BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (# 1)

First Sunday of Advent, Year A – November 28, 2004

“Stay Awake … Be Prepared!”

BIBLE READINGS
Is 2:1-5 // Rom 13:11-14 // Mt 24:37-44

I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS

I had filed my application for a religious visa at the U.S. Embassy in Manila,
Philippines and was scheduled for an interview on September 3, 2002. At 4:30 A.M. I
was on my way to Manila from our convent in Antipolo City. At 6:30 A.M. I was at
the gate of the Embassy patiently waiting for what I thought was an 8:30 A.M.
interview. I finally realized that I belonged to a group of about 50 applicants whose
papers began to be processed at 8:30 A.M. There were several groups ahead of us
and other groups waiting behind us. At 10:00 A.M. we were ushered into a big room
where American consuls were interviewing the applicants. It was a remarkable period
of waiting for all of us. We had to stay awake, alert and ready to be called at any
time. I could not afford to doze off or take a break for fear that I would miss my
opportunity for the interview. At 2:30 P.M. my name was called. After a three-minute
interview my visa was approved. I went home happy and relieved. My patient
waiting and vigilant expectation paid off.

Today we enter into the season of Advent and begin a new liturgical year, a
“sacrament” or sacred sign of the presence of Christ in time. The liturgical period of
Advent is a time of waiting and interior preparation for our meeting with the Lord
who came in the flesh, continues to come in our daily life, and will come definitively
in glory at the end time to restore all things in himself. The Gospel passage that is
proclaimed this Sunday (Mt 24:37-44) is at the heart of the season of Advent. It
challenges us to live this period of messianic waiting with renewed watchfulness.
The Gospel exhorts the community of disciples to vigilance.

The biblical scholar, Adrian Leske gives a biblical framework for a deeper
understanding of this Sunday’s Gospel reading. He explains: “Jesus has been
deliberately vague in answering the questions of the disciples (Mt 24:3: “Tell us,
when is this going to happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the
end of the world?”), and his use of apocalyptic symbolism has lifted the questions
out of human time into God’s time. This has left the disciples with a feeling of
impending crisis and uncertainty as to when things will happen. All this has been
leading up to Jesus’ instruction on how they are to live until the closing of the age.
The coming of the Son of Man as judge at that time now becomes the focus of
instruction.”

In today’s Gospel pericope, Jesus illustrates his eschatological message with

three brief stories: the story of Noah and the flood (Mt 24:37-40a), the parable of
two workers in the field and two women grinding at the mill (Mt 24: 40b-41), and
the parable of the thief in the night (Mt 24:42-44). These parables are meant to
underline the need to live righteously in vigilant expectation of the Lord’s judgment.
They also indicate the unpredictable and mysterious character of the Lord’s coming
as judge. Adrian Leske elucidates: “The flood at the time of Noah (Gen 6-8) was
always a picture of judgment on the faithless and deliverance for the faithful. So the
disciples, leaving the time of judgment in God’s hands, live righteously in constant
readiness for the coming of the Son of Man. At the end of the age there will be a
sudden and final separation of the righteous from the unrighteous, illustrated with
two graphic pictures. Those taken represent the gathering of the elect (Mt 24:31:
“And the Son of Man will send his angels with a loud trumpet to gather his chosen
from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”). The example of a thief
breaking into a house (literally, “digging through” the mud walls) emphasizes that
one never knows when the parousia will happen, so constant readiness is essential.”
Indeed, Jesus’ message tells us that, rather than knowing the exact time, it is more
important that we be always vigilant and prepared.

Our Advent preparation for the Lord’s coming challenges us to live our lives in
the here and now with purpose, meaning, impetus, force and dignity. It means being
a creative and energetic part of the glorious kingdom that Jesus inaugurated and
actualized by his paschal mystery. The authors of the Days of the Lord: The
Liturgical Year, vol. 1 assert: “Jesus affirmed that the kingdom is already present, in
his person, while proclaiming forcefully that it is still to come. Everything has been
fulfilled in the person of Jesus. His life, death, and resurrection – decisive historical
events – fulfill the Scriptures and their promises, and satisfy the longing of all the
prophets since Moses (Lk 24:27). But not everything is yet fully manifested.
Faith in the victorious redemption wrought by Christ also means that we look forward
with a renewed hope to that glorious epiphany of the Lord’s kingship upon his return.
In the face of these certainties, questions of when and how are meaningless … What
counts is the manner in which we live our lives today, for it is how we live that
determines how we hope.”

