Is My Life Pleasing to the Lord?
Pastor’s Column
December 2, 2018
1st Sunday of Advent
You should conduct yourselves in a way that is pleasing to God.
1 Thessalonians 4:1
Everyone who works for a living knows that in order to succeed in business, it always helps to know what the “supervisor” wants and to try to carry it out. I had quite a few “bosses” when I worked in the airline industry: some were great and some were not so great, but my goal as an employee was always the same, to try to do the best job possible. It helps to realize that whatever we do (whether we like our task or not), we are actually working for the Lord and not just for a paycheck; the way we carry out our daily obligations is a measure of our love for Christ.
We can apply this same logic to our relationship with God, because it works pretty much the same way. In today's second reading, St. Paul tells the Thessalonians that they should conduct themselves in a way that is pleasing to God. That seems pretty straightforward. While God does not want to be known as a “boss” or “supervisor,” Jesus does teach us to call God our Father, so this logic applies even more.
Life can get pretty complicated at times, but our relationship with God does not have to be so complicated. We have here an easy way to judge a variety of situations and actions in our lives, by asking ourselves this question: is what I'm about to do pleasing to God? Is what I'm about to say pleasing to God? Is the way I am treating this person pleasing to God? Is my life pleasing to God?
Most of us try very hard to please the person or persons that we love the most. Sometimes the person we try to please the most is ourselves, but too much self-love can lead to selfishness. When we love someone, we do our best to please them; and when we strive to please God, this is another way of telling him that we love him. What makes life worth living for most of us is being in a relationship with people that we love. Placing God as first among those we care about means striving to please Him by what we say and do, being conscious of the Lord in our decision-making and way of life.
The last line of today's Gospel (Luke 21:36) says this: be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and stand with confidence before the Son of Man. It is our faith in Jesus that makes us pleasing to God and allows us to stand with confidence before him. As we grow to love God more and more, we will find that we want our actions, our decisions, and everything that we do to be more and more pleasing to God. As this becomes a way of life, this becomes a relationship, and the Lord is pleased to call us a friend.
Father Gary
Reflections from Scott Hahn
Heads Up: Scott Hahn Reflects on the First Sunday of Advent
Download Audio File
The Last Judgment, Jean Cousin the Younger, c. 1585
Readings:
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:4-5,8-10,14
1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2
Luke 21:25-28, 34-36
Every Advent, the Liturgy of the Word gives our sense of time a reorientation. There’s a deliberate tension in the next four weeks’ readings—between promise and fulfillment, expectation and deliverance, between looking forward and looking back.
In today’s First Reading, the prophet Jeremiah focuses our gaze on the promise God made to David, some 1,000 years before Christ. God says through the prophet that He will fulfill this promise by raising up a “just shoot,” a righteous offspring of David, who will rule Israel in justice (see 2 Samuel 7:16; Jeremiah 33:17; Psalm 89:4–5; 27–38).
Today’s Psalm, too, sounds the theme of Israel’s ancient expectation: “Guide me in Your truth and teach Me. For You are God my Savior and for You I will wait all day.”
We look back on Israel’s desire and anticipation knowing that God has already made good on those promises by sending His only Son into the world. Jesus is the “just shoot,” the God and Savior for Whom Israel was waiting.
Knowing that He is a God who keeps His promises lends grave urgency to the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel.
Urging us to keep watch for His return in glory, He draws on Old Testament images of chaos and instability—turmoil in the heavens (see Isaiah 13:11,13; Ezekiel 32:7–8; Joel 2:10); roaring seas (see Isaiah 5:30; 17:12); distress among the nations (see Isaiah 8:22/14:25) and terrified people (see Isaiah 13:6–11).
He evokes the prophet Daniel’s image of the Son of Man coming on a cloud of glory to describe His return as a “theophany,” a manifestation of God (see Daniel 7:13–14).
Many will cower and be literally scared to death. But Jesus says we should greet the end-times with heads raised high, confident that God keeps His promises, that our “redemption is at hand,” that “the kingdom of God is near” (see Luke 21:31).