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On this First Sunday of Advent, we begin a brand new year in the liturgy. In liturgical time, we could call today “New Year’s Day.” Accordingly, we enter into a new cycle of Sunday readings. For Sundays and other special days throughout the church year, there are 3 sets of readings assigned for the day, and what set we use depends on what year we are in. These readings are assigned to Liturgical Years A, B, and C. This means we have not heard today’s lineup of readings since the First Sunday of Advent three years ago. The daily Mass readings follow a shorter 2-year cycle. So, in any given year, we are either in Cycle I or in Cycle II.

The liturgical year begins with Advent, a time of preparation for the Christmas season, which begins with the birth of Jesus and continues until the Baptism of Our Lord. This is followed by the first period of Ordinary Time that continues until Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent: a time of penitence leading up to the Paschal Triduum after the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. Easter Sunday marks the beginning of the Easter season, which continues until Pentecost Sunday (Pente = 50: fifty days after Easter). Pentecost marks the start of the second period of Ordinary Time, which culminates in the Solemnity of Christ the King, which is kind of like “New Year’s Eve.”

The Gospel today is taken from St. Luke’s account of what is known as The Olivet Discourse, which Jesus gave from upon the slope of the Mount of Olives from which he and his contemporaries had a clear view of the Jerusalem Temple. This discourse begins with:

And when Jesus drew near and saw Jerusalem, he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.“ (Luke 19:41-44)

Just as today we leave behind one liturgical year and begin anew, so this discourse is a prophecy of the transition from the Old to the New Covenant. Jesus wept tears of sadness for Jerusalem because he knew that within a generation of his ascension into heaven, it and its Temple would be surrounded and destroyed by the Roman legions under Titus Flavius Vespasianus.

The sacrificial cult of the Temple would no longer be necessary to keep covenant with God, for the Temple found its fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The earthly reality of Jerusalem would give way to its fulfillment in the Church. Jesus’ advent meant the end of a world and the beginning of a new one. The New Covenant is now God’s plan for humanity.