Preparing for the Advent of the Lord

Today’s Gospel relates the story of the centurion who approached Jesus because one of his servant’s was suffering at home.  Jesus immediately responds that he will come to the centurion’s home to cure the sick and paralyzed servant.  The centurion’s response has been immortalized and has become a prayer that we pray every time we approach the table of the Lord in order to receive the Eucharist:  Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. . . (Matthew 8:8b).

You might be asking yourself as I did this morning, “Why does the Church choose this reading for the first Monday of Advent.”  However, it dawned on me as I turned the words over in my head that Advent is the season in which we prepare for the entrance of Jesus into our world, our home.  The Feast of the Nativity of the Lord Jesus is the day for which we are preparing.  On that day we will once again recall the birth of Jesus in the cave of Bethlehem where his mother laid him in a manger, the one who was destined to become the bread of life finds his first resting place in the feeding trough for the beasts of the stable. 

As we listen to the story of the centurion, we marvel along with the Lord at the faith of this man.  Ironically, the synoptic Gospels relate that only the demons which Jesus cast out of possessed people and Roman soldiers recognize who Jesus really is.   As St. John says in his prelude to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus came among his own, but his own knew him not.  This irony is so amazing.  The very people who had been prepared through the prophets for the coming of the Messiah were not able to recognize him.  It took a pagan centurion of Rome to acknowledge who Jesus really was.

Preparing for Christmas is a stress-filled occupation.  There is so much to do and so little time in which to do it.  The Gospel today reminds us that the real preparation for Christmas must be an interior task.  Worry less about shopping, cooking, baking, wrapping, decorating and card sending and pay more attention to watching and waiting with the Word of God for the Advent of our Lord and Savior Jesus.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator