First Sunday of Advent

Fr Dominic’s Homily

We hear a lot about artificial intelligence. Chat GBT as you know is an online programme. It uses vast amounts of data and processing to give human like and accurate answers to practically any question within seconds. It’s virtually indistinguishable from human responses that would take hours or even days to do the same thing.

You can use it to ask existential questions like does God exist and is there life on other planets. Students use it for essays and this sort of thing. Recently somebody asked it by using all its data to say which religion is the most authentic in terms of all its teaching and historical evidence and within seconds it responded “Christianity”.

It was then asked to be more specific in terms of which denomination of Christianity has the greatest undisputed proof out of all of them and with great simplicity it replied again within seconds: “Roman Catholicism.” 

It’s good to know that even robots agree with the authenticity of our faith in terms of all its historical evidence.

Part of that evidence included a tiny baby being born in a manger in a stable.

So we as Christians focus on this aspect of Jesus coming into the world at this time of year as its saviour and redeemer who will banish the darkness and bring us to the love, joy and hope of his kingdom.

Then there is a second aspect of this season of Advent. We look forward in anticipation to the return of Christ at the end of time.

That’s why many of the readings and prayers speak about this and we can easily get confused. Is this season about the birth of Christ or his return at the end of time? Well both are true and incorporated into this season.

When Jesus was born as a baby in a stable he was obscure, no one really knew much about him or who he really was. It was a scene of humility and he was judged by many during the course of his life.

However when Jesus returns at the end of time there will be no ambiguity in respect to exactly who he is. He will be regal in his status and known by all. Instead of being judged by us he will be the one to judge us in how we have lived.

We do not know when he will return. Jesus says that nobody knows. So we must be prepared. Advent is a season of preparation. That’s why it’s a good time to go to confession.

The sacrament of confession does much more than cleanse us from sin. It replaces sin with grace.

And it changes us. Each and every confession we undertake deepens forever our union with Christ. And it wins for us a higher place in heaven.

Confession gives us an increased love of the truth by increasing the purity of our hearts. Confession is the sacrament of brutal honesty. It’s not for the feint hearted.

When someone lapses from the faith the first thing to go is confession. The second is prayer. The third is Mass.

Like someone on a diet you know when you have given up on your plan it when you no longer step on the scales and weigh yourself. In the same way you know when you have lapsed from your faith when you no longer weigh your soul using spiritual scales.

Confession increases our desire to be closer to the Lord. It helps us to hear and follow the advice of our guardian angels more clearly.

Confession helps us to have spiritual and moral insight. It gives us spiritual wisdom. The more we go to confession the more we are in touch with our spiritual souls and can see our own failings more clearly. Like driving towards the sunshine and seeing the blemishes on the windscreen.

Outside of the Mass there is no place that we can receive more good for our souls than in confession.

We do not want God to speak those famous Aramaic words that were written on the wall in front of King Balshazzar “mene mene tekel upharsin” Your time is near. You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. We are not the best people to decide whether or not our sin is serious or not.

Padre Pio said that if a closed room requires dusting then how much more do we need to clean our souls even when we think that we have shut out all sin.

As we approach Christmas may we live this season of Advent in the joy and hope of Christ’s birth and that we can be prepared in our hearts and minds for his return at the end of time.