OXYGEN

30 Nov – First Sunday of Advent

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Isaiah 63:16b-17; 64:2-7

You, the Lord, yourself are our Father,
‘Our Redeemer’ is your ancient name.
Why, the Lord, leave us to stray from your ways
and harden our hearts against fearing you?
Return, for the sake of your servants,
the tribes of your inheritance.

Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down!
– at your Presence the mountains would melt.

No ear has heard,
no eye has seen
any god but you act like this
for those who trust him.
You guide those who act with integrity
and keep your ways in mind.
You were angry when we were sinners;
we had long been rebels against you.
We were all like men unclean,
all that integrity of ours like filthy clothing.
We have all withered like leaves
and our sins blew us away like the wind.
No one invoked your name
or roused himself to catch hold of you.
For you hid your face from us
and gave us up to the power of our sins.
And yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we the clay, you the potter,
we are all the work of your hand.

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1 Corinthians 1:3-9

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ send you grace and peace.
I never stop thanking God for all the graces you have received through Jesus Christ. I thank him that you have been enriched in so many ways, especially in your teachers and preachers; the witness to Christ has indeed been strong among you so that you will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit while you are waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed; and he will keep you steady and without blame until the last day, the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, because God by calling you has joined you to his Son, Jesus Christ; and God is faithful.

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Mark 13:33-37

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Be on your guard, stay awake, because you never know when the time will come. It is like a man travelling abroad: he has gone from home, and left his servants in charge, each with his own task; and he has told the doorkeeper to stay awake. So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn; if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake!’

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Be on your guard, stay awake, because you never know when the time will come.

My journey of faith is probably similar to yours. I began my life knowing little about God except what I heard about Him from my parents. I longed to know God personally, and waited for the day when I could meet Him. Sometime in my teenage years, I got to encounter God personally, and that encounter helped me to lead my life in faith. Then, in later years, I grew weary and doubtful, and I went through a troubled period in my faith life. I endured and some time later, I encountered God again in a different way; I had my conversion experience. It was then that I reaffirmed my choice to follow Him for the rest of my life, and that involves doing the mundane rituals I know are necessary for the health and maintenance of my faith journey.

In a way, my faith journey is reflected in the liturgical calendar. We begin the year with the season of Advent, a period of waiting to encounter the Lord. We encounter Him at Christmas as we celebrate the day He entered our world in the flesh. A short period of celebration marks the Christmas season, then we go into the Weeks of Ordinary Time. A little later, we go into Lent, a period of repentance and often hardship for us, as we strive to remain faithful to Christ and follow Him to the cross. We enter our darkest hours in the Easter Triduum; we die with Christ, and are raised to life once more with Him at Easter. A longer period of celebration is marked by the Easter season, and then with new perspective, we are put back into the Weeks of Ordinary Time, the mundane, for the rest of the year as we await the day that we will finally meet our King – the Last Sunday in Ordinary Time (Feast of Christ The King), which we celebrated last week.

This is the story of our lives, this is the story of our faith journey. We sometimes want an immediate response from God to whatever trouble we might be going through. Like in the first reading, we want God to “tear the heavens open and come down” immediately; we want a response from God on our own terms in our own time. But that’s not how God works. God wants us to wait for Him, and always be on our guard, for that is the only way that we will be properly prepared to receive Him when He chooses to come into our lives. That is our conversion experience, which can only take place when we are properly prepared to receive Him.

And after our conversion experience, we will return to the mundane rituals of living out our faith in the world that we continue to exist in. We live out the mundane with a new perspective of it, watching and waiting for the Lord our King.

(Today’s OXYGEN by Daniel Tay)
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Prayer: Dear Lord, help us never to forget that our journey on Earth is a transient one. Help us to keep focused on our eternal destination as we live through the mundane, watching and waiting for You. Amen.

Thanksgiving: We give thanks to the Lord and His Church for giving us routine rituals in our lives, for they reflect the truth of life.

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Upcoming Readings:

Mon 01 Dec – Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Matthew 8:5-11
Tue 02 Dec – Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72; Luke 10:21-24
Wed 03 Dec – 1 Cor 9:16-19; 22-23, Psalm 116, Mark 16:15-20; St Francis Xavier, priest, missionary OR Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23; Matthew 15:29-37
Thu 04 Dec – Isaiah 26:1-6; Psalm 118; Matthew 7:21. 24-27
Fri 05 Dec – Isaiah 29:17-24; Psalm 27; Matthew 9:27-31
Sat 06 Dec – Isaiah 30:19-21; Psalm 147; Matthew 9:35-10:1. 5a. 6-8, St Nicholas Bishop
Sun 07 Dec – Isaiah 40:1-5. 9-11; Psalm 85, 2 Peter 3:8-14, Mark 1:1-8; Second Sunday of Advent