Every once in awhile I have this strange experience while driving from one place to another. Maybe I’m on a phone call, maybe my mind is juggling a bunch of things, or maybe there’s just some other distraction consuming my mental bandwidth. But then I arrive to my destination… and I have almost no memory of the trip. I wasn’t asleep, but it’s as if my brain switched to autopilot. I was awake, but in terms of awareness, I was wide asleep.
It’s a weird feeling, a little scary, and it always makes me wonder: Where else in my life have I moved through something important with almost no presence of mind? What have I missed because I wasn’t really awake?
Maybe some of you have had that same unsettling moment of realizing your awareness has dimmed, that you’ve drifted through life without really noticing what was happening around you.
I bring this up because it speaks directly to our spiritual lives and to the heart of our readings on this First Sunday of Advent. Today Jesus urges us: Wake up. Stay awake. Pay attention. Because in the world we live, it is incredibly easy to become spiritually drowsy. Weariness, sin, comfort, distraction, and the long wait for God’s promises can lull our souls to sleep. If we’re not careful, we drift into spiritual auto-pilot.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells people to get ready for his coming, not by warning them about big, dramatic sins, but by warning them about being too busy. He reminds them that before the Flood, people were “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage”, all normal, good things, yet those good things lulled them into a fatal sleep. They were so wrapped up in ordinary life that they never noticed God at work.
And here we are, at the start of December, the busiest month of the year. For many Americans it’s a month filled with stress, noise, endless to-do lists, and the pressure to buy, fix, decorate, cook, host, and celebrate. Advertisers whisper, “Treat yourself, indulge a little, buy this and then you’ll finally be at peace.” But the the cycle of noise and busyness doesn’t bring us peace…it numbs us.
Surrounded by all this, what can wake us up again? Silence. Not just the absence of noise, but placing ourselves in mindful quiet, knowing that we are in the presence of God. This sort of silence was central to one of the most important moments in my life.
People often ask how I heard the call to become a priest. One thing made it possible: interior silence. I was on a weekend retreat with high school friends my freshman year. On the last night we were watching a movie when I felt this quiet pull in my heart telling me: Go to the chapel.
So I slipped away. There, in the stillness, with nothing competing for my attention, God spoke to my heart, not with my ears, but deep inside: “Feed my sheep.” I knew instantly what it meant. I’ve had good days and bad days, and many imperfect days in between, but I’ve never doubted that call. It came in silence. That moment is still the anchor I return to.
God works like that most of the time. St. Augustine had a similar experience. He was wrestling with God for years, praying, “Lord, make me chaste… but not yet,” because he loved his sins even as he knew they couldn’t satisfy him. And then one day, in the quiet of a garden, he heard a voice say, Tolle et lege…take and read.
At first he thought it was a child playing a game, but when he realized he was alone, he opened the Scriptures and read the very words we heard today: “Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ…”
Those few words convicted him. In one moment of silence, God broke through. Augustine’s life turned completely around. He became one of the greatest teachers the Church has ever known. All because he finally made space for God to speak!
So here we are at the beginning of Advent, and Jesus is telling us the same thing: Wake up. Pay attention. Be quiet. God is trying to speak.
This season is short; just 25 days until Christmas. So I want to propose a challenge for all of us, one I’m committing to myself: Carve out 25 minutes of silence every day for the next 25 days.
Just 25 minutes. A tiny fraction of the time we give to screens, to noise, to busyness.
Maybe your silence can happen during your commute: just leave the radio off. Maybe it’s at home: put the phone down, leave the TV off for a while. Maybe it’s at work: take part of your lunch break and sit quietly with the Lord.
How you do it is up to you. But I invite you to join me. Give God 25 minutes of real silence each day. Because in that silence, God wants to speak. He has a message for you; an invitation, a word of encouragement, healing, forgiveness, direction. But we can only hear his whisper if we turn down the noise.
May we give our highest priority to this sacred silence, knowing that it will awaken our hearts, draw us deeper into joy, and reveal our place in God’s saving plan.
Come, Lord Jesus…help us stay awake.
