Advent is about vigilance, about being watchful.
It's the reason why we have the Advent wreath.
We're supposed to be watchful, and this is a school of watchfulness, Advent is.
And while when we were or are kids at school, some of us still are,
you're not supposed to watch the clock in class.
This is a class in which we're supposed to watch the clock.
The Advent wreath is like a clock, and we tick off the days.
Leading up to Christmas.
Sometimes for the wrong reasons, or at least not the best reasons.
I shouldn't say the wrong reasons.
But, you know, we're looking for a higher reason.
And the reason is, of course, because Christ the Lord is coming.
And this school of Advent is a school for eternity.
Because we're preparing for the final coming, ultimately.
Fathers of the church, when they talk about Advent, they talk about three comings.
The first coming of our Lord in the flesh at Christmas,
which we commemorate liturgically and spiritually during Advent and Christmas.
So we are really preparing for December 25th and our celebration
of the Lord's coming at Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.
And at the same time, we're reminded about how he will come, not in the flesh,
not in humility, he'll be still in the flesh, but it won't be in humility.
It'll be in glory to judge us at the living and the dead.
So there's another curious thing about Advent is that at the end of the liturgical year,
before the beginning of Advent, we're talking about the last things
and the second coming of our Lord.
And now we sort of shift to preparing for Christmas.
But at the same time, we're still thinking about the final coming.
Because that's also part of the mystery.
Because everything that we do is supposed to be kind of a dress rehearsal for the final days.
But they also talk about, the fathers of the church talk about a third coming of our Lord,
which is a middle coming.
It's not the first coming of our Lord in the flesh and it's not the second coming of our Lord
at the end of time in glory, but it's this middle coming of the Lord.
And that's why Advent and our liturgical and spiritual celebration of Advent and all the,
really all the seasons are important because as I said, they're like a dress rehearsal.
We watch the clock in preparation for Christmas and it'll tick away and Christmas will be here
and the Advent wreath will go.
And the same thing will happen in our lives, the clock will run out and we'll face the Lord.
And that may happen because we live in the last days and our Lord actually comes in his glory.
More than likely it'll happen when we pass from this world to the next through the veil of death.
And so we can think about how every holy sacrifice of the mass in reality is a coming of the Lord.
And so again, we can see how this, if you want to call it maybe a discipline of life,
of this vigilance, is also practiced in reference to the mass
as we prepare for the holy sacrifice and receive Jesus in holy communion.
St. Francis of Assisi compares the mystery of Christmas to the mystery of the mass.
He says, just as the Lord came down into the womb of the Blessed Virgin when she said yes to God,
so every time the word, the priest speaks the words of God in the holy sacrifice,
the mass, Jesus comes down upon our altars.
Every mass is a little Christmas.
And this is so true that St. Peter Julian Emmard makes a very interesting observation in one of his books.
I don't remember which one in his series of books on the Eucharist.
He's talking in a very practical way about preparing for holy communion.
And he says that our remote preparation for holy communion,
is the life of recollection and prayer and, you know, living a life of penance and going to confession.
Those things that we do all the time in order to live a good life.
That's, you know, a thing that we should be doing daily as a part of our life
that will help us to be prepared for holy communion.
And then the proximate or near preparation for holy communion is, you know,
our time in church where we try to get quiet, recollect,
and think about God and maybe say a few prayers, you know, and prepare during mass.
And then before communion, maybe making a little act of sorrow for our sins
and asking Jesus to come to us and help us to be attentive.
Those types of things, just before we receive holy communion,
are the proximate or near preparation for holy communion.
But he goes on to say that in reality, the remote preparation for holy communion,
that life well lived that helps us to receive Jesus worthily, is the Immaculate Conception.
And he says it just plain like that.
He says the remote preparation for holy communion is the Immaculate Conception, period.
Nothing more.
And he doesn't go on to elaborate, but he's saying Our Lady is that preparation.
And she is, first of all, because she preceded the coming of the Lord at Christmas.
