart is really longing for, prepare to die to yourself and finally fix your gaze on heaven rather than on the world.

We never know what each day will bring, just as no one knows when the Lord will return. That is why we are to be faithful at whatever duty that has been entrusted to us and making preparation to meet the Lord must be a lifelong commitment. Whether in our business, personal, or spiritual life, this should be how we think, live, preach and pray. Advent is, therefore, a reminder that there is no room for complacency in the Christian life. Let’s heed the Lord’s wake-up call. “So stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming.” “Watch!”

Waiting in Readiness

First Sunday of Advent Year A

Today marks the beginning of Advent – a time of expectation, a time of anticipation, preparation and longing for Christ (both His birth and His Second Coming).  But before we come to that great feast of the Nativity of our Lord, the Church invites us to cast our vision into the future, to the very End. That’s the paradox of Advent, before we reexamine and consider how it all began, we need to consider how the whole story of humanity, in fact of the universe, would eventually end. You may have heard this advice before: sometimes things gets worse, in fact it has to hit rock bottom, before it gets any better.

The world in which we live is in a time of anticipation. A world where we are still searching and anticipating a cure to cancer, an antidote to war, a solution to the problem of evil and suffering. Despite years of technological advancement and research, social, economic and political experiments, successes and failures, we are nowhere near to finding a perfect solution to everything. Yes, our world is incomplete and it waits with eagerness for that completion, for that perfection, for that great closure to all the open ended issues we are still facing.   

For us Christians, we believe our human history did not begin with the Big Bang or the first spark of evolution, and neither will it end in global annihilation with every life snuffed out, either by nuclear holocaust or destruction wreaked by catastrophic climate change. No, we Christians, believe that both our beginning and ending is to be found in God. If we believe in a God whose creation is good; a God whose goal for the world is to usher in a new kingdom of peace – A kingdom where the lion lies next to the lamb, where weapons of death are remolded into instruments which will bring forth food from the earth.  Then we are right to expect something more; to wonder aloud “there has got to be more to life than this.” 

Today’s first reading from Isaiah speaks about this anticipation.  Like Isaiah, we live in an age and in a society where God’s priorities are irrelevant to most people: but Isaiah reminds us of the big picture – reminds us what God is doing in His creation, whether we acknowledge it or not. Our lifetime is just the blink of an eye in God’s eternity, and Isaiah invites us to look up, to see beyond our limited view of the world, to see God’s purpose and God’s action. Isaiah is given a prophecy concerning Jerusalem. Jerusalem was never the formidable city on a hill with secure walls, attracting pilgrims from all over the world.  Instead, Jerusalem and Mount Zion were physically unimpressive; the very symbol of insignificance on the world’s map.  Yet, God designates this insignificant place to be “established as the highest of the mountains”, its light provides an orientation point for all nations and it will become the epicentre of God’s instruction which would bring about peace on earth. All the nations of the world will stream to it, to worship God in His Temple, to know His ways and to walk in His paths. It will be a time of justice and peace, a time of total fulfilment for all. No swords, only ploughshares.

The power of Isaiah’s prophecy is that he reveals that God is on our side.  God is committed to bringing peace.  God is willing and able to use seemingly insignificant and unimpressive things to correct the course of the world.  Nothing embodies this message more than the Incarnation – God coming to earth in the form of a fully-human infant, born in a barn in an insignificant town, living a life of service to others, giving his life on our behalf and at our hands, yet remaining fully God. Indeed, the mountain of the Lord is not a place, or an object, or even the Temple made up of stones, but a person, our Lord Jesus Christ. For in Jesus Christ, the true “mountain of the Lord,” the One to whom we go up to, so that “He may teach us His ways,” the One who “will wield authority over the nations and adjudicate between many peoples.”

If in the Old Testament first reading, the prophet Isaiah gives us a message of anticipation, of hope and fulfilment, of peace and light, St Paul, in the second reading gives a reminder that seems stern and firm and just a little bit grim. And we haven’t even gotten to the gospel yet. There, our Lord’s message is positively doom-laden and threatening. But read together, both the New Testament epistle and the gospel which actually describes the situation just before the End, whereas it is the Old Testament that actually gives us a glimpse of how things would actually end. How do we understand this tension between the fabulous vision of hope and the sometimes depressing and challenging situation of our times? In a way, the readings remind us that the Kingdom established by Christ is “already” here, He established it 2000 years ago, but the completion of His project and mission will only be accomplished when He returns, and therefore the Kingdom is also a “not yet.” In Advent we remember the anticipation of Christ’s first coming, as well as His promised return. 

