1st Sunday of Advent (A)
St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh
27th November, 2022
“Your life’s purpose”
My friends,
A piece I read during the week past had the headline “Lift the gloom by finding life’s purpose”. It’s a reflection on how many people, young and old, have embraced ‘goblin mode’. I confess I wasn’t familiar with the term but now I know it’s a term used in some social media to refer to a person who has rejected the usual social norms of trying to be tidy, clean to opt for being messy, lazy, self-indulgent and feel good about it. It has become more acute after Covid which for some led to a sense of hopelessness, pessimism and an all ‘round sense that life is a waste and useless. So you stay in bed all day and when you’re hungry you have junk food.
As I said it is true of people of all ages. It’s truly sad but it comes from not having a sense of purpose in life outside oneself.
I find this such a contrast with my meeting with some of the Sisters of Charity founded by Mother Teresa. Sr. Christi is one of the sisters who oversees the whole congregation from the Mother House in Calcutta and she has been visiting the 14 communities of sisters in Ireland and Britain. She informed me the Generalate oversees 5,000 sisters work right across the world. Their promise and commitment is to give and not count the cost. Their only aim is to serve Christ in the poor, the leper, the AIDS victim, the ones lying on the streets. One cannot but be overwhelmed by such generosity and sense of purpose.
To-day we begin Advent a season and time of hope. It is a beginning of a new outpouring of healing and grace for those whose hearts are open to its gift.
This Advent is different from any other that has gone before. A year’s passing has changed us. A new job, a change of house, the loss of a spouse or dear friend, good fortune of some kind, the outbreak of war – all those mean we stand on new ground as we try to figure out what the future holds.
One thing is sure ‘goblin mode’ solves nothing. Staying in bed is for the infirm and sick – otherwise we are called to life, to love beyond ourselves, to reach out, to watch out for another.
The Advent journey has a thread of hope running through it – the hope, expectation and waiting of the Old Testament gives us a glimpse through which we can review and renew our sense of purpose in life. Often, blessings are not fully named and counted and acknowledged. Too often we defer conveying our love and appreciation to those who enrich our lives.
Having a sense of purpose is not necessarily about doing great and outstanding things, rather we know that intentional acts of kindness and support make all the difference in the world to others of course but to ourselves too.