The Christian disciples in today’s world are therefore marked by renewed

vigilance in response to the Advent challenge offered by Jesus, the Divine Master:
“Stay awake … Be prepared!” (Lk 24:42, 44). Like the provident householder wisely
equipped to fight off the onslaught of the thief in the night, the followers of Christ
are watchful and ready to receive the Lord’s daily visitation and welcome him at his
glorious return in the end time. Creative and forceful vigilance is a vital characteristic
of Christian discipleship. The authors of the Days of the Lord: The Liturgical Year,
vol. 1 conclude: “This vigilance is not a vague disposition of the spirit or soul. It is,
rather, an active force, a dynamic prompting that makes one act, always and
everywhere, with full reason. It is a question, really of faithfully doing one’s work, of
assuming our daily responsibilities with the conviction that we will not be surprised
by the unforeseen arrival of the Lord.”

II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART

A. Are we intent on living righteously in constant readiness for the coming of

the Son of Man? What does our renewed vigilance for the Lord’s coming
consist in?

B. How do we make use of the grace of the Advent season given us by the
Lord? Are we creatively engaged in giving witness that Christ has come and is
with us forever through the Church and the sacraments, and will come again
gloriously at the end time to restore all things in his kingdom?
 C. Do we pray the beautiful Advent invocation: “Maranatha! Come, Lord
Jesus!” with joyful hope? Are we thankful to the Lord for the gift of the new
liturgical year?

III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD

(Text by D. Rimaud)

Leader: God is at work in this age; these times are the last.
God is at work in this age; his Day will arise!
Fear not, the Day will come, the night is at its end,
and the glory of the Lord will fill the universe
more than the water covers the sea!

What is the task of those people that God comes to assemble,

other than to build the kingdom of the Prince of Peace?
How can we hasten this long-awaited day,
when the glory of the Lord will fill the universe,
more than the water covers the sea?

Assembly: That we may not be lost on this Day, which comes like a thief;
let us not sleep in darkness;
let us keep watch in the Lord.
As the light of the rising Sun even till its setting,
he will come in glory on the clouds, the Lord, the God of love.

May our pathways be lit with the sign of Jesus!

He alone can save our earth, where love is no longer among us.
We must defend the down-trodden, free the prisoner,
and the glory of the Lord will fill the universe
more than the water covers the sea.

God is love for his people; he loves to forgive.

God is love for his people; he desires their liberty.
Fear not, the Day will come; the night is at its end.
Let us rend our hearts and return to the Lord.
For he is the God who will return.

IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD

The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout
the week. Please memorize it.

“So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the
Son of Man will come.” (Mt 24:44).

V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION

A. ACTION PLAN: As part of renewed vigilance for the coming of the Lord Jesus in
our lives, let us commit ourselves especially during this Advent season to the devout
practice of LECTIO DIVINA, the prayerful reading of the Word of God, and/or the
Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM website for the YEAR OF THE EUCHARIST
PASTORAL TOOL: Eucharistic Adoration through the Liturgical Year (Year A).

B. ACTION PLAN: Respond with fraternal solicitude to alleviate some of the forms of
poverty and injustice in our local and world community, e.g. the tragedy of hunger,
the plight of the homeless, the loneliness of the elderly, the terror of war and
ecological destruction, etc.
 Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM

BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 4, n. 1)

First Sunday of Advent, Year B – November 27, 2005

“Rend the Heavens and Come Down!”

BIBLE READINGS
Is 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7 // I Cor 1:3-9 // Mk 13:33-37

(N.B. This new series of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO
DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY presents a biblico-liturgical study of
the Old Testament reading of each Sunday Mass to serve as background for a better
understanding of the Gospel proclaimed in the liturgy. For a biblico-liturgical study of
the Gospel for each Sunday, we request you to go to the PDDM Web Archives:
WWW.PDDM.US.)

