From Season to Season

"Watch, therefore; you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: 'Watch!'" ”     —Mark 13:35-37 “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” or so says the cheery holiday song by Meredith Wilson. And yet, when we enter our parish churches on Sunday, we won’t be greeted by Christmas trees and poinsettias or lift our voices in joyful hymns singing “glory to the Newborn King.” Instead, we will hear a “crisis mode” Gospel ( Mark 13:33-37 ) that calls us to vigilance, watchfulness, and prayer. It is certainly a disconnect. Unfortunately, for too many of us, Advent is a sort of pre-Christmas season that only thinly veils the all-out joy of Christmas. But with this Sunday’s readings and prayers , the Church is reminding us that there is much more to Advent than just anticipating the birthday of Jesus.

His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master's joy.'" —Matthew 5:21 As the Church year comes to an end, a single point is brought into sharp focus: we’re waiting for the fulfillment of time and of hope-filled promises of an untold future. We are awaiting the return of Christ.  As we know, in the final weeks of the liturgical year, “end times” readings permeate our liturgical worship to a point that might seem unnecessarily negative and even macabre, especially for those Christians who have had the threat of judgment used as a weapon against them, like a divine hammer hovering always just above their heads, and ready to strike. The liturgical texts for the end of the Church year, like the “Parable of the Talents” ( Matthew 25:14–30 ) and the “Lesson of the Fig Tree” ( Mark 13:28–32 ), offer us important insights into what our expectan

  Stay awake and be ready! For you do not know on what day your Lord will come. —Entrance Antiphon for the 32 nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, based on Matthew 24:42a, 44   Like many early Christians, including Saint Paul and the people of Thessaloniki , the Evangelist Matthew and his community would probably have struggled to reconcile their hope for the return of Jesus with their disappointment that it hadn’t happened yet. For most of us, the eschaton —the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgment—is an uncomfortable topic that might even smack of religious fanaticism. After all, how often have we dismissed religious leaders and self-proclaimed “prophets” who have declared that Jesus will return at a specific time and place? And yet, each Sunday, as we profess in the Nicene Creed, we declare our belief that “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church develops this fundamental Christian doctrine when it says, “Sin