First Sunday of Advent: Stay Awake!
Call To Action's 2022 Advent Calendar, planned and written by the Indigenous Solidarity Collective, provides 27 days of prayer and study to lead into action and solidarity with Indigenous communities. For each Sunday of Advent, we'll publish a reflection from a CTA member on the day's scripture passages, why we're committed to working toward Indigenous solidarity, and what it means to do this work. Following the reflection, we feature a call to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
The watercolor images used for this calendar, including this post’s feature image, were created by Duane Yazzie, who is of Hopi and Navajo ancestry.
First Sunday of Advent: Nov. 27, 2022
Not long after the horrors of the Canadian residential schools began circulating in the U.S., my mother told me: “Babcia used to give money to some Native American schools.”
My babcia (which is Polish for "grandmother") lived in subsidized housing; she was not a rich woman. But she was the epitome of the widow at the temple who drops her last coin into the poor box. Catholic charities would mail Babcia appeals and she, concerned for the children, would write a small check in return. Babcia trusted that the Church was doing right by the children.
Today’s Gospel: Matthew 24: 37-44
This news was and still is hard for me to digest. Am I angry at Babcia for donating money, and her trust in the Church? Am I angry at the Church for guilting my babcia and who knows how many other Catholics into supporting widespread abuse? Am I shifting blame onto the Church instead of sitting with this uncomfortable, personal revelation?
The readings on this First Sunday of Advent revolve around the theme of vigilance. When consumed by darkness, we’re told not to flail or fear but to remain present. Although Saint Paul claims that we’re rising from sleep, Jesus urges his disciples to “stay awake!” That distinction between staying awake versus waking, whether from slumber or from ignorance, is important. We don’t just need that push, that jolt to make us see the proverbial light; we also need to understand the nature of the darkness we’ve fallen into.
Some of us may feel like we’re a little too late, that we've fallen too far behind to catch up. We may feel like we are just waking, still unsteady on our feet. We may feel tricked or deceived by the darkness. We may project shame inward—shame for lingering in our darkness, our ignorance, our complicity for so long.
How do we move forward, now that the light has exposed all that we didn't wish to see?
Both Jesus and Saint Paul remind us that once we’ve awakened, there’s no going back. Moving forward and reconciling is not an option; it's a requirement. Fortunately, Advent is a season of preparation.
As I wrote in a previous Advent newsletter, I'm in recovery, and much of my theology comes from the so-called church downstairs. (The one with the 12 steps and Oreo cookies.) I'm well aware of the day-at-a-time maxim and the hope, pain, and uncertainty of waiting for what's to come. But waiting is a doing; waiting is an active process.
This Advent week, as I dig around in these shameful and uncomfortable feelings and histories, I recall a story from a friend with decades of sobriety. This friend was going to Confession but didn’t know what to confess, so they told the priest that they were judgmental.
The priest said: Turn it around. Say, ‘Thank you, God, for the awareness.’
This Advent season, we may think of vigilance as awareness and preparation as cultivation.
Cultivating awareness is also a process. As members of Call To Action’s Indigenous Solidarity Collective, we strive to show up consistently and vulnerably to educate ourselves. We are learning, in this process, how to stay awake for the protection of others and to draw upon this wakefulness when we feel ourselves falling back into those spirals of ignorance, shame, and defeat.