I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS

Today we begin a new liturgical year, a complex of celebrations by which the

Church annually celebrates the mystery of Christ. Through the liturgical year, God’s gift
of sacred time, the community of believers who listen to the saving Word and are
nourished by the Eucharist and the other sacraments, become more and more immersed
into the life of Christ, and through him, into the life of the Blessed Trinity. Sunday, the
Lord’s Day, is the building block of the liturgical year. It is the pre-eminent day for the
liturgical assembly to listen to the Word of God and take part in the Eucharist, thus
calling to mind the passion, resurrection and glorification of our Lord Jesus and steeped
in his saving mystery in view of life-transformation.

The liturgy of the Advent season, which begins the liturgical year, is replete with
Christian hope and laden with grace. This Church season is essentially to keep hope in
the future definitive coming of the saving God. The hope that the season of Advent
generates entails, however, accountability for the present moment. Every moment has an
eternal significance and we are therefore held accountable for it. Christians live in the
time between the now of Jesus’ victory over sin and death and the not-yet of his return in
glory. The challenge of the Advent season is to see how we live creatively and dutifully
as God’s children in this in-between time. According to the Gospel reading of this
Sunday (Mk 13:33-37), our Advent expectation for the coming of Christ must be marked
by a spirit of preparedness and a state of readiness in preparation for the end time.

Against the backdrop of the Old Testament reading (Is 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7),
the Advent expectation of the Church is enriched by past experiences of mercy and
redemption. The Lord’s coming is redemptive for those who trust in him. For the people
of hope, the Advent invocation that comes forth from their lips is “Oh, that you would
rend the heavens and come down!” (Is 63:19b). Today’s passage from the prophet Isaiah
depicts the thoughts that he gave to his dispirited people around the end of their exile in
Babylon and echoes the need for a Redeemer on account of the human race’s sinfulness.
Harold Buetow comments: “The passage opens and closes by addressing the Lord our
father (vv. 63:16; 64:7), a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt, when God had called
Israel his son, his first born (Ex 4:22). Because in this life we are all exiles, we make
Isaiah’s prayer our own. No matter what one may see of sin in oneself and be
disappointed, there is always encouragement: God rescues and saves – but he does rescue
and save. Even if you have hit bottom, there is the encouragement that there is no place to
go but up. When Isaiah saw themselves hit bottom in ruins, he pleaded for God to tear the
heavens open and come down (v. 19); the people of that time thought of the skies as a
solid, plastic-like transparent vault, which would need breaking through for God to come
to earth. At the same time, Isaiah’s prayer (64:2-7) intended to be recited by all the
people, confessed their guilt and admitted that God was right to have permitted the Exile
as a punishment for sin. God has not heaped a heavy burden of sorrow upon sinners; he
has simply allowed sinners to wallow in their own responsible guilt.”

The people who have been chastised and purified by God in the crucible of the
Exile-experience, notwithstanding their pain and suffering, were able to hold on to their
hope. The biblical scholar, Eugene Maly reflects: “What is the source of this hope? How,
in the face of crises, frustrations, and disappointments can it have such power? The
reason is an equally strong faith in the past, a belief in what God has already done to
prove his love. The reasoning is that, if he has done so much already, how much more
must he have in store for us! Thus, in Advent hope and faith are expressed equally; we
can hope because we believe.” For Christians, their hope is centered on the second
coming of Jesus Christ in glory. Eugene Maly continues: “If we really do believe what
God has done in Jesus Christ, and if we really hope in his coming, we must strive to be
prepared. Thus Advent will be a season of joyful expectation – and that is what it must
be.” Harold Buetow concurs: “Our waiting for Jesus is not a despair-filled tension. So we
live by faith, walk in hope, and are renewed in love so that, when the last scene of drama
of our life unfolds and Jesus comes to be our judge, we shall not merely know him, but
come to him as a friend.”
 PERSONAL REFLECTION
By Sr. Maria Carolina L. De Jesus, PDDM

