In general, I think it's fair to say that Americans don't like to wait. Indeed, modern woman and man are a pretty impatient group. When we want something, we generally want it now, and this is why today's Gospel may rub us the wrong way. We really don't want to wait for the Lord of the house to get home. “Why is he taking so long?” might well be our response. We can look up and down our streets—this very street of Newark-Granville Road—and see how many already have their homes decorated and all lit up for the season...and, I may add, beautifully so. And yet, the Church is still urging us to watch and wait.

     You know, the Gospel today is really not so much about waiting for Christmas. Rather than focusing us on Christmas, it helps us to reflect on the Second Coming of Christ at the end of time. It is the bridge between the last days of the Church year, which we have been celebrating over these recent weeks, and the first days of the new Year of Grace.

     So how does the Church ask us to approach this reality? Well, it says, as on a vigil: not a vigil of anxiety, where we never want to hear the worst. It must be “a vigil of hope” where, as Fr. Richard Leonard (the Australian Jesuit) says, it's “where we wait and trust in a person who has shared our lot, understands our frailties, and loved us to death.” And so, "we place our hope in Jesus the Christ, our brother, our Savior, and our friend." On this First Sunday of Advent, “We look beyond Christmas to that final moment when heaven and earth will be united and our vigil will be complete. On that day we believe the Son will have dawned once, and for all, on the world. Now don't you think that is something worth being awake to see?”

     During Advent, we will have our Advent wreaths up, of course, to help us focus on the Christmas ahead before he comes again, and our Advent Magnificat booklets will be in the gathering spaces of many churches to help us keep vigil. We still have a goodly number of those available here at St. Edward’s. And, yes, we will have the lights of the season and our nativity sets, both in our homes and in church, to remind us of how Christ's birth in Bethlehem is what got it all started. And so we pray, in the words of this Gospel: may he not come suddenly and find us sleeping.