Before, in the fullness of time, St. Paul tells us in the letter to the Galatians,
God sent his son born of a woman.
In the fullness of time in which he sent his son,
was the presence of Our Lady in the world.
Before he brought Jesus into the world,
he fashioned a temple for him with his own hands,
and he made that temple holy and immaculate.
And he placed his son in her womb.
Flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone, conceived from her substance,
yet virginally through the power of the Holy Spirit, not through the seed of man.
Jesus is truly her son.
And he dwells in her womb.
And he dwells in her womb.
And he dwells in her womb.
He dwells in her womb for nine months, and then she gives birth to him.
And she prepares the way, like St. John, but in a far greater sense.
St. John really, you know, comes, his preparation for the Lord comes much later,
before our Lord begins his public ministry.
The real preparation for the coming of the Lord is the purity, is the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
And that's true in the first coming.
It's also true in the second coming.
It's also true in the last coming, and at the middle coming,
every time we receive Jesus in Holy Communion.
When Our Lady came at Guadalupe,
it exemplifies the things that I'm talking about now.
It's a parable, yet at the same time, it's a true story.
A true story that represents this cosmic,
cosmic working out of these realities, of the coming of the Lord.
And it indicates, you might say in a particular way,
that middle coming, and in a sense, the last coming.
Although, of course, the world didn't end at Guadalupe,
but for a lot of people there, it must have seemed like the world was coming to an end.
For the people in Mexico City,
who were suffering at the hands of human sacrifice of the Aztecs,
you know, thousands upon thousands of people sacrificed on the altars of Satan, really.
It must have seemed like the end of the world.
And then the massacre, when the Spaniards came into Mexico and stopped the sacrifice.
Huge massacre.
And after the culture was brought to the ground,
the Indians were not, understandably, very happy.
They were happy with the Spaniards, and many times for good reason.
Some of the Indians were being sold into slavery,
and were otherwise being abused.
Not all the Spaniards were bad, of course.
The Bishop, Fray Juan de Zumarraga,
prayed to the Blessed Mother and asked for a solution,
and asked her to intercede,
and to bring peace,
in Mexico, and also to bring the Aztecs to conversion.
Because they really weren't converting very quickly,
for understandable reasons, at the time.
And so Our Lady came.
God sent his mother,
as the woman clothed with the sun,
the woman of the apocalypse.
And that must have seemed,
you know, if you look at the image,
it's kind of the end of the world.
It's the end of the world.
The type of image Our Lady is blocking out the sun,
standing on the moon.
In fact, the woman of Revelations 12,
it's a very complex image,
but it's an image of Our Lady and the church,
in glory, at the end of time.
It's more than that.
There's also other things built into that image.
But in part, it's the woman in glory.
She's also suffering, so it's Our Lady at the foot of the cross,
but this very complex image tells us something.
And that's kind of what I'm saying in these three comings.
You know, we're experiencing all of them.
You might say, in a way,
Our Lord could come at any minute.
And the signs are there, you know,
that the coming is imminent.
Doesn't mean it'll happen in our lifetime,
or, you know, what does imminent mean?
You know, even in times of scripture,
things seemed imminent.
But that's the whole point.
Very often, there are those signs,
and the Lord tells us that we know not the day or the hour,
but that we must be, tells us that we must be vigilant.
And so, we need to be encouraged in that vigilance.
And that's why people went out to see John the Baptist.
They knew there was something more than just a
real radical ascetic outcast.
A radical ascetic out in the desert,
who was maybe very eccentric and extreme.
They knew that he was speaking the words of God.
And even Herod,
who didn't like what John had to say,
couldn't turn away from what he had to say.
He was conflicted.
He was conflicted because he wouldn't convert.
He knew the truth, just wouldn't live it.
Ultimately, of course,
he rejected the grace that God sent to him.
But we have these prophets that come from time to time
to warn us, to encourage us,
to make us sometimes promises.