The image of the lone aircraft that glided silently and directly into the World
Trade Center that Tuesday of September 11, 2001 sent shivers down my spine and
shocked many people who were watching that horrific and terrorist attack. What we saw
in our television screen was very real and not just a creation of Hollywood studios. This
awful tragedy that killed thousands of innocent lives and left many injured and missing
will be etched forever in our memory. In the days that followed, we waited, waited for
the news of our relatives, friends and loved ones who might be there laying beneath tons
of rubble. We asked the questions … how many went to work that morning? How many
boarded that flight and how many were in that scene not knowing the awful horror that
would happen to them? Would there be a space of forgiveness for those who did this
villainous act?
During this season of waiting, Jesus encourages us all to be watchful and alert for
we know not when the time will come. Nobody knows when the Master of the house is
coming. The Gospel speaks of events that, in our way of looking, span an eschatological
sense of time. The prophetic message is “Repent the Kingdom of God is at hand!” Turn
to God and accept God’s mercy while there is still time. We do not know when or how
long will it take before it happens, but one thing is certain: we do not know the day or
hour and we do not want to be caught sleeping when it happens suddenly. As in the
words of Isaiah, “would that you might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you
in our ways!”
Keep watch! Advent is a time of watchfulness and preparation. Keeping watch
can mean being vigilant to the opportunities of God’s coming. There are different
moments when God can come in our lives. He may come as a sick friend who needs our
help. He may come as a poor person knocking at our doors. He may be our parent who
longs to see us and gather us as a family. These are moments of opportunities for God to
come. These are important moments of watchfulness. Advent allows us to remember the
first coming of God. It is a celebration of his incarnation. It is also a season when we wait
in vigilance for his second coming at the end of time. It is a preparation that keeps our
minds and hearts focus on his presence. It calls us to keep our minds and hearts purified
with joyful expectation. It is a time of renewal since “we are sinful; all of us have become
like unclean men, all our deeds are like polluted rags; we have all withered like leaves
and our guilt carries us away like the wind” (Is 64:4-5). There is nothing more precious to
God that to give him the gift of ourselves, who are ever watchful and ready for his
coming; a heart that is wrapped up in a spirit of humility and purity.
More than being alert and watchful, Advent is a season of love. It alerts us to
glorify God’s loving presence in us. God’s love for humanity in all its sinfulness and
fears should be the basis of our own conversion. God embraces us untiringly with all our
faults and failures. He continually invites us to come home with him whenever we lose
our way. By renewing our hope and intensifying our love, God comes through us in all its
glory. The root of our watchful conversion should always be God’s loving presence in
our hearts. Prepare a place for him. Watch out for Jesus! Meet him in the home of
renewed hearts.
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART

A. What are the feelings, sentiments and realizations that well up from deep within
us as we begin the new liturgical year? How do we come to grips with the quality
of “newness” that comes to us from the Lord in this hope-filled history of ours?

B. In the Advent expectation that prepares the Church for Christ’s definitive coming
at the end-time and his various comings in daily life, what is the source of our
hope? How, in the face of crises, frustrations and disappointments can our hope
have an intense power?

C. Is our waiting for the Lord’s coming free from despair-filled tension? Do we live
by faith, walk in hope, and are renewed in love so that in our final encounter with
the Lord Jesus we come to him as his faithful servant and intimate friend?

III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD

(From Psalm 80)

Leader: O shepherd of Israel, hearken;

from your throne upon the cherubim, shine forth.
Rouse your power, and come to save us.

Assembly: Lord, make us turn to you;

let us see your face and we shall be saved.

Leader: Once again, O Lord of hosts, look down from heaven and see;
take care of this vine, and protect what your right hand has planted
the son of man whom you yourself made strong.

Assembly: Lord, make us turn to you;

let us see your face and we shall be saved.

Leader: May your help be with the man of your right hand,
with the son of man whom you yourself made strong.
Then we will no more withdraw from you;
give us new life, and we will call upon your name.

Assembly: Lord, make us turn to you;

let us see your face and we shall be saved.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD

The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the
week. Please memorize it.

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!” (Is 63:19b)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION

A. ACTION PLAN: Try to create an inner space of silence within you and pray
through the week as Advent mantra, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and
come down!” Commit yourself to hasten the coming of God’s kingdom by
exercising corporal mercy for the poor and needy.

A. ACTION PLAN: To help us begin the liturgical year in a spirit of receptivity to

God’s grace and in order to give homage to Jesus Christ, the redeeming Lord who
came, who comes and will come gloriously at the end-time, make an effort to
spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site
(www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE
LITURGICAL YEAR (Vol. 2, n. 1): A Weekly Pastoral Tool.