Today’s readings: Isaiah 63, 16-17. 64, 1.3-8; 1 Corinthians 1, 3-9; Mark 13, 33-37.

Starting a new liturgical year should gear us up to new perspectives and new strategies. It is Mark’s gospel that will be our focus throughout this year, and Mark, if read thoroughly, can provide a very particular outlook on life. It can provide a reading of reality that can be political as much as spiritual, and cultural as much as religious.

Mark’s narrative strategy is meant to involve the reader not as a spectator but as an actor. We are all actors on the stage of life, and entering the Advent season is a call to action. In today’s gospel, Jesus’s call is to “stay awake”. But that takes it as a given that we are with eyes open. So in our context, and this is a first provocation, are we being called to stay awake or to wake up?

The call to vigilance on the part of Jesus is primarily directed toward a historical responsibility we all carry. It is not a vigilance of passivity but one that should keep us from falling asleep, that should put us on guard from forgetfulness. What is in view throughout this season is the Christmas event, which is not a romantic or nostalgic happening where friends just come together and where, for a change, we become all well-wishers.

The Scriptures call us to stay awake in the darkness of history, to refuse to close our eyes to reality as it is, to struggle against the globalisation of indifference. It is a call to the Church itself to put its house in order, to let go of an accommodating religion which can be viral and infectious as much as alienating from a real and historical redemption as God promises it.

The tone in Mark on this first Sunday of Advent, when we are already busy lighting up Christmas decorations, is one of warning. “Be on your guard” is not meant to generate fear and it need not be taken in an apocalyptic sense. It is not a vigilance in the sense of dreading something, but one that provides new perspectives to look forward to.

In Isaiah in the first reading we read about Israel after the exile going back to the heart of faith and again acknowledging God as Father and Redeemer. God is the one who redeems in the sense of giving us back the dignity which many a time we risk losing or, still worse, we risk denying to others.

Israel during the exilic experience, which was a time of darkness from the standpoint of its faith, had forgotten all about its God. Isaiah goes back to the very basics, reminding Israel God’s “ancient name”, His very identity. Losing connection with God is equivalent to “stray from our ways” and to “harden our hearts”.

“Be on your guard.” On guard from what? For what? Which are the red lights on our paths today that make us slow down, that keep us on guard, or which, if unheeded, lead us to face tragic consequences? This goes for society in general and may easily apply also to many of us on the level of our personal living.

This is what Advent is for and about. The words of Isaiah are consoling but, if read with depth and wisdom, remind us that we are called to act with integrity.

Staying awake to reality as it is around us and as we ourselves are constructing it, should make us question not just whether the Lord is missing, but also whether He is, after all, being missed.

This is meant to be the opportune time, the time of grace to review our whole life, what we do and what we fail to do, in the light of the Lord who comes. His coming, as Isaiah says, “tears the heavens open”. Vigilance is a must because His coming can take us by surprise. It can happen even without our noticing it.

We cannot as true believers project a redemption as something that occurs outside or beyond history. Mark’s gospel will surely help us recall what it is in our day that we stand for as Christians. We cannot afford to keep simply repeating old stories that have literally nothing to say on the crude reality many are living today.

We need to go back to the drawing board, to the heart of our faith, in order to grasp afresh and with deep insight what God’s redemption is about and be bold enough to project it on today’s scenario.