1st Sunday of Advent - Year B (Mark13:24-37)

I was fortunate to be with my mother, holding her hand, during her final hours. For a while during her dying process, she seemed to be struggling to breath. It was painful to watch and even more painful to hear. There was what seemed to me an eternity between each breath. And each and every time I wondered if this was the end. I was alert to every sound, every touch, every sign that the end was coming. I was painfully awake.

Could it be this level of alertness to which we are called by the gospel for the First Sunday of Advent? If so, I don’t know that I’m up to it. It’s all together too much to ask, too much to endure. That level of wakefulness quickly takes its toll on both mind and body.
After the struggle passed, my mother moved into a more restful and peaceful state. I was certainly still awake, still aware of all that was going on, but it was no longer painful and I was no longer on edge. Her breathing was so quiet that it was hard to hear and it was no longer necessary or even possible to try to guess when the last breath would come. The nerve racking hyper-alert listening and watching was transformed into a peace filled “being with”.

It is this peace filled being with the moment that the season of Advent calls us to embrace. Our preoccupation with violent apocalypse tricks us into thinking that we can know the day and the hour. The violent destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans must surely have seemed a precursor to the end, but it wasn’t. The violence of my mother’s physical struggle to cling to life was also not the end. Though painful to both mind and body, we have no choice but to stay awake and alert when everything is crumbling around us, the challenge is to be awake to the gradual opening of a spring leaf on a tree.