1st Sunday of Advent November 30, 2025

Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:37-44

How often our lives look as though they will just go on and on. Perhaps as we get older, we begin to recognize that we shall die. Many spiritual writers, however, encourage us to live today with an awareness that we might die right now. This awareness can deepen our inner life. We begin to recognize the importance of everything that we do. If we are living for God in every action of our lives, then how wonderful life is. Most of us, however, live lives that are mixtures of good and bad choices. We don’t always choose to live in ways that are completely loving and selfless. Rather we choose that which brings us pleasure and sometimes brings us fleeting happiness and joy. We seem not to look beyond the present minute.

Advent keeps telling us that there is more to life than the present moment. We are created in God and shall live eternally with God—but we must choose now to begin to live that life. The first reading today, from the Prophet Isaiah, is not a blueprint of how to bring peace into our present world. Rather, it is another message to us telling us that the only way to peace is to live in God. The only way that our world can live in peace is if it accepts God entirely. Isaiah is wise enough to know that this will not happen in the world as we know it. Rather it is only possible in another world, a world completely in God. So you and I should not be expecting any kind of divine peace in our world. That is not to say that we should not strive to change our world. Rather, we must keep our expectations for a perfect world for the life that comes after this life.

The second reading, from the Letter to the Romans, reminds us that now is the time to change our lives. When we think about the end of the world, when we think about the end of our own lives, too often we think that there is still plenty of time for us to convert and to begin to live completely in Christ. The Letter to the Romans wants us to know that NOW is the time to change. There is no other time. So, Advent keeps pushing us to think deeply about life and about death. How am I living today? The way that I am living today is how I shall be if I die today. Do I want to be for eternity as I am today? Let us turn to Jesus our Lord and ask Him to transform us so that we may live with His love entirely, now and for ever.

                 Fr. Terry.