2449AFC120624 – Advent Series 2 Year C – ← 😊 PODCAST LINK
“We should have been ready!”
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Philippians 1:9-11 – 9 And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10 to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
Luke 3:3-6 – 3 He [John the Baptizer] went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Christ Jesus our Lord. “You should’ve thought of that before we left!” We all remember hearing that as we piled into the car – or bus, or train, or tram, or church, or school (you get the picture). There are some things we just have to take care of before we get to the next thing and – more importantly – the main thing. And when the main thing comes, how often do we say, “I should’ve known … – to bring my boots, to go to the loo, to pack a sweater, get my swimsuit, call my Auntie, tell my sweetheart (spouse, children, pet[s] … ) I love them.” We should have known that yesterday, or tomorrow, or even today – for us, for me, for you – judgment will come. “I shoulda woulda coulda” will be of no help at all. Even “I am, I have, I did, I didn’t” will be ineffectual.
“We never heard that before.”
“How the heck did that happen?
“Why weren’t we told?” (↔ Music Link)
“I must’ve missed the memo.”
“The real problem around here is the lack of communication!”
And the Lord might say, “Yes, my children, I agree. Communication is a problem – it’s a two-way process and there’s a lot of static on your end so that you can’t hear me. I’ve been telling you ‘CONSTANT VIGILANCE,’ yet you’re so busy with your idols that you don’t have time to watch.”
“But I was in church Sunday.”
“I’ve done my Five First Fridays and Seven First Saturdays.”
“You gotta take it easy on me. I’m having a hard time here, and you’re not helping me.”
“I was watching last week when that creepy vagrant came around looking for a hand out. I sure sent them packing! Too lazy to get a job, eh?”
“I think I heard that once in some homily maybe.”
“Ready for what – the signs clearly given in the Book of Revelation have not all been fulfilled, if we really believe all that stuff anyway, so I’ll wait in my own way and see what happens.”
Does this image seem shocking? Why would I put something so negative here? Here is a phrase from our Key Verse: that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless. And there it is, to determine what is best, to know discernment. (↔ Learning Link) “Well, we know we’re not like them. They don’t even know who Jesus is. (↔ Music Link) This image certainly does not look like “The Pearly Gates,” does it. We know that Jesus talked about Hell often – over 150 times in the New Testament – but too many of us say, “Well, Hell isn’t really a thing, you know, because God is so merciful that Hell is empty (← Check it out!), but it most certainly is not. Now, even though The Catholic Church’s current status on the apparitions in Medjugorje is that it recognizes the spiritual value of the devotion, but does not judge the authenticity of the alleged apparitions, one of the dialogues with the children who were the Witnesses was recorded as: Vicka: “We saw many people in hell. Many are there already, and many more will go there when they die…The Blessed Mother says that those people who are in hell are there because they chose to go there. They wanted to go to Hell.” (← Check it out! Seriously, ← Check it out!)
We see that those people who are going to Hell just aren’t paying attention to what should be easily seen and heard: God is in charge, he is on his Throne, and HIS plan for our Eternity is both final and optional. From the days in Eden to the actual moment we are reading these words, we have been given a choice: get onboard or miss the boat. Remember the last time that happened, the one in the B.I.B.L.E. featuring Noah? (And not that ridiculous cinematic version!) We can choose to gain “more and more knowledge and full insight to help us to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ we may be pure and blameless,” or we can just ignore everything God has given us to know, to love, to obey, and to trust him. Last week we said there are no excuses. I left out this famous passage so I could put it in this post: Matthew 7:21-23 – Concerning Self-Deception – 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ 23 Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’” Note that the heading to that passage is Concerning Self-Deception. The passage is about self-deception, and self-deception is concerning as in disturbing.
There’s another choice, and the key to it is in our Key Verse from Luke: [John the Baptizer] went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Here it comes again: Repent and believe the Gospel! “I’m already saved! I was Baptized and confirmed, when to Sunday School, I’ve got a Bible (somewhere), and I was Born Again right after my birthday in 1971! I’ve got nothing to worry about. I AM A CHILD OF HIS Grace!” I am glad you are that certain. May it be so for your eternal abode. It still might be well for us, though, to be the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
How do we know the will of our father in Heaven, unless we know what he wants by knowing what he has said – like in the first post for this Advent – and by getting ready – acknowledging our sins and repenting, confessing our sins and doing penance, avoiding sin and resisting the desire to be tempted, and seeking and accepting God’s pardon and forgiveness? Dearly Belovéd, we most definitely must work on the second half of Jesus’ admonition –Repent and believe the Gospel! Assuming we are sincerely humble and contrite and can sustain an effective repentance (even if we fail 1,000 times a day, we can still repent 1,001 times!), then we must truly believe the Gospel. There is a Hell, plenty of people are going there, and I don’t want you or me to be among them!
We should have known! We should have been ready! Next week we will see why we say, “It’s Gospel, Adelphos!”
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
