To Go or Not To Go
As we enter into the Season of Advent, we begin a new liturgical year and we give thanks to God for all the blessings He has bestowed on us this past year. As we look forward to this new year, we ask the Lord to give us a hopeful heart, a heart that waits in joyful expectation for the coming of the Lord. The Church gives to us these seasonal markers of the year to invite us to a deeper relationship with God, helping us focus our prayer and meditation on the mysteries of Jesus’ life. Advent marks the beginning of the liturgical year, the four week period that leads to Christmas, the birth of Our Lord and Savior. In today’s commercialized world we often skip Advent and jump right to Christmas. We can see this in stores where Christmas trees and decorations are put up the day after Halloween! Even in our own homes and schools we have this undisciplined tendency to jump to Christmas, but we must not do the same in our hearts. There will be no Christmas without Advent so we must use this time given to us to truly prepare our hearts for Christmas, not for the dinners and presents, but for the coming of the Lord, the Word made flesh who comes to dwell among us.
Advent comes from the Latin word adventus meaning “coming” or “arrival.” So Advent is the period of preparation and expectation of the coming of the Prince of Peace. At the same time is it also a journey. We are invited to journey with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem to wait in joyful anticipation of the birth of Jesus. We wait for the coming of Jesus. His first coming was of course more than 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. We also know that His second coming will be the day He comes to judge the living and the dead. But there is also a “third” coming of Christ, and this is the here and now, when the Lord comes to meet us in the silence of our hearts, in Scripture, in the sacraments, and in our encounter with one another.
So, today, we stand in the present moment, the first Sunday of Advent in the year 2025, and we recall and remember the first coming of our Lord while anticipating His second coming with the sure knowledge and trust that He is with us here too in this very moment. Let us give thanks for the moment in time when the Word was made flesh for our sake so many centuries ago and let us prepare our hearts for the day, that as Scripture tells us we know neither the day nor the hour, He will come again in His glory to judge the living and the dead, separating the sheep from the goats, and gathering all of His Father’s children to Himself, so that where He is we all might be (cf. John 14:3).
As we begin this new liturgical year and this holy season of Advent, will we wait idly and passively or will we wait actively in joyful expectation, telling everyone about the Lord and His love and mercy, the Light for those who have been walking in the darkness and the Consolation for all those who have been silently crying out to the Lord in their grief, sorrow, doubt, and frustration? Mary and Joseph are all packed and ready to walk to Bethlehem, and they turn around, meeting your gaze, asks you, “Will you come with us?”
