do you want to need someone?

 Homily

1st Sunday of Advent BI

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

29 November 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

Do I want to need someone?  Of course I don't.  I'm the independent type.  I hate needy people. I love to be alone and do things myself, as much as I can.  I don't want dependence.  I want distance!  I want 2020 forever!

Yet if I continue on this path, in the end I will be the most needy of all.  Unless I want to need someone, I will become like the people I dread.  The most terrifying thing in my life is if people give me what I want, to be left alone.  

For I have been struggling with some of the same things for 46 years now. There are some things deep down, at the most fundamental levels in me, that are broken.  These are the things that can't be fixed with a plan or prescription, no matter how hard I persevere.  Some things can only be healed by relationship, by a person.

Not just any person, mind you.  I might find many friends welcome to join me in jail.  There's only one who can fully bail me out.  I need more than someone.  I need a savior.

The sooner I want to need a savior the better off I'll be.  Unless I want this Jesus to come, I will continue to stiff arm Him as much and for as long as I can.  I always have.  The results have always been the same.  I'm embarrassed to need him.  I hope I will never need him again.  I let him come the minimum amount necessary to get by.

This is not the attitude of Advent.  Advent tells Jesus to get down here, and to hurry the hell up.  It's the attitude of not wanting one more year for plans and prescriptions.  It is instead the desire for this to be the year when I truly allow this person to come and mess with my mess.

Advent is the attitude that the most terrifying thing in my life is if he gives me what I want, to be left alone.  Advent fears not the Lord's coming, but His not coming, leaving me in the slavery of my own limitations.

So I watch.  I wait for a savior, not only because I need to, but most of all because I want to.  I don't want another year.  I want this to be the year.

Come, Lord Jesus, come!