Homily: Wake Up and Pay Attention!

Deacon Tony Cecil
Dec 1, 2018
6 min read

Deacon Tony Cecil Homily: 1st Sunday of Advent, Year C (2 December 2018) Epiphany Catholic Church, Louisville, Kentucky

I’m often asked how I go about preparing a homily—every preacher has their own routine. For me, I usually start by going over the readings at the beginning of the week, on Monday night, and sleep on it.

This week. I had a dream about Whoopi Goldberg.

I’m serious.

In the 1990’s, Whoopi Goldberg starred in a popular film franchise called “Sister Act.” She plays a Vegas performer who, in the first movie, was on the run from her gangster boyfriend after she witnessed him murdering someone. The police placed her in hiding in a convent, disguised as a fully habited nun named Sister Mary Clarence. She was supposed to lay low until her boyfriend went on trial, but that wouldn’t make an interesting movie. So, instead, she brought new life into the nun’s choir, making them local celebrities to the point that she was almost caught, and she saved the failing convent and struggling parish that was her temporary home.

In the second movie, the sisters call upon her to take up her disguise again to help save the failing school they had been transferred to. Just as in the first movie, Sister Mary Clarence does this through music. The problem, though, was that her struggling inner-city school was filled with students who didn’t want to put much work into anything, let alone a music course that was supposed to be an easy A on their report cards.

Tired of putting up with their attitudes, one day, Sister Mary Clarence enters the classroom and writes this on the board:

If you wanna be somebody; if you wanna go somewhere—you better wake up and pay attention!

This phrase becomes the motto of the school’s students. It helps them realize that it’s up to them to change their situation—in their lives and in their school. It helps them realize that the world would keep moving, and they needed to get in gear to move along with it if they ever wanted to make it beyond their own neighborhood. It helps them to realize that they were not powerless.

If you wanna be somebody; if you wanna go somewhere—you better wake up and pay attention!

This weekend is the First Sunday of Advent, meaning that we are now entering a new liturgical year. Once again, we begin anew the journey of walking alongside Christ through his life, ministry, and passion through the lens of the scriptures that will be proclaimed this year. And this year, our Gospel passages will mostly be taken from Saint Luke—and dang, did they pick a doozy to start of off with.

Our Gospel passage is filled with images that certainly wake us up—the sun, the moon, and the stars moving abnormally, people dying of fright from what is coming, the seas roaring like they never have before, the heavens themselves shaking and trembling at what is to come upon the world. Not exactly the Christmas cheer that has filled stores since October and many of our homes for a couple of weeks now.

Advent, as I’m sure many of you know, is a season of hope, of joy—it’s a time of preparation—it’s these last few weeks leading up to Christmas, when we celebrate our Savior’s birth. So—what’s the deal here? Why on earth would the Church squelch that joy right as it’s beginning by giving us a Gospel like this?

In answering that question, it can be pretty easy to just write the whole thing off—to say to ourselves, “well, we have to get through the whole book in three years, so this weird end of the world stuff has to come at some point, right?”

But—the longer I’ve been in seminary—the more I’ve learned about the Church and liturgy—the more I’ve seen that we don’t do anything for that reason—everything is planned out—everything has meaning—there is no haphazardly throwing stuff together because we have to get through the book. So what’s the purpose, then?

I think that this time of Advent, for us, is much like that scene from the movie I talked about earlier—we are the students filling the desks of a classroom, some not really wanting to be there—many not wanting to put in much effort beyond the bare minimum, and in comes the teacher, and the teacher writes on the board:

If you wanna be somebody; if you wanna go somewhere—you better wake up and pay attention!

This phrase—this phrase from a 90’s Whoopi Goldberg movie—I think, can be the key to understanding this reading, and the key to understanding this season as a whole.

Because this time of Advent isn’t only about preparing for Christ’s coming at his birth, which we will celebrate in a few weeks.

It’s also about that time that will come when no one knows—that time when Christ comes again—when He comes again in His glory, where our decisions and how we’ve spent our lives choosing him or not choosing him determines the rest of our story.

And that’s why we have the Gospel passage that we do this weekend.

Because if we wanna be somebody, if we wanna go somewhere—we better wake up and pay attention! Let’s break that phrase down a bit.

If you wanna be somebody…

Who is it that we want to be?

Someone who is successful—well liked—wealthy?

Those are all good things.

But, in the end, this cannot be our only identity.

The real answer to that question—who is it that we want to be—can and should only be this: A Saint—someone who has used their success, their popularity, their platform, their wealth or lack thereof, their life—to help themselves and others choose Jesus.

If you wanna go somewhere…

Where is it that we want to go?

To the top of the corporate ladder? To a position of prestige? Toward a life of comforts without end?

Those, too, can be good things.

But, in the end, they alone do not really matter.

And the answer to this question—where is it that we want to go—can and should ultimately only be this: Heaven—that we have spent our lives, no matter our job or our situation—choosing Jesus so that at the end of our lives, we can spend eternity in Heaven with Him.

You better wake up and pay attention.

What do we need to pay attention to?

Our schedules—our to-do lists—our stock investments?

These are all good and important things.

But, these cannot be the only things we pay attention to.

I think for this question, our scriptures give us the answer.

Jesus says about his coming again, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.”

Saint Paul says to the Thessalonians, “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love…so as to strengthen your hearts to be blameless in holiness…at the coming of our Lord Jesus.”

It’s our hearts.

It’s our hearts that need to wake up—it’s our hearts that we need to give our attention to.

This season that we begin today—this time of Advent—this time to prepare for the coming of our Lord—both in the joy of his birth and in the hope of his coming again—I think is a time to really prepare our hearts.

Because in order for us to experience the joy of Christmas to the fullest extent possible—in order for us to be ready and to not be surprised at his coming again—in order for us to be saints on the journey toward heaven that we are called and we were created and that he died for us to be—our hearts must be prepared.

Our hearts must be prepared to welcome him.

Our hearts must be emptied of all that is not him—our fears, our anxieties, our worries, our hatred, our grudges—and they must be filled with all that is him—his love, his joy, his peace.

So we need to ask ourselves—what has captured our hearts?

If it is anything other than Him—we need to ask Him to help us empty it—we need to ask him to break our hearts of stone and to help our hearts beat with the love of his own sacred heart.

Because we want to be somebody—a saint.

Because we want to go somewhere—heaven.

And so we must pay attention—to Him—our Lord—the lover of our souls—and we must have hearts that are filled with his love and hearts that are ready to welcome him, and hearts that are ready to join his heart in changing the world.