Last year, various political celebrities commemorated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

German chancellor, Angela Merkel, escorted leaders, including the Russian president, the French President, the British Prime Minister and the US Secretary of State, through the Brandenburg Gate.

“Today marks a truly happy moment of German and European history,” she said.

Nicely put.

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Then, would you believe, President Barack Obama made a “surprise” video address to the celebrants.

“This anniversary is a reminder that human destiny will be what we make of it,” he announced.

Plus more of the same, like, “Human destiny is what human beings make up.”

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

To learn anything from the Berlin Wall, let’s start by admitting that human destiny is NOT what we make of it.

Human destiny is what God makes of it.

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Christmas is a good reminder of how absolutely we are dependent on God — for our destiny here on earth – and in the hereafter.

Christmas might be a good time to try to get our minds in tune with reality.

Attend church on Christmas Day.

Start making some kind of personal sacrifices.  Go without some luxury — no sugar in your tea, no junk food, anything . . . .

Any sacrifice, even a small one, can help us to become humble as Our Lord was.

God says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit (the humble who rate themselves insignificant) for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”  (Saint Matthew’s gospel, chapter 5)

Today, Sunday 28 November 2010, is the First Sunday in Advent.

“Advent” as in an arrival or a coming.

In Australia, by coincidence, we seem, this day, to be looking at the “advent” of a new Victorian Premier — the result of yesterday’s state election.

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For Christians, however, today is significant as being the first day of the Church’s traditional season of Advent — the four-Sunday period leading up to Christmas Day.

Advent is a time for preparing one’s mind and soul to celebrate of the birth of Jesus Christ 2010 years ago . . . .

Literally the advent of God himself into this world in a particular place, at a particular time, in the person of a particular baby, Jesus, the son of Mary.

* * *

It is advisable to attend Church every Sunday during Advent.

Starting today.

You will notice that there are three advents referred to in the Bible readings at Mass during the Sundays between now and Christmas.

(1) The first advent of Christ was the birth of the baby in the stable at Bethlehem in the historical past — God making his advent amongst us in humility and weakness.

(2) The second advent is the presence of Christ Our Lord in the Holy Communion received by believers at Mass in the historical present.

(3) The third advent is yet to occur — the final coming of Christ in almighty power at the future end of  history.

* * *

Each one of these advents makes it easier to understand the other two.

The practical point for us today is this:

God offers us, through these advents of his Son, a supernatural relationship with himself . . . .

A relationship which promises to revolutionalise us personally . . . .

And to change the world . . . .

More than any election result can change it.

Deaths of Australian soldiers in Middle East war zones are increasing.

Recently three — Corporal Jared McKinney, Private Grant Kirby, and Private Tomas Dale  — were killed within three days.

We admire these men for their bravery. We feel for their distressed families.

It seems almost rude to ask the unavoidable question — what point was there to them being there anyway?

Will their sacrifice ultimately help anybody?

* * *

We must, of course, respect their sacrifice.

Many of us doubt whether we could find the courage to do what they did.

Every ANZAC Day our whole nation goes into a state of perplexity.

We all want to pay our respects . . . .

We all want to avoid glorifying war . . . especially war against those who aren’t a direct threat to Australia’s sovereignty.

* * *

Inside Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance is a “Stone of Remembrance”, engraved with the words “Greater love hath no man”.

Every year, at 11am on 11 November — the hour and day of the Armistice which ended World War I – a ray of sunlight shines through the roof, lighting up the word “LOVE”.

Those words come from the Bible — words of Jesus Christ predicting his own death — nothing to do with soldiers or war.

John’s gospel, chapter 15:

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.”

* * *

The Christian message is that the Passion of Christ is the one redeeming sacrifice.

Humanity (you and I) are enslaved by sin (disobedience to God) – meriting for us punishment, as demanded by God’s justice.

Christ’s Passion has infinite merit, such that it was a kind of ransom — covering the price of redeeming us from that debt of punishment.

No other sacrifice is in the same league.

Not the death of any soldier, however courageous.

Not the deaths of however many millions of Jews in the German Holocaust.

* * *

The Catholic Church teaches that Christ’s Passion is unique, literally.

Many people find that hard to believe.

Everybody finds it hard to understand.

Even harder to explain in words.

The statistics show that about 8 percent of Australians go to church every week.

About 12 percent go once a fortnight to once a month.

About 20 percent go at Christmas and Easter, but hardly any other time.

Which fits in with the other things we know about human nature.

* * *

Much of what we do we really don’t do — we have machines, gadgets and short-cuts which sort of do them for us.

Most workers don’t really go to work. They sit in a machine that goes to their workplace: then they get out.

Most meals today are not prepared, so much as unwrapped.

