First Sunday of Advent 2025
Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24: 37-44
Those of you of a certain age may remember the Billy Cotton Band Show, which was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme early on Sunday afternoons through most of the 1950s and 60s. After “Two Way Family Favourites” a request programme for members of the armed forces serving overseas, and the News, there would be a bellow of WAKEY! WAKEY! followed by the Billy Cotton theme tune.
That shouted WAKEY! WAKEY!” was Billy Cotton’s trade mark. It could also be the trademark of the beginning of Advent. Today we have St. Paul telling the Christians of Rome that “the hour has come for you to wake from sleep” and Our Lord urging us to “Stay awake!” (By the way, you also have to give up orgies and drunkenness. Sorry about that!)
Why this emphasis on wakefulness? Because “the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect”. What does that mean? Isn’t Advent a time to prepare for Christmas? Well, up to a point. The emphasis on the First Coming of God the Son at the First Christmas doesn’t really begin until 17th December. Until then, there is more focus on His Second Coming at the end of time, which we await, and for which we must prepare; and still more on His present coming, which we are called to recognise, but which will elude us if we are not awake.
Today’s Gospel may strike us as somewhat confusing. Is it talking about the end of time? Apparently not, because some people will be left alive: twice we are told “One will be taken, one left”. What then is it talking about? It is preparing its immediate hearers for two comings of the Son of Man, the glorified Christ. There will be His coming in the events of 70AD, when the Jewish Revolt against their Roman rulers will be ruthlessly crushed, and the Temple destroyed. Some people will survive that. Yet there will also be His constant coming in the events, the circumstances, the people of every day. Our response to that constant coming will dictate our outcome at His final return as our judge.
This is where wakefulness comes in. If we are not awake and alert, we shall never notice the Christ who comes to us every day of our lives. This is the Christ who will say at the Last Judgement “Whatever you did to the least of mine, you did to me”. Are you alert enough to recognise Christ in every person that you encounter? The faces around you in church—each of them is the face of Christ. The people you encounter in the street—the good, the bad, and the ugly—each of them is Christ for you.
What about your experiences today? Will you be sufficiently awake to recognise Christ in each of them, to see each of them as an opportunity to grow, to be renewed, to be drawn closer to Christ? And your prayer—will you have the courage to be still in the presence of God, to avoid the temptation to fill your prayer time with endless talk, which may prevent God from speaking to your heart? Will you give ANY time to prayer today? If not, your spiritual sense will be lulled into sleep, and at the Last Judgement you or I may find ourselves asking “When was that, Lord? When did we see you and not recognise or serve you?”
These are questions for the whole of Advent—indeed for the whole of our lives. What is required of us is wakefulness, rather than activity, alertness rather than busyness, openness, not only to the God who HAS come, but to the God who WILL come at the end of time, and who DOES come, here and now, today.
And as we are alert to this God, let us also have one eye on the prophet Isaiah, the prophet par excellence of Advent, who will bring us, each weekday, in the First Reading at Mass, a prophecy of the Kingdom, which we will see, in the Gospel, fulfilled in the person of Jesus, though not yet in its fullness, for Advent is the season of the Kingdom, of the “already” and the “not yet”. The Kingdom is among us, though not yet in its glory, the ultimate sign of this being the Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament, which IS Jesus, but not yet in the fullness of His Kingdom, His Reign.
Today Isaiah sees Mount Sion, Jerusalem, as the focus of peace for the world. Even the most cursory glance at the News will tell us that this is far from being currently the case, yet the seeds are there, which we must nourish with our prayer, and with our own justice and peacefulness. If we, and the world, are awake, there are opportunities to be seized, both in Jerusalem and in our own lives, in order that Advent may be a living reality. So WAKEY! WAKEY! and STAY AWAKE!
