FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT – CYCLE B – YEAR OF MARK

We begin a new liturgical year, the year of Mark.  The Church in the liturgy invites us every year to contemplate Jesus with the eyes and the perspective of one of the evangelists.  Let us be guided by Mark during this liturgical year in order to discover Jesus as Mark wants to present him to us.

Let us not make a synthesis of the four gospels to have a biography of Jesus. The gospels are not partial biographies of Jesus, so that we may put them together to have a complete biography of the Lord.

The gospels narrate to us real events of the life of Jesus, but the authors of the gospels are not interested in giving only events, but they want  us to discover  the real  meaning of these events through faith. Thus they are a theological reflection. For this reason an evangelist uses parables that another does not use. The same may be said about the miracles, the sayings…, and  the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord.

Let us submerge ourselves into the gospel of Mark, and let him lead us.  

THIRD ISAIAH – THIRD ISAIAH

      This reading is taken from the third part of the book of Isaiah, called the Third Isaiah.

      The prophet has the difficult mission to keep the hope of the people that have come back from exile, and are disappointed because the promises are not fulfilled in the way they expected and understood.

      When we read the book we realize that there is a tension between the present worries versus the future hope; the accusation for the crimes versus the messages of hope; the disillusion of the present versus the messianic expectations; the welcoming of the foreigner versus the condemnation of the foreigner. At the end of the book the theme of the exodus takes a second place while the first interest is in the future Jerusalem, the transfigured city where the promises will be fulfilled.

      THE READING FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT  IS 63:16-17, 19; 64:2-7

o   In the Jewish liturgy as well as in the Christian liturgy we remember, we make present the things God has done in the past, the events of the history of salvation.

o   In the beautiful reading of this Sunday, the author and also ourselves we say to God, as if we wanted to make him remember who He is for us, what has been our experience of Him in the past

§  You are our Father and our Redeemer, this is  God your name forever (63:16)

§  Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard that there is a God who does the marvels you have done for us, for those who hope in you (64:3). Paul will say also eyes have not seen, ears have not heard ….

§  At the end of this reading   the prophet says to God, You, o Lord are our father; we are the clay and you are the potter; we are the work of your hands.

§  What a trust and security in his hands that are shaping, cherishing  and protecting us, sometimes even without realizing it ourselves, even in spite of our sins and imperfections. His love does not have either boundaries or conditions.

o   The prophet also remembers the marvels God did for his people in the past, this is another way to make God remember who He has been for us

§  Remembering and hoping that God will be  present again among us

§  We ask Him to protect us again so that we may be able to convert from our crooket ways

§  The prophet  mentions what are these crooket ways, and he ends up saying to God, that in spite of everything he is our Redeemer and Creator. 

      RESPONSORIAL PSALM: Psalm 80: 2-3, 15-16, 18-19

      LORD MAKE US TURN TO YOU, LET US SEE YOUR FACE AND WE SHALL BE SAVED

This psalm is a lamentation and a supplication. It has three parts:  

Invocation vv. 2-4

Lamentation vv. 5-8

Supplication  (vv. 6.9-20)

The responsorial psalm is taken from the first and third parts.

• We invoke God as shepherd, Lord of Hosts, vine dresser, creator
• We tell him that if He helps us and if He is with us, we will never depart from Him again, the final supplication will be “Give us new life and we will call upon your name”.
• We have received this new life in our baptism, we are able to call upon his name with complete trust, but also with responsibility, being aware of what we have said, and thus live according to the words we have pronounced.

SECOND READING: 1Co 1:3-9

      We will read the beginning of the letter of Paul to the community of Corinth.

      In the two first verses which we will not read on Sunday, Paul introduces himself as well as his companion Sosthenes.

o   Sosthenes was well known in Corinth. He had been the chief ruler of the Synagogue in the city of Corinth. Maybe Sosthenes was also a good preacher. Paul chose him as his collaborator. The fact to mention him in the introduction of his letter to the Corinthians might have helped Paul  in his difficult  relationship with that community.