It is true that we live in a time of anticipation.  But it is also a time of active participation.  This is not a passive anticipation, but an active participation.  We are actively participating in the kingdom of God which is already here but not yet complete. Christian waiting, Advent waiting, does not mean that we just sit around, hapless, whilst doing nothing. We must allow our lives to be shaped by our Lord and His teaching.  What exactly does a life shaped by His teaching look like?  Well, we just read how the apostle Paul would answer that question.  He gives us a list of don’ts: “no drunken orgies, no promiscuity or licentiousness, no wrangling or jealousy.” Of course the list is not exhaustive. But more than just avoiding sin, St Paul is trying to tell us to live positively. He says, “let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ.” What St Paul is trying to tell us is that we should not just rely on ourselves to find the power and energy to faithfully live out God’s commands every minute of our lives. Righteous and virtuous living would never be possible without God’s grace – it is with Christ as our shield, our helmet, our armour, that we can face every battle with temptation and come out victorious. Apart from Him, we are sitting ducks, destined for failure.

As we live in this “in-between time” and anticipate Christ’s birth and return, we must constantly be vigilant, living prayerfully and righteously in anticipation for His return. Our Lord warns us to be ready for what He calls ‘the coming of the Son of Man’. This means not just an event in the future, but also His continual presence with us, even now, though we often fail to recognise Him. In the days of Noah, people went about their ordinary business unaware of the judgement hanging over them. They were quite unprepared for the flood, which came and swept them all away. In a similar way, the coming of the Son of Man is a crisis hanging over us, but a far more important one. Some will be ready for it, some will not. That’s the heart of it: being ready, prepared. You never know when the burglar will break in.

All the time the Son of Man is coming to us. He is present with us, and all the time we are being challenged to accept or reject Him. Advent is the time when we think about this especially, when we try to open our lives to His coming, to the inflowing of His love and forgiveness. It is a time when we strive to accept the good and reject the bad, so that we become more and more like the Son of Man and share in His life. For “the mountain of the Lord” to “wield authority over the nations”, it must have authority over us. Christ must be our king, and we must submit to Him. We must put away sin, allow Him to “teach us His ways, so that we may walk in His paths.”  “O House of Jacob, let us walk in the Light of the Lord.” 

We do not wait in vain

First Sunday of Advent Year B

Today’s readings remind me of the highly cryptic and absurdist play written by Irish Nobel laureate and novelist, Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot.” It is a tale that involves two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. They distract themselves while they wait expectantly and in vain for the play’s namesake to arrive. To occupy themselves, they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide – anything “to hold the terrible silence at bay.” At the end of the story, Godot does not appear, thus reinforcing the futility of the waiting. In fact, one may be led to think that Godot may actually not exist.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to note that the name ‘Godot’ sounds too oddly familiar and similar to ‘God.’ Thus, the play can be read as a post-modernist critique of Christian hope, a parody of humanity who waits in vain for the coming of God, who chooses not to reveal Himself at the end. It seems to reinforce what many atheists are saying to us - there is no point waiting for Christ coming, he isn’t coming, no one’s coming to deliver you, don’t waste your time, God may not even exist, there is no HOPE! It is interesting that such a play, brilliant as it may be, with an equally bleak setting, should be voted the most significant English play of the 20^th century. Is this an indication of how far we have descended into a state of hopelessness or does it reveal a society that has grown cynical with waiting for deliverance?

Today, we begin the season of Advent not with a bleak message that we will be experiencing darker and more depressing times. Prophecies of doom abound from both economists and political analysts. The Advent message is not one which mirrors the storyline of the abovementioned play that we are waiting in vain for a person who will eventually not show up. No, the message of Advent is one of expectant joy, a message of true Christian hope that our waiting will not be vain. The person, whom mankind is waiting for as its saviour will come, in fact He has already come. Why? Because St Paul tells us, “God is faithful.”