And the greatest of the prophets,
in respect to the coming of the Lord,
the first coming,
is Saint John.
But in New Testament times,
in respect to the middle coming of our own lives
and the last coming,
God has sent his mother.
And at Guadalupe, it's interesting,
because she didn't offer any warnings.
Her words were words purely of encouragement.
She came and she wasn't frightening to Juan Diego.
She was beautiful.
She came in the midst of color.
She came in the midst of color and song.
There were all the colors of the rainbow
reflecting off the rocks
from the colors of Our Lady's mantle.
And there were birds singing in the middle of December
that were not typical to that time of year.
And of course, later on,
there were the multicolored blooming roses,
Castilian roses in the middle of winter
on that hill.
And Our Lady,
in a way that reminds us
of something that happened later,
we have this little chair over here,
which we used for a video
about the apparitions of Our Lady at Rue de Bac.
And the chair over here is modeled after the one
that Our Lady sat in, in Rue de Bac.
And Saint Catherine ran up
and put her arms in Our Lady's lap.
And Our Lady spoke to her for several hours
about the fact that,
what she had to tell her,
well, Our Lady of Guadalupe arranged the flowers
in Juan Diego's tilma
to make sure that he had it just the way she wanted it,
to take it to the bishop.
And it was when he dropped, of course, the flowers
that the image appeared on Saint Juan Diego's cloak.
So Our Lady came in this radiant beauty
and compassion,
and her words to Juan Diego also reflected that,
where she asked him,
am I not here, who am your mother?
Are you not under my shadow and protection?
Am I not the cause of your joy?
Are you not in the hollow of my mantle
and the crossing of my arms?
Is there anything else you need, she asked him.
That was when he was afraid that his uncle would die
and that he would have to abandon her,
her quest in favor of getting a priest for his uncle.
Our Lady came down off the hill and sort of cut him off.
He had this quaint idea
that he would just go around the backside of the hill
and avoid the Blessed Mother.
And she ended up coming down the backside
and was on the path,
and she stopped him
and encouraged him to continue
along the path that he had been directed on,
in spite of the fact that he had some challenges
and difficulties.
So our Lady was present there
to encourage one,
and she does the same for all of us.
So this evening,
in a particular act of vigilance,
our brothers and sisters in the Third Order,
our novices,
make their first profession.
And in our community,
what characterizes our particular way
of observing the Franciscan role
is our vow to our Lady.
We make a vow to the Blessed Mother
to live our consecration to her.
And our brothers and sisters this evening
will be doing that for the first time.
We'll do it for a year
and then repeat it for several more years,
and hopefully we'll make it permanent.
But, you know, we have that opportunity,
each and every day of our lives,
and at particular times,
we solemnize that opportunity
through this kind of vigilance,
preparing for Christmas.
And so we invoke our Blessed Mother this evening
and ask her to be our Advent,
not only in our preparation for Christmas,
but in our preparation for
every time we receive God's grace,
and especially when we receive Him in the Eucharist,
and most especially when He comes for us
at the end of the world,
whether that is the end of our life
or literally the end of the world.
That is grace that we need to pray for,
and it's a grace that our Blessed Mother
wants us to ask for.
Our Lady remains in her image at Guadalupe
because she promised to be with us.
And she wanted, in a miraculous way,
to make it clear to us that she is.
There's no other miracle,
exactly like the miracle of Guadalupe,
where God painted the image of His Mother
and made it permanent.
There's no reason why the image
should continue to exist,
but it does continue to exist
because God wants us to be able to see it.
And as we look at the Blessed Mother
and we see her beauty,
we also see her power,
and we see a visible sign of God's grace,
and we anticipate His coming.
Our Blessed Mother in the image is with child,
and her attitude of prayer and watchfulness
must become ours.
Let that be our grace.
Let all of us remember
that she is indeed with us.
She has kept her promise,
and we are kept in the hollow of her mantle
and in the crossing of her arms.
And we are with her in the middle of the world.
Let's pray.
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