Most people’s only hope of catching a fish is to get the fish-and-chip man to chuck the pre-cooked, pre-wrapped, pre-greased, pre-over-salted parcel across the counter for you to “catch”.

They say today’s young people do less communicating using their vocal cords than with their fingers on keyboards — another way of saying they don’t communicate at all.

To worship God together with other people is a logical duty, but you might say, “I can worship God at home . . . .”

To which God replies, “No you can’t. I have told you that you must do it together.”

* * *

The Law of the Catholic Church is that, “Sunday . . . is to be observed as the foremost holy day of obligation in the universal Church . . . on Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass.”

Yes, bound.

The Bible warns against non-attendance at Mass — against trusting in second-hand religion, religion by remote control, making up our own rules etc.

The Epistle to the Hebrews (chapter 10) spells it out:

“Brothers, since through the blood of Jesus we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary . . . let us hold fast to our confession that gives us hope, for he who made the promise is trustworthy.

“Let us consider one another, how to rouse one another to love and good works — not forsaking our assembly together , as some have become accustomed, but encouraging one another, and so much the more as you see the great day approaching.”

Researchers worry that constant looking at screens – television, computer, mobiles – can create, or at least aggravate, attention disorder problems in children.

The old joke about ADD standing for “Absent Dad Disease” may be truer than we like to think.

Given an upbringing with no functional father plus wall-to-wall electronic brain stimulation – little wonder if a youngster never learns to apply himself to reality, to set priorities or to resist impulses.

* * *

Politicians and vested interests insist that the internet needs to be high-speed.  Anyone saying different would be considered a fruit loop.

But are not human beings, by and large, low-speed? And are not humans more important than the internet?

Really getting to know someone cannot be rushed. And it takes time learning to understand why a certain problem is dominating somebody’s life.

Yet don’t we all need — fairly often — to be understood and listened to?

Such help may be very scarce in a future with everybody’s minds high-speeded away from the wave-length of the human soul.

* * *

Some Catholics join the Third Order of the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth.

Members of this order NEVER watch television.

They must say certain prayers every day and make their Confession and receive Holy Communion frequently.

Also they are encouraged to spend one hour before the Blessed Sacrament at least once weekly — kneeling in silence before the Tabernacle on the altar in their church, motivated by their belief that in that tabernacle Christ is truly present, welcoming us to himself.

But is an hour too long? 

Well, doesn’t it take about 15 minutes merely to shake off the unspiritual distractions of the outside world? 

Perhaps another 15 minutes to tune our ears into listening for God’s unobtrusive presence. 

Finally, by God’s grace, one may enter into conversation with Our Lord . . . worldly things fade . . . at the end of the hour we’re reluctant to leave.

Having first found God in the Blessed Sacrament, then we can seek to find him in other people.

ANZAC Day isn’t quite what it used to be.

It used to be a day for honouring those brave enough to die for their nation, their faith and for God (as they understood him).

Now powerful people are changing it — a disturbing symptom being the ditching of “God Save the Queen”, the anthem close to the hearts of most of the fallen.

In recent years, Australia’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) has been conducting an ever-bigger program of indoctrination of Australian youth, climaxing every ANZAC Day, April 25.

The DVA supplies schools with sophisticated curriculum materials, websites, virtual tours of battlefields etc., costing taxpayers $6 million a year.

Children hear about their debt to the fallen soldiers and the heritage of “freedom and democracy” that they left us.

It works. Children will literally recite that “if they had not fought at Gallipoli, we wouldn’t be where we are today”.

Historically, the 1915 Gallipoli campaign did little to protect Australia. But Anzac Day is no longer about history. It’s about whipping up a secular nationalistic “Anzac Spirit” in young minds.

* * *

The lobby group orchestrating all this is the RSL (Returned and Services League) with its 1500 sub-branches and 240,000 members.

Anybody hoping to weaken their grip on the minds of Australia’s children — or on the nation’s purse-strings — will face a skilled, relentless, well-connected, implacable enemy, which makes Freemasonry look like Pollyanna.

Attend a memorial service tomorrow and look at it from this angle. It’s true, isn’t it?

But many present won’t notice.

* * *

A newspaper editorial asserts that Anzac Day is now “the most significant date in the calendar of the nation”.

Yes, we take ourselves and our nationalism more seriously than we take God — making Anzac Day more “significant” than Christ’s birth, death and resurrection as celebrated at Christmas, Good Friday and Easter.

But disregarding God brings consequences in both time and eternity.

God revealed to Saint Catherine of Siena that he will call mortals on the Last Day, “Rise ye dead and come to judgment . . . you are who are dead to my love . . . .”

Is that us he was speaking about?

Are we so confident that God is irrelevant — that the “Anzac Spirit” is all we need to make a better world and to be happy in the after-life?