First Sunday of Advent – A
Is 2:1-5, Roms 13:11-14, Matt 24:37-44
December 2, 2007
Fr. Carl McCarthy
 

          As a priest, I have been on several retreats. Every year I make an annual retreat, and, in the seminary, I made numerous retreats. But one of the more memorable retreat experiences was my first Teens Encounter Christ retreat, TEC # 95 in 1991. For morning wake-up call, the retreat team burst into our room, flipped on the lights, beat pots and pans together, and sang at the top of their lungs, “Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory. Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory.” We were startled out of our sleep, alert and awake to the world.
          Advent arrives in that same startling fashion. Advent can easily be the forgotten season, lost amidst the hustle and bustle of Christmas preparations. We could easily be filled with the sights and the sounds of the season and be lulled to sleep. But Advent awakens us. It calls us to be alert and ready for Christ to come again. It’s not the sound of pots and pans beating together that startle us from our sleep. We hear the voices from Sacred Scripture calling us to awaken. From the voice of the Evangelist Matthew we hear, “Stay awake! You do not know the day the Lord will come.” From the voice of St. Paul we hear, “…it is now the time to wake from sleep. For salvation is close at hand….” From the voice of the prophet Isaiah we hear, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
          The scripture over these four weeks of Advent calls us to awaken and be alert for the Lord’s coming. These Advent days clang with the sounds that challenge us to reshape our lives. These Advent days call us to abandon the ways that lead to destruction. These Advent days call us to live in new ways, with peace, and justice and forgiveness.
          Paul Stevens was awakened at 3:00am by the ringing of the telephone. His 20-year-old daughter, Cindy, had been babysitting at a friend’s house in the neighborhood. It was a parents’ worst fear come true When he got to the home, he found her semi-dressed and stabbed in the heart and the back.   
          The disarray of the bedroom where Cindy lay suggested a violent struggle during what looked like an attempted rape.  Paul found the assailant, Jack Gatewood, passed out on the living room floor. Gatewood was the ex-husband of Cindy’s friend, for whom she was babysitting. The police were called, and an ambulance rushed Cindy to Deaconess Hospital in Evansville, where the doctors pronounced her dead on arrival. 
          Whenever Paul and his wife, Ruth, speak of Cindy, they do so with great pride. She had been active on the high school volleyball team, worked as a private secretary after graduation, and cared deeply for people who were down and out. Just two weeks after her death, her parents received a letter announcing that Cindy had been accepted to work with a group of Native Americans on a reservation in South Dakota.
          Because of the pre-trial publicity, the trial was moved to Vincennes, IN. Missteps during the trial resulted in Gatewood serving only 7 years in prison. He then returned to Evansville, where he was seen by members of the Stevens family.
          This turn of events was more then Paul’s family could take, and they moved to Dawson Springs, KY. Paul went to church every Sunday in those days, but he never received communion. He said that he did not feel that Jesus should enter a body filled with so much hate for another. While at Resurrection Parish, he attended a Cursillo Retreat.  There he told a small group of people what had happened to his daughter and the hate that he felt for her killer. The priest invited him to simply say the prayer, “Jesus, I love you.” He said he prayed that prayer when he couldn’t sleep at night and any time that he thought of Gatewood. In time, he was able to let go of the hate in his heart and feel the forgiving love of Jesus.
          If Paul’s forgiveness is not miracle enough, consider this. That same priest was the chaplain on death row at the Kentucky State Penitentiary, and he invited Paul to come and minister at the prison. After much prayer, Paul accepted the invitation. After the first visit, he was hooked and became a volunteer Chaplain.
          Paul uses the story of his daughter, Cindy, with those death row inmates. Somehow, this story communicates the power of conversion to others who have killed. He saw several of those men accept the love of Jesus and even become Catholic.   
          Hatred destroys the fabric of human life. Hatred destroys love between men and women and leads only to hardness of heart. Hatred is destroying our world even now. We cannot allow Advent to be the forgotten season. We cannot allow these Advent days to just pass us by. There is too much life at stake. These days call out to us to awaken, to search our own hearts, and prepare for Christ to come again. What could Jesus and his love help us relinquish?  What could the unconditional love of God help to change in our hearts? In these Advent days, let us pray, “Jesus, I love you,” so that the love of God can be born anew in each of us at Christmas.