Advent 2024
Dear brothers and sisters,
As we arrive at the beginning of this new liturgical year, celebrating Advent season, I’d like to invite all and each of us to refresh our knowledge and devotion on what this time really is. It’s crystal clear that Advent is a time of hope, a time of preparation for Christmas. It’s a time to celebrate the gift of the Word of God made flesh and born from Virgin Mary. As such, Christmas atmosphere in many parts of the world is already present, much time ahead of Christmas itself. We celebrate because it has a value.
What lacking many times is another aspect of Advent. Advent is not (only) to await for Christmas. We do not expect Jesus’s birth. In case you don’t know, He has been born already more than two thousand years back. What the pilgrim Church awaits, what we all really expect now, is Jesus’ Second Coming. It’s our faith of which we’re reminded each time we recite the Creed: awaiting Jesus to come in glory and power to judge the living and the death, to give us eternal life.
In liturgy of the four weeks of Advent, the last week is the one intended to specifically direct our focus on the celebration of the nativity. A good part this season invites us to reflect on the Second Coming of Jesus, and to foster virtues in us so as He finds us worthy when He comes. The pilgrim Church basically journeys between the First Coming (incarnation and nativity of Jesus) and His Second Coming (Parousia). It’s a time to expect and to hope for the coming of Jesus. It’s not too much to say that the whole life of the Church, our whole faith life, at the end, is an Advent time. As we continue to hope and expect for His coming, our whole life is a permanent state of waiting, waiting for the fullness of time.
Vigilant life is the main invitation of Advent. At all time, we’re invited to keep the flame alive, that is the flame of faith, charity, and hope. At the time we’re baptized, we receive the lit candle accompanied with the invitation to care for it and make sure the light keeps on burning till the time we’re to meet the Lord. That is to live in grace and virtues, far from disgrace of sinful life, ready for the coming of our Lord and Savior, at any time. So many times in the Gospel, Jesus insists on this vigilant life, as the day of his coming is unknown to anybody.
In Timor, in so many occasions, I have been insisting on this point, because so many of us limit the Advent to just in view of celebrating Christmas. And industries plays with our human feelings, offering us their Christmas ornaments for decoration, many has nothing to do with the nativity of Jesus. So many focus only on this aspect, and therefore the invitation to conversion and vigilant life ends right away after Christmas days.
Advent is a short period of liturgy season that reflects our entire pilgrimage time. That is the Church in hope for the coming her Spouse to bring her into the endless and happy communion with the Trinity God. This is our hope. Our hope tells us that despite so many tribulations and confusion, fruit of sin, we believe that our Lord Jesus will come to restore all creation at due time. He will come to bring into completion the salvation to all creatures that has been started and already effective in the world. This is our hope, and this is what we’re really waiting for. This is what keeps calling us to conversion and vigilant life. We pray that we may be strengthened to prepare the way for Him, to convert and live in grace, ready to welcome Him, on His Second Coming. But since this Advent is also a time to prepare ourselves to celebrate Jesus’ First Coming, His Nativity, so let me wish you all a Blessed Christmas.
By: Fr. Joaquim Sarmento, SJ