      The reading begins with a greeting in which Paul wishes the grace and peace of God for the community.

      He continues giving thanks to God for the community

      The witnessing to Christ that Paul has given to them is the reason that the community knows the Lord and does not lack any gift.

      The Lord will strengthen them until the day of the Lord Jesus. The communities of the early Church called this day “parousia”

o   This word was used in the Hellenistic world  to designate the coming of some one. Later on it was used when an Emperor or Princess was coming to a town.

o   The word means “coming”

o   But Paul does not use this Greek term in this passage about the Day of the Lord Jesus, he uses instead the word “apocalypse” which means “revelation”

o   The use of apocalypse instead of parousia to speak about the Day of the Lord, helps us to understand the second coming of the Lord as a revelation, manifestation of the Lord at the end of human history.

      Even if Paul does not mention here anything about our feelings on the second coming of the Lord, from the context we may deduce that he wants to say to the community that there is no room for fear, because the one who comes is the Son of God, our Lord, in Him the Father has called us, to be like the only begotten Son.

GOSPEL: MARK 13:33-37

During the year B we are going to read from the Gospel of Mark.

Ø  It is the shortest one of the four Gospels. It has 16 chapters,

Ø  Biblical scholars from the XIX and XX centuries have been able to discover that this Gospel was the first to be written. The date was probably between the years 65 to 70.

Ø  The Gospel of Mark is called also the Gospel of the Disciple.

Ø  A way to explain this definition of the Gospel is by means of a comparison. When we do a weekend retreat in any of the Apostolic Movements of the Church, at the end,  before we leave,  we are given a handbook to help us to live according to the Movement we have been admitted to.

Ø  Thus the Gospel of Mark tells us in a very simple and direct way how to be and become more and more a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Ø  We do not begin the reading of this Gospel from the first chapter because in Advent the church chooses what fragment will fit the message she wants to give us.

Ø  The theme of this First Sunday of Advent is “Be on guard.”

Ø  The verse of the Alleluia before the Gospel Reading will be LORD LET US SEE YOUR KINDNESS AND GRANT US YOUR SALVATION.

Ø  This means, be on guard but without fear, with hope and eagerness because the one who comes is the Beloved  of each one of us and of the community.

Ø  The one we await with anticipation and loving eagerness, to become one with him, is the Lord Jesus. We await the total fulfillment of the promises of a new heaven and a new earth where there will be no more fear, no more doubts, no more tears, no more suffering; where everything will be peace and harmony.

COME LORD JESUS!   MARANATHA!

CLARETIAN CORNER

I passed that whole night asking our Lord to deign to manifest His will to get out of that problem. But, O, Divine providence! Many times we had looked and measured every step of that house, first with Sr. Florentina and then with the other sisters and even with the confessor. Yet we could never find a place for the enclosure because we did not know how to make there a church nor to have a stay – out and much less intern girls. And that night, so many ideas and means came to my mind that I found a place for everything and it was very easy to arrange all. Now, my problem was how to tell it to the procurator, since the chaplain had already the keys of the other house.   . María Antonia París, Foundress of the Claretian Missionary Sisters , Autobiography 186)

 Toward the end of April I left Santiago and headed for Manzanillo, together with two of my priests, while the rest of my missionary band went off to different locations. At Manzanillo I began preaching for the month of May; I preached several times daily. Without realizing it, I let slip some remarks about great earthquakes that would be coming soon.      From Manzanillo we pushed on to the parish of San Fructuoso, and wherever we went we followed the same routine: hearing confessions, preaching, confirming, and performing marriages. From here we went to Bayamo, where I started the mission and did as elsewhere. I gave the Spiritual Exercises to the clergy, preached every day, and kept on confirming people until August 20, 1852. That day, at ten in the morning, as I was standing in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament of Our Lady of Sorrows, I felt the first of a series of earthquakes that were to be repeated for several days.  (St. Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 528)

YES I AM COMING SOON!