Sunday,
December 01, 2013
First Sunday of Advent
First Reading: Is 2:1-5
Second Reading: Rom 13:11-14
Gospel Reading:
Mt 24:37-44
Jesus said to his disciples, “At the coming of the Son of Man it will be just as it was in the time of Noah. In those days before the Flood, people were eating and drinking, and marrying, until the day when Noah went into the ark. Yet they did not know what would happen until the flood came and swept them away. So will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. Of two men in the field, one will be taken and the other left. Of two women grinding wheat together at the mill, one will be taken and the other left.
“Stay awake, then, for you do not know on what day your Lord will come. Just think about this: if the owner of the house knew that the thief would come by night around a certain hour, he would stay awake to prevent his house to be broken into. So be alert, for the Son of Man will come at the hour you least expect.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Just how long can a human person stay awake? Tony Wright of Cornwall stayed awake for 266 hours beating Guinness World Record holder Randy Gardner of San Diego who in 1964 set a record of 264 hours awake. Randy Gardner’s record was surpassed that same year by Toimi Soini of Hamina Finland who stayed awake for 276 hours. But Soini’s record was deleted from Guinness in 1989 for encouraging a practice harmful to health.
A more impressive record in 1977 escaped Soini’s fate. Mrs. Maureen Weston of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire voluntarily went without sleep for 449 hours (that is, for 14 days and 13 hours) in a rocking chair marathon from 14 April to 2 May 1977. Though she tended to hallucinate towards the end she surprisingly suffered no lasting ill effects.
How Maureen did it remains a secret. But Wright revealed his secret in an interview. He said it was his “caveman diet” of raw food, that enabled him to “train his mind in such a way as to stay awake for 11 days and remain coherent and aware of what was going on” around him.
If going without sleep for many days requires discipline of the mind though concentration and of body through strict diet, what more could be said of staying spiritually awake? To respond to today’s Gospel invitation to be spiritually vigilant, we too must go on a “caveman’s diet”. The first two readings point to what this diet should consist. The first reading suggests hope while the second recommends that we live under the light, not in darkness. With the spiritual intake of hope and light, we stay awake long enough to last until the day of his coming. — Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.
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