FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
WATCH AND PRAY
The words ‘vigilant waiting’ capture the mood of the First Sunday of Advent. This expectation is hopeful and is seen in the entrance Antiphon: ‘To you, I lift up my soul, O my God. In you, I have trusted; let me not be put to shame.’
Foremost in the Church’s mind is the expectation of the last day and the judgement it will bring. The faithful must advance courageously to meet the Lord; they are called to enter into the kingdom at the day of judgement.
Advent I
Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,
the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ
with righteous deeds at his coming,
so that, gathered at his right hand,
they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.
We pray for the “resolve” to meet the coming Christ with good deeds and thereby to merit possession of the heavenly kingdom. This resolve comes not from ourselves but from Christ. If we are truly God’s faithful people, then our good deeds should naturally be part of who we are as we run forth to meet Christ at his coming. Our meriting the heavenly kingdom is, as St Paul teaches, “not having righteousness of my own . . . but that which is through faith in Christ . . .”[23] The collect employs a vivid allusion to the gospel of the sheep and the goats[24] as we are “gathered at his right hand” with the sheep.
The phrase “at his coming” reflects the Advent focus on Christ’s first coming at his incarnation, celebrated in the Christmas feast, and his second coming at the end of time. A particular change in the way prayers are translated in the 2010 English missal is to revert to referring to God’s people (the congregation here gathered in the liturgical assembly) as “they” rather than “we”. This can still feel strange to those brought up on the 1971 translation but, as well as rendering the Latin more accurately, it makes us ask the question “Do I want to be part of this ‘they’?” It no longer makes the easy, and perhaps presumptuous assumption, that I am one of the runners forth with righteous deeds – the prayer genuinely becomes a petition-prayer, begging this Advent grace for myself.
Adrian Porter sj