2008-11-20. Advent 1

STAY AWAKE!

It is a topical. However, when we met in church on Sundays we cannot leave at home all that we see, hear or read in the media. With the development of the media, the reality is not there, waiting for been discovered by us, but it is the reality which comes to meet us. In addition, very often, when we faced with reality, the feeling we experience is of a real disaster. For a few months, we are in full economic crisis, the first one that involves a globalized economy. However, also other things exceed us, such as terrorism on a global scale. This week we had a vision of horror in India. In addition, we have also inter-ethnic wars in Africa, famines throughout the third world, and so more. These things are beginning also to occur even inside the "civilized" country... Moreover, earthquakes, floods, the threat of heating up the planet ... Do I need to continue?

Excuse me, but not all this is new. There have been many moments, throughout human history, in which humans lived plunged into the disaster. Feeling that things could not continue like this. that the world, their world, was sinking. And the causes of this feeling has always been the same: some natural and others caused by human stupidity or evil. We can also found in the Bible texts that are like an echo of this experience, with only one difference: the same experiences were lived in faith. In the text that we have read in Isaiah, the people of Israel cried out to God in his anguish: “Rip the heavens apart and come down, Lord!” (v. 1).

The starting point of the biblical experience is that this is a world without God. Men and women we have built, from the beginning and throughout the centuries, a society without God, apart from God, as if God would not exist. However, the Bible is the story of how God "comes" at the gathering of human beings, men and women as specific persons, and from this encounter between God and man emerges history. God "comes" to Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and through them comes to his people, and through his people ... God wants to "come" to each of humans and be received by them, by us...

That is what we celebrate every year at the time of Advent, that’ we are starting today. We say that in Advent we prepare for the celebration of Christmas. However, this is not a matter of starting to buy things and more things to make a big party. We are not talking about that. We prepare to find the meaning of Christmas; the meaning that events we celebrate in Christmas, and that took place two thousand years ago, have for us and for our lives.

Christmas means that God comes. It means that in child born of Mary is God himself "ripping the heavens and coming down" to meet with humankind. In Jesus, whose name means, "God saves", we can see God. The problem is that, in Jesus, God does not come as we imagine him. In Jesus, God is indeed a human being, an individual man, with his proper name, made of flesh and bones.

Advent reminds us that God, made already one of us in Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah, the one which comes to saving, doesn’t just "came" in the past, but is still "coming" to our lives, every day. And not only, as we say, to "our heart." Remember the text of the Gospel of Matthew: "I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these followers of mine, you did it for me!" (25:40)... "I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me" (25:45). God, became a man in Jesus Christ, "comes" to us in those in whom he wants to be loved and served: the poor, the sick, the victims of all sorts of evils, which don’t have anyone other than God.

The Advent also reminds us that God comes to us where we do not expect to find him: in a man misunderstood by his family, refused by his friends, rejected by the pious and honest people, unjustly condemned, tortured and executed ... How many men and women live and die in this way in the world! Advent reminds us that God comes to us in Jesus crucified. That, in the person of His Son, God has been killed by us. And that God wants to be found precisely in the crucified of Jerusalem and in all the "crucified" in this world. "If you are ashamed of me and of my teaching among this godless and wicked people, then the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels" (Mk 8:38).

Ah! Advent reminds us, finally, that God comes to us in the future and from the future. Since our God is the God of the future. God is preparing a future for humankind. What we all need, what we all want, what we all look for, but not always in the right spot. The future is not economic ruin, nor nuclear destruction, nor the anguish nor the night, but life. "Eternal" life, life "of quality", the truly human life ... The life that God offers us in Jesus Christ and that will be the “all together life”, along with Jesus Christ. "We hope the new heaven and new earth that God has promised, in which everything will be just and good" (2 Peter 3:13).

God comes in Jesus Christ. When it seems all is finished, when the suffering seems cannot be more, remember: "The Son of man is already at the door" (Mk 13:29). Really, do we want him to come? Or do we want everything to remain the same?

Well, this is not time for waiting only, but for starting work. Since the question is not when will Christ come, but how will he come and he is already coming to us. The matter is to listen and obey his word ("Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away" Mc 13:31). It is time of remaining vigilant and awake, for being able to recognize God on the cross. When the final come, he will know us.

AMEN