Homily
for December 2, 2007
Liturgical Year A - Cycle II
First Sunday of Advent
By Fr. Andrew Moyo Topic:
We are saved by hope.
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Dear brothers and sisters,
Today we begin the new
liturgical year. During Advent, we
prepare ourselves to celebrate Christmas. However, as Christians, we do
so in a way
which also prepares us for Christ’s second coming. When we celebrated
the Great
Jubilee, the Pope gave us this theme, “Christ yesterday, Christ today
and Christ
forever.” These sum up the three
comings: Yesterday, as it was in Bethlehem,
Christ coming today, in our hearts and Christ’s coming tomorrow, at the
end of
time. Advent is the time of hope. It is
interesting that at the
beginning of advent; and on the feast of St. Andrew, a very great man,
Pope
Benedict issued the Encyclical, Spe salvi facti sumus-in hope we
were saved. In the suffering and misery
of daily life, Christianity provides the faithful with a journey of
hope to the
Kingdom. In the Catechism of the
Catholic Church,
Hope
is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom
of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in
Christ's
promises and relying not on our strength but on the help of the grace
of the
Holy Spirit. (CCC1817).
We live by hope in our daily life. When we leave home
for work; for church, we hope to come back.
Hence, we say, “See you later.” When we fill out an application for a
university, we hope
we will be admitted. Without hope we
would not dare to apply. Christian Hope Christianity is a religion of hope.
Hope is reality. It is not a dream or a false
promise. The basis of our hope is the resurrection. Paul reminds the
Ephesians
that before their encounter with Christ, they were “without hope and
without
God in the world” (Eph 2:12).
In the
same vein, he says to the Thessalonians, “You must not grieve as others
do who
have no hope.” (1 Th 4:13) Here too, we see as a distinguishing
mark of
Christians, the fact that they have a future, the fact that they
hope.
It is not that they know the details of what
awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not
end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain, as a
positive reality, does it become possible to live the present as well. How do we live by hope? By surrendering our lives to God. By
living the present
in the presence and awareness of God and surrendering the future into
the hands
of God. It is not by chance that when we pray the Our Father, we
raise our arms and say: “thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.” What are we
saying? We are saying, “Lord, we hope in you- we surrender our lives.”
This hope
gives us the courage and strength to face suffering and misery. Let me now illustrate this with some
examples from Zimbabwe. We have severe fuel shortages in Zimbabwe. People just line up their cars at
the service
stations with the hope that gas/ fuel will be delivered at any moment. We also have severe food
shortages.
In spite of the empty shelves, people still
keep on going to the shops and supermarkets hoping to get something,
eventually. All this is hope. When I was in England,
people were always asking me this question, “How do the people in your
country
survive with an inflation rate of more than 10 000%?” I always
gave this simple answer, “The people
of Zimbabwe
have much hope” Some days back I got this text message
from a friend in Zimbabwe: “When God leads you to the edge of
the cliff,
trust him fully: only two things can happen; either he will catch you
when you
fall or he will teach you how to fly. So hope in him.” It is hope
that keeps people on their feet. Viktor Frankl, a psychotherapist, when
he was in the Nazi
concentration camp, observed prisoners that did and did not
survive.
He saw that people who had hopes of being
reunited with loved ones, or who had projects they felt a need to
complete, or
who had great faith, tended to have better chances of surviving than
those who
had lost all hope. Hope gives meaning to life. Hope
gives us the courage to face whatever
situations we encounter in life: sickness, death , anxiety, family
problems,
etc. We are saved by hope. And we live by
hope. My dear brothers, my dear sisters, are
you a person of
hope? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Hope full or doubtful? Brave or timid? Cheerful or gloomy? Trusting or timid? We are saved by hope. Be a hopeful
person. Let us pray that this advent may be for us a
time of hope.