ST. AGNES CATHEDRAL SCHOOL
2020-2021 Reopening Plan

November 29 2020

Happy New Year! If this strikes you as a bit premature, it isn’t really because this Sunday marks the start of the new Church year. In the Catholic Church, the first Sunday of Advent is the beginning of the cycle of readings, holy days, and holidays for roughly the next 365 days. It’s also the time of year not only when we are called to prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus at Christmas, but also when we are asked to examine our lives and take stock, spiritually speaking.

The readings for today all carry a common theme: Wake up! Wake up from the slumber that keeps us mediocre and our moral lives stagnant. Wake up to the possibility of a new beginning, a new way of living that welcomes Jesus into hearts and souls. We are told to awaken from the slumber that is robbing us of a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our God and begin to live the new and abundant life that we have been promised.

The warning that Jesus gives his disciples is not so much a caution against sin as it is against being “unconcerned”. This is the way that he describes the attitude of those who were swept away in the flood at the time of Noah. Their mistake was in being unconscious of God in the midst of ordinary activities. Jesus heightens this warning as he describes the time of his second coming.  Certainly, nothing suggests sin in either activity, yet one will gain an everlasting reward and the other not. What separates the two destinies? In a word wakefulness.

It isn’t for us to know when the Lord will come, but we need to be aware that he will come. We are called to live in a state of wakefulness, of spiritual attention. Like the homeowner who doesn’t know exactly when the thief will come testifies to the fact that he must “keep a watchful eye,” the Lord for whom we wait tells us, “You also must be prepared.”

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