1st Sunday of Advent ~ Year A

Spiritual Reflection

November 30, 2025 ~ 1st Sunday of Advent ~ Year A (pdf)

It is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.
For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed;
the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Rm 13:11-12 

Our modern world has a fear of aging. Innumerable are those who try to not think or talk about it. . .

Coming face-to-face with our limits, and particularly our finitude and our mortality, is also an invitation to another type of relationship with people and things: one learns that control and domination may not have the last word, but one must learn to let go and accept some dispossession.

Carl Jung maintained that the passage from the exterior, in order to carve a place in society – to the interior, in order to find in our selves the answer to questions – is a crucial element for adapting to mature age. It presupposes a period of questioning ulterior motives. This crisis is also closely linked to the consciousness of aging. The first part of adult life is over: one is established in a career or vocation, one has a family or is devoted to some work, project, or community, and is emancipated from their parents. After several years in a career that one has pursued feverishly, a question comes to mind when exploring the interior: “What have I done with my life?”

One is then led, in a profound way, to facing suppressed problems because one has feared facing them before. The mid-life transition constitutes the most important stage in the cycle of life. According to authors and psychologists, it consists of three essential tasks: re-evaluate the past, modify life’s structure, and attain a greater individualization.

In reconsidering his past and his life, the individual needs to acknowledge his future death, and sometimes he lives with a great delusion.

This transition brings us to posing the eternal questions, but now they are founded on our past experiences and the life that we have lived.

“What have I done with my life? What are my true values? Who am I outside of my function, my career, my status? What have I accomplished with the dreams of my youth; what do I want to do with the time left? How does it all harmonize?”

The time has come to grieve one’s youth – the time of delusion – and to renew our ‘yes’ to life, to our vocation, to our spouse, etc. One needs abandonment and to accept aging, to accept sacrificing some dreams of our youth and finally letting go.

Before letting go, however, there is often a journey and even an upheaval ahead. Many persons question themselves in a radical manner.

André Daigneault, The Long Journey toward Serenity, pp.146, 148-149

References from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

1021 Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ. 592 The New Testament speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming, but also repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith. The parable of the poor man Lazarus and the words of Christ on the cross to the good thief, as well as other New Testament texts speak of a final destiny of the soul – a destiny which can be different for some and for others. 593

1007 Death is the end of earthly life. Our lives are measured by time, in the course of which we change, grow old and, as with all living beings on earth, death seems like the normal end of life. That aspect of death lends urgency to our lives: remembering our mortality helps us realize that we have only a limited time in which to bring our lives to fulfillment:

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, . . . before the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. 570 

Questions for Reflection

1.          What past experiences have revealed to me my concerns and worry about my mortality? What reaction do I have to these events?
2.          In what areas of my life is God calling me to confront the limited time of my human and spiritual reality and call upon His mercy with trust?
3.          Mary, Mother of the great surrender, I entrust myself to you without reservation. How can this prayer of entrustment to Mary be a path to Jesus through which He brings my life to fulfillment?

Prayer after Sharing

Thank you, God, for allowing me to see the truth about my weaknesses and how it calls upon the abyss of your merciful Love.