First Sunday of Advent (Year B)

Homily

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Sunday 3  December, 2023
St Mary's Cathedral, Perth

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As many of you would know, I have recently returned from Rome where I attended the First Assembly of the Synod of Bishops called by Pope Francis to discuss a very important theme: how the Church can become a more synodal Church which responds more faithfully to the call from the Lord to become a Church, His Church, which is open to all, conscious of our need for each other and our dependence on each other and focused on our fundamental task of bringing the gospel alive in the world in which we live. This is all summed up by saying that we are having a Synod on Synodality.

Synodality is a rather "churchy" word and one which we don't often come across in any other context, so it would not be surprising if most of us had no real idea of what the word means.

The word actually comes from the Greek word which means "people walking together". To speak of a synodal Church then, in the mind of Pope Francis, is to speak of a Church as a place where we find God's will for us through our listening to each other as we travel the journey of our lives together as Christians. The Church has always believed that because we are baptised we have within us the gift of the Holy Spirit who, if we are open to the work of the Spirit, will lead us forward into a greater understanding of what the Lord is asking of us, not just as individuals but as a community of faith - a community of disciples.

This is what we tried to do at the Synod in Rome. Together with the 300 bishops who had been chosen by their brothers or who had been individually invited by the Pope there were many other people, deacons, priests, religious brothers and sisters and many lay women and men, who shared their own understanding of the faith and of the work of God in their lives. In listening respectfully to each other we were being challenged to hear what the Holy Spirit might be saying to us as the Church.

The key to all this, of course, is that we were at the Synod, and are in our local experience of the Church, all called to listen to each other as brothers and sisters in the communion of the Catholic Church. It is as people of faith, united by our common commitment to the Lord, that we enter into this listening and the dialogue which eventually flows from it. And so, as we listen to each other, we also have in our hearts and minds what we have heard from our listening to the Scriptures and especially the gospels, what we have heard from listening to the teaching and tradition of the Church, and what we have heard from listening to the stirring of the Spirit of God in our own hearts. In the midst of this listening and this reflection we are waiting and praying for that gift of wisdom which will enable us to recognise just what it is that God is calling us to.

This art of listening, and the willingness to wait upon the wisdom which can only come from the Holy Spirit, are really at the heart of the Advent season which begins today, and which is designed to help us prepare for the coming of the Lord at Christmas. This is what Saint Paul talks about in today's second reading when he reminds the people of Corinth, and us, that while we are waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed, we are given the gifts of the Holy Spirit to keep us steady and without blame.

It is sometimes not easy to hold steady, as it is all too easy for us to go astray and to begin to imagine that we can recreate the Church so as to make it more comfortable, easier to manage, and less challenging. We can become like those people in the gospel who, when asked who Jesus was, replied that he was one of the prophets or perhaps John the Baptist come back to life. These answers held a grain of truth - people recognised that Jesus was a man of God - but they could only understand Him in terms of what they already knew. Simon Peter, on the other hand, was not afraid to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus congratulated him on the wisdom of his answer. But even Peter could only understand the idea of the Messiah in traditional terms. When Jesus began to explain that, precisely as the Messiah, He would have to suffer and die, Peter was horrified. Peter wanted a triumphant, successful Messiah - not a suffering and vulnerable one. Everyone wanted to be able to explain Jesus in terms of what they already knew - in terms of what they were comfortable with. But Jesus, the real Jesus, was always going to call them beyond the known and the controllable into something greater, more challenging, but ultimately more rewarding.

If this was true of Jesus, then inevitably it will be true also of the Church which is His body. The Church, in His name, will always be calling us beyond the known and the comfortable into something greater. Saint Augustine once prayed that the Lord created us for Himself and our hearts would always be restless until they rested in Him. If the Church, through its life, teaching and prayer, does not make us restless then it is not leading us to God, in whom alone will we find our rest. And if we are seeking to build a comfortable Church then we are building one which will ultimately lead us not to the Lord but to nothingness.

As the Church throughout the world continues this synodal journey, in which we are all invited to play our part, perhaps we can enter into his holy season of Advent, not just with a sense of expectation as we await the coming of the Lord, but with a sense of excitement that there is still so much more to know about him and about his Church, and so much He still wants to give us and do for us, in and through his Church.

May the Lord give us open hearts and minds, and a desire to know him more fully, as we enter this season of Advent