St. Dominic Catholic Church

Homilies

Wake Up and Light a Candle! 2020-11-29 Fr. Roberto

Homily for the 1st Sunday of Advent – Year B
Fr. Roberto Corral, OP
St. Dominic’s Church, Los Angeles, CA
December 6, 2020

Title: Wake Up and Light a Candle!
Theme: Rather than sit and curse the darkness, we need to light a candle of hope for our world.
Readings:  Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b, 64:2-7; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

A woman named Clara Hale was born in 1905 in North Carolina. She got married shortly after high school and then moved with her husband to New York City. Unfortunately, in 1938, after being married only ten years, her husband died leaving Clara with three young children to bring up alone during the Great Depression in the middle of Harlem, a very poor area of New York City. Because of her financial struggles, and in order to be able to stay home and care for her children, Clara decided to start a home daycare service so she could make some money and try to survive. After a few years, Clara also became a foster parent so that she could take in and help more children. She began taking in 7 or 8 foster children at a time. 

By 1968, twenty-five years later, Clara had cared for and raised forty foster children, all of whom eventually attended college. At that point, Clara was in her mid-60’s, and she decided to retire from all the work of raising so many children. However, the very next year, Clara’s daughter brought her a young drug addicted mother who asked Clara to help her with her baby who was also drug addicted. Clara took the baby in and cared for it. Six months later, Clara was raising 22 drug addicted babies in her apartment. Eventually, thank God, she received help from social workers and others, including her own three children. And then the city of New York bought and renovated a five-story house for Clara to use to care for all these babies and their mothers. Clara continued to care for children at Hale House until she died at the age of 87. It is estimated she had cared for 2,000 babies and children, not to mention their mothers. 

There is a well-known saying: “It is better to light one candle than to sit and curse the darkness.” Clara Hale had every right to sit and curse the darkness of losing her husband, of having to raise three children by herself during the Great Depression, and I’m sure lots of other negatives and darkness in her life. She could easily have given in to the hopelessness of her personal situation as a young, poor, single mother in 1938. She could have given in to the hopelessness of trying to care for one drug addicted mother and child in 1968, not to mention the dozens and hundreds and eventually thousands that came to her for help. But instead she chose to light a candle in the darkness, one baby at a time.

You and I could certainly put together a long list of all the things that have gone wrong this year and the challenges that we have struggled with in our personal lives, in our city, our country, our Church, and our world. Because we have had to deal with so much darkness this year, we could easily give in to a sense of discouragement, defeat and hopelessness; we could easily just sit back and curse all the darkness that surrounds us. But our readings today and the example of Clara Hale challenge us all to do what she did – not necessarily to open our homes to care for foster children or drug addicted babies and their mothers – but simply not to give up,  not to give in to the darkness, negativity and challenges in our lives, but rather, as Jesus says so forcefully in our Gospel today, to be watchful and alert! 

These two words Jesus uses in the Gospel are not passive words; on the contrary, they imply action, energy and decision. In other words, Jesus is telling us to be active and energetic in looking for him; to choose to look for him in our blessings and especially in the midst of the darkness and challenges we face: to choose to look for him in the struggles with our loved ones who have gotten on our nerves during this pandemic; to choose to look for him in those who voted for the opposite political party than we did; to choose to look for him not just when we’re here at Mass, but especially to choose look for him in the messiness and craziness of our lives. 

Today we begin the beautiful season of Advent in our Catholic faith. It is a time of preparation to celebrate the first coming of Jesus 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, and a time to remember that he will come again at the end of time to judge us. But, most importantly, it is a time for us to be watchful and alert for Jesus to come to us right here and right now. The darkness, negativity and challenges in our world are a wakeup call for us to look for Jesus and to fight the darkness by lighting a candle: a candle of hope, of love, of patience, of honesty, of sacrifice, of forgiveness, a candle of doing something instead of adding to the darkness by doing nothing. 
Jesus is saying to each of us this Advent season: “Wake up. Don’t give in to the darkness. Keep your flame of faith alive by lighting a candle. Bring my light, bring your hope in me to this hopeless world. Let others see me in you.” 

My brothers and sisters, our world needs Jesus now more than ever; and, therefore, our world needs you and me now more than ever. So, don’t just sit and curse the darkness; light a candle instead.