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I was leaving the airport recently and upon exiting the parking garage I noticed graffiti spray painted on a wall with the words:

“The Lord is coming SOON!” 

That really put me in an Advent mood. “The Lord is coming SOON!”

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But beneath that someone else added, “Not if he’s flying American Airlines!”

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When is the Lord coming? Is he delayed? Is he not coming at all?

It’s confusing, much like today’s Gospel passage.

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We’ve all come here with Christmas cheer – joy is in the air! But it feels like John the Baptist is trying to take the wind out of our sails.

“Repent!” he says. “Repent!” 

Why is John so grouchy? 

I wonder, did he wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning like the Grinch? Nobody wants to see John’s face on a Christmas card – that scraggly beard and a camel hair shirt.

Maybe the Church made a mistake in giving us today’s Gospel passage.

Or maybe there’s wisdom to be found in it.  

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Commercials and advertisements won’t lead us to repent. 

They’re doing the opposite, trying to convince us that our Christmas won’t be complete without the Amazon Echo smart speaker, Apple’s AirPods, and a Fitbit. 

Everything we never knew we needed! 

In fact, Black Friday shoppers spent a whopping $7.4 billion online – all in a single day.

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But if we push pause on the holiday craze, then we may find a reason to repent. 

While it’s great to be generous – as we all should be! – sometimes we forget to be generous to those who need it most.

There are an estimated 800 million people without enough food or access to clean water.

Perhaps more surprisingly, 35% of the world – some 2.5 billion people – do not live in sanitary conditions.

A friend of mine is travelling to Mexico in a few weeks, for example, to serve a community that lives entirely inside a landfill. They’ve even built their church out of garbage.

I wonder, do I need those AirPods as badly as someone else needs clean water? Or a sanitary place to worship?

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Of course not.

But how much of my Christmas budget have I earmarked for the poor?

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Perhaps a more subtle point is this. How many of us would feel cheated if we woke up on Christmas day with little to nothing underneath our Christmas tree?

From our youth, we’ve been trained to expect gifts – and lots of them – on December 25^th. Though it’s not always the case, the holidays do have a strange way of making us selfish.

I’ll be the first to admit it.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t give gifts to those whom we love. In fact, giving gifts is one of the five love languages; it’s how some people show their affection for others.

But if we only spend our time and money on those we love – and neglect those truly in need – then we’ve missed a significant part of the Christmas message.

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A final point.

The one thing we all need – I’d say just as much as food and clothing – is love. Without it we become cold, empty inside, like the Grinch who stole Christmas.

Perhaps this is the other half of the story. 

While many of us are filled with holiday cheer, we must remember that there are others who feel alone. 

Think of that person who lost his or her spouse this year; that homebound neighbor; that aging relative who’s stuck in a nearby nursing home.

A simple phone call or a handwritten Christmas card can go a long way. 

Who’s one person I’ve not thought of, whom I can reach out to this Christmas?

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We’ve all come here with Christmas cheer – joy is in the air!

But John the Baptist reminds us to see the bigger picture.

Christmas is about love – the love that God has for us and the love that we should have for one another – not only our family and friends, but also the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

After all, that’s how God entered our world – as a poor child without a place to lay his head.

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(Note: The picture was borrowed from “Hope of the Poor,” an organization dedicated to serving the poorest among us in Mexico. For more information, please go to: www.hopeofthepoor.org)

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One of the worst parts about being sick is the sense of loneliness or isolation that sets in. 

Despite the care of family, friends, and nurses, our world becomes increasingly small –confined to our own room, our own bed, and our own thoughts.

No one can walk a mile in our shoes.

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Such is the case of the man in today’s Gospel. 

He’s deathly ill, confined to his bed and his thoughts, which is why the centurion calls upon Jesus to heal him.

But Jesus not only brings this man physical healing; he also frees him from his social isolation.

Perhaps there’s a word in that for us.

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In the midst of this holiday season, we should consider two things:

Is there anything that isolates me from others? 

Maybe our temper has gotten out of control, we’ve lost our patience, have clung to hurt feelings, or have fallen into an unhealthy habit.

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Conversely, is there anyone around me who may be feeling isolated? 

Perhaps it’s an aging parent or grandparent, a friend who recently lost a spouse, or a homebound neighbor. 

How can we reach them?

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Just as Jesus heals this centurion’s servant, empowering him to rejoin the community, so we must work for greater unity and peace during this holiday season.

“For where two or three are gathered in my name,” Jesus says, “I am there in the midst of them.”

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Think about how often we forget things – whether it’s something small like our keys or a person’s name, or something bigger like an anniversary. 

I’ll be the first to admit, I can be terribly forgetful.

Growing up, the one thing I’d sometimes forget was my homework. More often than not, it wasn’t that I forgot to bring it to school; I simply forgot to do it.

I still remember the moment my teacher would go around collecting it. I’d have that sinking feeling in my stomach – like, “uh-oh.”  

Even though I knew I didn’t have it, I’d still bend over the edge of my seat and give my backpack a good shake, as if it’d magically fall out.

Meanwhile, I’d be preparing a thousand excuses as to why I didn’t have it, as if my teacher would believe me. 

“My dog ate it!… I left it on the counter!… Somebody stole it!”

It never worked. It was only my fault. Some days, I was simply unprepared.

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It’s that sinking feeling of being unprepared that Jesus warns us about in today’s Gospel. 

He’s finally reached the end of his public ministry. And before he hands himself over to death, he answers one of his disciples’ most pressing questions, “When is the world going to end?”

“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man,” Jesus says. “In those days, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.”

Life seemed normal. Then the flood came.

In other words, we know neither the day nor the hour of Christ’s return. We must live each day in a state of anticipation.

This doesn’t mean living in fear or anxiety; rather the opposite. We must be at peace – with ourselves and with one another, which sometimes demands the hard work of reconciliation.

We who live in a constant state of readiness – of peace – shall rejoice when the Lord returns.

But those who are unprepared – those whose hearts are filled with darkness, lust, and jealousy as Saint Paul says in our second reading – will have that sinking feeling in their stomach…

…like trying to make homework fall magically out of an empty backpack.

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Have we done our homework? If Christ were to return now, would we be ready to meet him?

Or is our backpack empty, so to speak?

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There’s no doubt that these remaining weeks leading up to Christmas will be filled with their share of anxiety: shopping, decorating, cooking, and card writing.

But if we don’t enter into some level of silence and reflect upon our relationship with Christ, then we’ve missed the whole point of Advent, which is intended to be a time of spiritual reflection.

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Perhaps, then, we should consider two points.

Just as I could not do my homework the moment it was being collected, so we cannot grow in our relationship with Christ at the moment of his return.

We must do it now. Advent is here.

Secondly, just as I couldn’t borrow a friend’s homework, so we cannot borrow someone else’s relationship with God. We each have our own. That’s what we’re held accountable to.

So how can I deepen my own relationship with the Lord this Advent?

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In the midst of the commercial craze of Christmas, Advent reminds us to slow down, enter into the silence, and examine our own spiritual lives, considering things like:

“Where is the light at work in me? And where is there darkness taking over?”

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We know neither the day nor the hour, but the world will come to an end. When Christ returns, all that will matter is whether or not we’re prepared.

Let’s do our homework. 

Come, Lord Jesus.