Advent celebrates primarily two comings – the first coming of Christ in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago. The incarnation, the Word of God taking flesh, seems to be a fulfillment of what the Prophet Isaiah writes in today’s first reading – it is the prophecy of how the Lord “would tear the heavens open and come down.” The whole of humanity who had waited for aeons for the coming of its deliverer, its new Joshua who will lead them to the Promised Land, is not disappointed, as the Saviour has indeed come – He is Jesus the Christ. But Advent does not only prepare us for that first coming which we commemorate every year at the Feast of Christmas but also points us to the future, to Christ’s second coming in glory, to judge and deliver the world from sin, evil and death.

Our Christian faith is eschatological to its core. What do I mean by eschatological? The word ‘eschatology’ refers to the Last Things that we had learnt in our catechism – heaven, hell, death and judgment, the four eschata. But the real focus of eschatology is the Last Thing, which is not exactly a thing, in the sense of being an event or an object – it is God himself, the Eschaton. God is the source and summit of our lives, He is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. It is Him who we await, not just the end of the story. Eschatology is not purely confined to these vague, deeply profound and theological concepts of the future. Eschatology has everything to do with our present lives. This eschatological vision shapes our Christian world-view. It reminds us that our objective and purpose in life does not reside in the past or even in the present, it is posited in the future. The final solution would not be found here in this life – the final solution can only be found in God. It tears us away from navel-gazing, from self-idolatry, and draws our attention to that which lies beyond the horizon, Christ, who is the Alpha, and the Omega, the beginning and end of everything.

Finally, eschatology teaches us to be watchful. What does it mean to be watchful? What does the Lord mean when He tells His disciples to ‘be on (their) guard,’ and ‘stay awake’? Humans are great voyeurs. We enjoy watching, especially what pleases the eye. A beautiful woman or a handsome man would often elicit a second look or even a prolonged gaze. We watch for market trends in order to ensure that we are ahead of things economically and financially. We watch for pitfalls and obstacles especially when we are negotiating a difficult path or engaging in a new project. Some of us enjoy watching for the faults of others and gleefully jump at the opportunity to catch them when they make a mistake.

But is this the kind of watchfulness which the Lord is speaking of? I guess that these are more distractions rather than authentic watchfulness. We are invited by the readings to watch for the Lord, and especially for His coming. Firstly, this requires patience because as Jesus noted, ‘you never know when the time will come.’ The problem is that our attention span is often too short. We constantly look for distractions or loose interest when results are not immediately forthcoming. In a world that seeks immediate gratification, quick final solutions are the only acceptable options. Patience teaches us to respect God’s time and not dictate it. 

Watchfulness calls for fidelity or faithfulness to our duty. Take note that in today’s gospel, the image of the master entrusting the servants with a duty to watch for his coming, reminds all of us that being watchful is not just merely an individual vocation. The servants’ lack of watchfulness may cost the entire household its property or even the life of its members. We are called to be watchful not only for ourselves, but also for our family members, our children, future generations, our neighbours, our BEC members, our non-Christian friends, colleagues and everyone else. If we let our guard down, others apart from us will suffer too.

The third aspect of this watchfulness is expounded by St Paul in the second reading. He exhorts the Corinthians that while waiting for the Lord’s coming, to keep ready and without blame until the last day.’ Staying awake and being watchful means that we need to guard against sin. Sin dulls our senses to the promptings of God. Sin blinds us from recognising Christ in our lives. Sin distracts us from waiting and watching for the Lord. That is why Advent is also a penitential period for the whole Church. It is a time for us to honestly search our hearts, seek the Lord’s forgiveness, celebrate His mercy and the gift of repentance in order to make ready the way for the Lord’s coming.

Advent is the season of longing, of hope, of desire that we will come to perceive God face-to-face, no longer dimly through a mirror. Unlike Vladimir and Estragon who seem to have waited in vain for the mysterious Godot whom they do not know, Christians, on the other hand, are waiting in hope for Christ whom they do know. Our Christian waiting is never in vain. Christ will come. But will He find us ready, on guard and awake? Rather than to fill our time waiting with self-absorbed activities and distractions that will “hold the terrible silence at bay,” let our season of Advent be one of watchfulness, fidelity, patience and finally contrition that we may find within the silence of our hearts the voice of God, who sends His son to be our liberation and our salvation.