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Today we begin a new Liturgical Year with the First Sunday of Advent.
The decorations in the church are changed, the stately Advent Wreath is out and the first candle lit.
This Advent/Christmas Season has always been my favorite liturgical season; so rich in texts, symbols, music, and memories. It has an aroma of childhood memories, a bittersweet sense of times past, yet with new beginnings that answers to that desire in the human heart for something, and Someone, new who comes into our seemingly old and dark world.
Yet ,there appears in the liturgical texts of the Season one of the most poignant questions in all Scripture. It is when Our Lord asks those around Him "When the Son of Man comes, do you think He will find faith on the earth?"
The fact that Jesus askes that question implies at least the possibility of a negative answer.
Just today I heard a story:
A man was setting up his usual Manger scene outside his house on his own property. As he did so, an elderly neighbor comes over and asks him My...religious aren't we? The homeowner replies that yes, in fact, he is a believing Catholic. To which this elderly man replies that many people find his Manger scene "offensive" with the strong inplication that the homeowner is disturbing the neighborhood with this "religious display."
Where is this neighborhood?
Baghdad? Mecca? Tel Aviv?....No.....Levittown !
When the Son of Man comes, do you think He will find faith on the earth?
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