BEWARE OF SCAMS!

If you're like me, you get a lot of calls on your cell phone from numbers that you do not recognize. My phone tells me the location of the caller, which is very helpful. When I get a call from Pascagoula, Mississippi, say, or Waco, Texas, I don’t answer it. I have become very suspicious. If the person really needs to speak to me, they will leave me a voicemail message.

Recently I have gotten voicemail messages from some nice lady who is offering to help me with my serious problems with the IRS over my back taxes. Since I have never filed income tax in my life, I don’t bother to return her call. The same with someone who is warning me that my auto insurance is about to be canceled. I don’t have a car, nor do I have insurance for a car so I don’t bother to respond.

We are becoming more and more wary every day of scams. 

Living in the in-between time

The first Christians were expecting Jesus to return in glory within a matter of weeks or maybe months. As time went on, however, it became apparent that Christ was not returning right away, and Christians had to adjust their hopes. If Christ is not coming back immediately, then what do we do in the meantime? This is the situation that Saint Paul addresses in his letter do the Thessalonians in today’s second Reading. He writes to his readers,

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love

for one another and for all,

just as we have for you, 

so as to strengthen your hearts, 

to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.  Amen.

Every Christian knows how we are supposed to live as we wait for the coming of our Lord: Loving one another, being just and generous, meek and forgiving, and so forth.

However, our culture is constantly trying to trick us with false messages about how to fill up emptiness we feel inside -- an emptiness that only God can fill. So we are constantly bombarded with scams every bit as phony and sleazy as any telephone scam you could Imagine. 

¨You will feel happy and satisfied if you have enough possessions. So go shopping for more stuff¨ That is a scam!

¨You will be fulfilled if everybody respects and envies you when they see the luxury car that you are driving or the designer clothes that you are wearing.¨ That, too, is a scam, a lie.

We are bombarded every day by scams offering to make us fulfilled, happy and content. They are all lies! Don’t listen to them! Just keep deleting those false messages.

Today, the first Sunday of Advent, encourages us to prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ, to make sure that we are living our lives In accord with Jesus’s teaching as we wait in joyful hope for his coming. His promises are true, they are not scams.

Let us pray for one another during this holy season that we can get better at ignoring those calls from unknown callers, calls that lead to nothing but trouble.

Come, Lord Jesus!