The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
If you knew with absolute certainty that you were going to die tomorrow, would that change how you chose to live today? I’d assume most of us would admit that our answer to this question is “yes.” It is all too easy to allow that which should be held at the center of our lives to fall by the wayside.
You are, I am sure, able to recall for yourself the sorrowful and joyful mysteries of your life that threw all of your reality into a grand eternal perspective. A mother will never forget the moment she sees a positive result. In that moment, she knows that her body and her life are no longer her own. Her heart beats for another, and nothing else quite matters as she thought it did.
Often, it takes a grim prognosis or an otherwise shocking event to bring into focus what truly matters. I can recall a clear moment 2 years ago when I received news that changed my life. I had learned that a dear friend had died suddenly. To make matters worse, no one knew how. We never did get clarity. What this tragedy did clarify, however, for many of my close friends who knew him – all of them more or less nonbelievers – was that nothing quite mattered anymore as they thought it did. It was time for us to choose how we would spend our one wild and blessed life.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns us to remain vigilant and alert. Stay awake, He says. Be watchful! Remember your death! A morbid image, perhaps, for the first day of a season meant to be spent in peaceful and joyful anticipation, but the Church in her wisdom reminds us with today’s readings that we are meant to be kept firm until the end so that when we see His face, we will be saved.
Being witness to the Lord in His birth requires that we should also be witness to the Lord in His death. This Advent season, as you make room in your heart for His coming, recall to mind ways in which you can prioritize the things of Heaven and seek first the Kingdom. It is our call to pursue heroic virtue in holiness every day. He came to this earth for one purpose: so that He might show us the way to eternal life. Nothing else matters. As St. Thérèse puts it, “[We] cannot be half a saint. [We] must be a whole saint or no saint at all.” In this life, we must choose to be all or nothing. Let these weeks leading to Christmastide be a time of rest and renewal of our covenant. Let us choose all.
Laurie Medina is an alumna of the Echo Graduate Service program through the University of Notre Dame, where she received her M.A. in Theology. Three years ago she moved to sunny Southern California from Texas to pursue her career as a Marriage and Family Therapist. She loves spending time outside, having heart conversations over coffee, and finding beauty in the holy ordinary.