December 3/First Sunday of Advent
Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. ~ Mark 13.33
A few Novembers ago, on my first trip to the Grand Canyon, my husband and I walked the South Rim, following the trail along the canyon’s top. When we reached the Bright Angel trailhead, he opted to stay on level ground, but I departed from the path and hiked for a while down into the canyon’s beauty. Instead of moving forward, in other words, I went deep. All too soon, an awareness of time called me back to the top, and we resumed our forward journey. On this first day of Advent — a brief three weeks this year — Christ invites us to step off our life’s linear trail. He encourages us to leave behind the remorseless tick-tock of the Immediate, and to choose the path of the Important. In Mark’s gospel today, this deep and meaningful time has a Greek name: kairos. Caught up as we may be in the default pre-Christmas pace of “hectic,” we become prisoners of chronos, responding reflexively to the demands that the inexorable succession of minutes and hours places on us. But in the very act of his coming, Jesus transformed chronos into kairos, disrupting and fulfilling human time. History assumes a redemptive character through the birth of this baby, his subsequent life, death, and resurrection. When God suddenly “fell like a daring meteor into time,” as British poet W. H. Auden put it in his poem Kairos and Logos, everything changed. Humans that we are, we have no choice but to march through linear time. But as we begin this season of preparation, Jesus calls us to be alert to the true significance of our lives as Christians, moving through human chronos towards a rich, vast, and eternal kairos.
Lord God, Free us from the prison of our days so that we may dwell with you in the deep and holy time of kairos. Amen.
To hear the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, sing “Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w98-VuKi-4Q
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120323.cfm
