In The Beginning: Homily for the 1st Sunday of Advent, B

1^st Sunday of Advent, B                                                                                 December 3, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert                                                              St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” That’s the opening line to the second book of Douglas Adams’ comedy book series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” You see, Douglas Adams was a Christian-turned-atheist and his book series is full of funny little jabs at bad arguments for God’s existence. That opening line – creation being a bad idea – conjures up the classic argument: if God is real and He is good, why is there so much evil?

Consider this scenario: If you walked into your living room to find the children crying, the coffee table in pieces, and food splattered across the wall, what would be your first reaction? Once the first burst of anger or weariness or whatever subsided, it wouldn’t take long for you to set about finding out who was in charge and where they went wrong.

But there’s something odd about asking who’s in charge of your children in your living room. Sure, you left your babysitter or eldest child in charge, but ultimately, you were in charge, right? Does that make the mess your fault? Does that prove that having a living room and filling it with kids was a bad move? If you knew… if you knew that leaving someone else in charge would end with a mess, but you left them in charge anyway, is it your fault that everything went wrong?

It’s like this question I get all the time: If God knows everything, did he know Adam and Eve would sin? Yes. If He knew they would sin, why didn’t he just stop them? We just heard Isaid the prophet ask God, “why do you let us wander?” As Douglas Adams put it, the creation of the Universe is “regarded as a bad move” because it allowed a lot of terrible things to happen. And God knew they would happen.

Why? If he knew it was coming, why did God let Adam and Eve sin? Because of love. Because love requires freedom. If God forcefully prevented them from making choices, would they be free. Although many atheists and agnostics find it utterly irrational, God actually thinks that the risk is worth the reward, that the bad results of giving us our freedom are outweighed by the love and goodness that that freedom makes possible. That’s why Jesus left human beings in charge and told us to keep watch despite knowing how bad we’d get.

Yet, there’s still a missing piece here. God is all-powerful. That means He should be able to accomplish his plan even if we don’t make the right choice. We see that in his promise that “the gates of the netherworld will not prevail” against the Church no matter how we might use our freedom. Yet, God’s plan constantly requires the free cooperation of human beings like Mary… and priests for the sacraments.

So, do we have real freedom? Or is God in charge? As with so many things in our faith, the answer is “both.” God’s wisdom and power are so great that he can use our freedom – even when we sin – to accomplish his will. Unlike your children in the living room, God can weave our evil into a tapestry of even greater good. That’s why creating the universe – and giving us free will – was not a bad move.

Still, this tension between God’s omnipotence and our freedom isn’t just a puzzle. It’s a very real tension right here and now. Our readings and psalm show that. Scripture itself speaks as if God is in charge even of our freedom. Isaiah asks God, “why do you harden our hearts?” as if maybe God is making us stubborn. The psalm prays for God to “make” us turn to him. St. Paul tells the Corinthians that God will keep them firm to the end, “irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Freedom isn’t contrary to God’s power; it depends on it.

There is a mystery here that I cannot completely resolve for you. But we aren’t without any understanding. Your freedom is real, but as anyone who has struggled with a bad habit or an addiction can tell you, that freedom isn’t completely free. God gave us real freedom, but every sin we commit robs us of some of that freedom. Because of sin, we can’t really choose to be fully good anymore. This is why Isaiah’s lament in the first reading ends with this hopeful image: “Yet, O LORD, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your hands.” In other words, God is all-powerful, he can make us good and holy… and he does so by increasing our freedom, not removing it.

The story of salvation that we begin today with the season of Advent is the story of God restoring our freedom from the inside out. Rather than compelling us to do good or simply blocking us from doing evil, God becomes a human being so he can enable human beings to be free enough to truly choose what is good once and for all.

Getting there requires us to live in this tension. It’s why, even though today is the beginning of a new liturgical year, we hear about the end of the world and are warned to use our freedom to watch out. We begin with a reminder of the big picture and of the freedom that we’ve mostly lost to sin. God alone can restore that freedom to us. He also leaves us in charge of ourselves and the world around us. What we do with that freedom and responsibility will matter for all of eternity. So, be prepared freedom, for judgment, and for salvation.

Prepare for your freedom by begging God, like Isaiah, for the grace to turn from sin, to make you repent. Prepare for your judgment by staying alert, relying not on yourself but on God to keep from turning back to sin and worldliness. Prepare for salvation by honoring the season of Advent and not just skipping straight to Christmas.

Watch out for the greed of businesses telling you that what you buy is what makes Christmas. Watch out for the world’s lie that, if you just celebrate Christmas now, you’ll be happier now. Watch out for the devil’s trap of thinking that freedom means counting on yourself.

You don’t have to be a grinch, but there should be a difference between how a Catholic celebrates Advent and how the world celebrates Christmas. I’ll be giving out Advent bags to kids after Mass to help them enter into the season by doing something each day to prepare for Jesus. I encourage you to do something every day too. An extra decade of the rosary, a fast or penance, the Jesse tree, the Advent wreath. Since our readings begin with this plea for mercy, I urge you to make forgiveness part of your freedom. Go to confession this Advent. And, as we are going to pray very soon, be sure to forgive others as you’ve been forgiven. Try making a list of everyone you resent or have trouble forgiving, even just a little. Each day of Advent, go through that list, add new names if you need to, and say for each one: “in the name of Jesus, I forgive ___ and I bless them.” That way, when Christmas comes, you’ll have made enough room for Jesus to stay in a heart open to mercy rather than in the cave of your resentments. In the beginning, the universe was created and it was a very good move. In the beginning was the Word who would one day take on flesh to show us how good it really is. In the beginning, the all-powerful God saw you and loved you despite your sin, the same God whose Son died to set you free. Now that we’ve begun, how will we end?