Come and Rest: Homily For November 30, 2025

As we begin the start of the season of Advent, it can be hard to come and rest in the Lord Jesus. Our lives are filled with so many activities, and with so much hurry. And yet, hurry is antithetical to the spiritual life. We are to become disciples, apprentices with Jesus. Readings for Today.

Table of Contents

Come and Rest

Matthew Kelly, the founder of Dynamic Catholic, for both Advent and Lent, asks a very interesting question. When was the last time you had such an amazing Advent that the year stands out in your mind? For example, you might say that the Advent of 2014 was so amazing that you still have vivid memories of it today. Truth is, if you’re like me, Advents come and Advents go, but it is not really the case that any one Advent stands out.

Maybe this is the Advent that will be so wonderful in spiritual growth that you will be talking about Advent 2025 for a very long time. Maybe. But how? I’m going to suggest that this Advent will in fact be more likely to be awesome if you can embrace the tenor and tone of the season. For in so many ways we can find the spiritual life and spiritual growth at odds with the message of the world.

Whereas Advent invites us to silence and waiting, the world invites us to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Advent is a time of waiting and reflecting. It is a time when we are invited to embrace the invitation to silence. Not to worry so much about the invitation to spend money, but to accept the invitation to spend time. This time of year the world invites us to hurry. Hurry up and get your Christmas shopping done. Hurry up and plan the perfect party. Hurry up and make everything perfect for family. Hurry up and get the tasks on the endless list that need to be accomplished.

I joke that I used to really enjoy Christmas until I became a priest. What I meant was there were so many things to do I rarely found myself enjoying the season. By the time Christmas arrived I found that I was too tired, too worn out, too exhausted to really enter the season of great celebration. Is this the way it has to be? Do these weeks before Christmas really need to be hurry, hurry, hurry?

When I was discussing my homily for today with Father Andrew Carl Wisdom, he suggested a book called “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.” Even in the introduction there were phrases that stood out to me like, “The Lord is my shepherd, therefore I got to run faster.” Love, joy, and peace are incompatible with hurry. The observation that the average person touches their phone 2,617 times a day.

Just imagine what Advent could be like if we sought to touch our God more than our phones. The book is written by a Protestant minister, a leader in the church. There is a line he writes that hit me like a ton of bricks. It hits me like a freight train. “In America you can be a success as a pastor and a failure as an apprentice of Jesus. You can gain a church and lose your soul.”

Everything about Advent should enable a focus where our constant attention is focused on Jesus. How does Jesus want me to be a father or mother? What kind of employee does Jesus want me to be? How does Jesus want me to view other people, the world? Again, from the book,

“We all have our own story of trying to stay sane in the day and age of iPhones and Wi-Fi and the 24-hour news cycle and urbanization and 10-lane freeways with soul-crushing traffic and non-stop noise and a frenetic 90 mile per hour life of “Go, go, go!””

The hard part is that we can even be in a hurry about good things. But do we find time simply to hang out with Jesus? Do we take a moment to step back and allow ourselves to be like Mary who treasured things in her heart? Our spiritual life can be like people on vacation who are so busy planning the vacation, taking pictures with their phones, that they miss the experience of simply enjoying the moment.

Our spiritual life can be like that. For some of you of a certain age, you might remember the song by Harry Chapin, “Cats in the Cradle,” about a father who was so busy providing for his family that he didn’t develop a relationship with his family.

The first part, this first part of Advent, challenges us to see our spiritual destination. It is not about career advancement, successful task completion, making a lot of money, throwing the best parties, or getting the most stuff. This first part of Advent invites us to focus on the end of time.

We have been given a certain amount of time. Are we most concerned about becoming a success or about whom we are becoming? Isaiah offers us the goal of Advent. “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” This is a walk where we look around, stop to smell the flowers, challenge ourselves to see the amazing things of the presence of God.

Two, as the psalm says, “I rejoiced because they said to me, ‘We will go up to the house of the Lord.'” St. Paul tells us to cast off the works of darkness, and he lists as works of darkness orgies and drunkenness, promiscuity and licentiousness, rivalry and jealousness.

But maybe for us today it is not really any of those things. Maybe for us the works of darkness are phones and Wi-Fi and job success and accomplishments. There is an old joke, “Jesus is coming, look busy.” But maybe this Advent, maybe this Advent, what if Jesus wants us to hear, “Come to me all who labor and are burdened.” Maybe all Jesus wants for us is to come and to rest for a while in his presence with him.

rest — Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

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