First Sunday of Advent
Jer 33:14-16; 1 Thess 3:12 - 4:2; Lk 21:25-28 (Year C)
The season of Advent belongs to everyone who believes that the best, both for ourselves and the world entrusted to us, is yet to come. The sure hope that Advent proclaims is rooted in Christ and his power to save. Therefore it refuses to surrender to a tired cynicism that remains locked into the negative and cannot rejoice in a future of God’s making.
Such was the mindset confronted by the prophet Jeremiah in the years immediately before Jerusalem’s catastrophic destruction. Over many generations, successive kings had wandered far from the ideals of the kingdom entrusted to David and his successors. They, like the surrounding nations, had become a people whose heart was given to power and prestige. They had become insensitive to the exploitation that underpinned their imagined enlightenment.
