HE'S COMING...
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
November 28, 2020
Advent is not the time for Christmas carols, although you’d
never know to listen to all the background music in the stores or on the
airwaves. Church is just about the last holdout, where Christmas is not rushed
in on the day after Thanksgiving. But there’s one familiar Christmas song that
seems just right for this weekend. It’s that children’s song, “Santa Clause is
Coming to Town.” You know how it goes:
“You better watch out, you better
not cry
Better not pout, I’m telling you why.
Santa
Clause is coming to town!”
Santa’s not here yet, and we know that he’ll be here on
Christmas, but just exactly what time he arrives will be a surprise. So the
time to figure out whether to be naughty or nice is not sometime on Christmas Eve.
He’s already making that list and checking it twice. Now.
Santa’s arrival is a kind of day of reckoning. He will
already know if we’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. He would
like nothing more than to make us happy. The gifts that we will receive are not
the result of what we happen to be doing at the moment he enters the house. They
are the rewards for what we’ve been deciding to do each day up till then. Now. If
we are dedicated to what is good before his arrival, then his surprise return
will not be a moment to fear, but rather a moment of great joy and gratitude.
When the gospel of Mark has Jesus telling us today to “stay
awake,” it doesn’t mean to stay up all night. In fact, Santa often prefers to
show up when we are in our beds in dreamland. And when Jesus tells his
followers to watch always (as he repeatedly does in this gospel), he’s not
telling us to be paranoid or on edge, like a lookout might be while a crime is
being committed. Rather he’s saying, “Don’t commit the crime!” Now.
To be watchful and awake in the gospel sense is to commit to
ordering our lives each and every day according to what is expected of us by
God, beginning now, so that when the Day of the Lord arrives we will not have
need of regret or fear or harsh judgement. We aren’t clever enough to know at
just what time he will arrive for us, and the message of Jesus here is that we
don’t have to be – even he did know the day or the hour while he walked this
earth, but he knew it didn’t have to be anything to dread because his life had
been well-lived for God.
Santa takes no pleasure in leaving coal in people’s
Christmas stockings, and our task is to ensure that he doesn’t have to. And we
make that choice now. Santa’s gifts are always just that – freely given gifts. But
how we live each day demonstrates whether we really want them. So it is with
our Lord.
Advent is a season for waking up, in the biblical sense. For
being deliberately aware of how we prioritize the things that we value, and
making changes where that is needed. And this unique time of COVID-19 can be a
particularly rich opportunity for us to do that, not least because it’s forcing
decisions upon us every day whether to live more for ourselves or for the
common good; whether to embrace justice, or something else. Pope Francis was
absolutely right to have said recently that this virus is exposing a lot of us
to the truth about ourselves and how we live well together – or fail to. And he
noted that the various places around the world that have had very different
consequences of COVID-19 are expressions of how committed people are to working
for the common good, or not. He didn’t name names. He didn’t have to. We have
some waking up to do, and the time is now.
May this new season be a moment to re-awaken to the ways
that we still need to conform our lives more closely with Christ, in our own
specific life situations. Santa Clause is coming to town. We can count on it. And
that ought to be great news. So is the Lord. And that should be hopeful, happy
news too. May we be ready for both of their arrivals by being awake now.
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