My dear friends,
Praise be Jesus Christ now and forever!
This weekend we begin a new liturgical year that starts with Advent. Advent means “the arrival, the coming.” During this season, we wait with faith for the promise of the second glorious coming or arrival of Jesus our Lord at the end of time. It also reminds us of the constant coming of Jesus into our lives through the events of our lives, the sacraments and our neighbors.
The message of our readings on this first Sunday of Advent is that the Lord Jesus is coming. There are three things that we need to reflect on during this season: promise, waiting and coming. The promise of our Lord Jesus Christ to come again and our actively waiting for Him to come. It involves us actively working toward securing our place in the Kingdom of God.
Advent waiting has to do with incarnating the reasons for our hope. It has to do with acting, behaving and doing in accordance with the hopes that we have in our hearts. It means not only being forward-looking, but also, being forward-moving. To achieve this, we try our best to bring peace, justice and love into the world. We all wait for that definitive coming of Jesus, for the real end-times, for the time, when “there will be no more tears, no more crying, no more pain.” But as we live in this “in-between time”; as we wait actively in hope, we just have to contribute and work to make all that happen in the here and now.
Let us ask the Lord for the grace to be always ready to welcome Jesus at any time with a heart full of trust, hope, peace and love.
AMEN.
God loves you!
-Fr. NEIL