“Well happy new year! Today we begin the new church year. We begin this prayerful season of Advent, a season of joyful expectation for the coming of our savior, yet the Church gives us this first reading from the prophet Isaiah that does not exude joy. In context, Jerusalem had been destroyed and the people had been rounded up as captives and exiled to Babylon. Isaiah laments and he cries out to God, ‘You Lord are our Father, our redeemer. Why do you let us wander O Lord from your ways and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?’ In this lament Isaiah is crying out to God for his people. Again and again they have broken God’s covenant and they kept losing their way wandering off to the point that their hearts had hardened and they no longer feared God. This lament echoes throughout the centuries and we hear it today and the context of our Gospel is this: Jesus is on the Mount of Olives. He’s overlooking Jerusalem and he’s with 4 of his disciples. He’s telling them of the coming destruction of the temple, the tribulations that would occur before the end times and then our Gospel begins. Jesus literally gives us a wake up call. Five times in this short Gospel he tells the disciples, he tells us to watch, to be alert, to wake up. Wake up to what? The coming of the savior? Yes, but more than that. We must first wake up to our own sinfulness. If we do not wake up to the fact that we are sinners, then we will never realize that we need a savior. We will be like the addict who never realizes that he needs help. This is the state of our secularized culture today. This idea of waking up is also an idea of St. Paul. In his letter to the Romans he writes, ‘It is now the hour for you to wake from sleep for our salvation is closer than when you first accepted faith. This idea in our scriptures of waking and watching sadly has been twisted by our culture. Now there’s a popular term used to ‘stay woke’. Now I don’t wish to offend anyone, but as well intentioned as many who call themselves ‘woke’ ‘to keep woke’ or ‘to be woke’ it’s inconsistent with being a Catholic. The etymology with this term is fairly recent and it’s complex. To be woke is to embrace radical feminism, abortion, homosexuality, gender neutrality, Marxism, relativism, and any other isms that are contrary to Catholicism. Under the guise of tolerance and inclusion the evil one has sown seeds of division and destruction.
It is a new year. Today is the best time for making spiritual resolutions on this new year’s day. Save your resolution for going to the gym or losing ten pounds for January 1st. Today is a time for serious pondering of our spiritual life. I’d like to suggest a few resolutions. First in line with our readings, let us resolve to look into our hearts and to humbly acknowledge that we are sinners in need of a savior. Let us resolve to allow God’s grace to soften our hearts and in this new year I’d like to say what’s been on my mind for several months. Last Advent no one would predict what has come. There’s a virus out there. It’s extremely communicable. It does what viruses do: they spread. They cause sickness and in some cases death, an average of 5 deaths for every 10,000 people. Fr. Tom has guided the Church of Ascension in practices to protect from this spread of the virus. Most people have returned to celebrate the Mass, but many still are in fear. Jesus teaches us in Matthew’s Gospel, ‘Do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell. Let us not replace faith with fear. Let us not replace sacraments with safety. Let us ask God to give us the strength and the peace to overcome fears and return to Mass and finally, a resolution for all of us. In prayer, let us find the peace and the joy that only God can give. It is the hour to wake from our sleep and to prepare our hearts for the coming of the savior.”