In these final days of Advent
Christmas will soon be here,
and naturally we want to try to prepare ourselves more intensely to celebrate the arrival of our Lord.
Perhaps by recalling these final words of the Apocalypse
that refer to our Lord’s second coming, but that are always relevant:
“Come, Lord Jesus!”, “Come, Lord Jesus!” It is a great desire that our Lord may come, at Christmas,
in the celebration, but above all that He may come constantly to our souls,
that He may come especially in the Eucharist each day.
“Come, Lord Jesus!”
And this desire, with these words or without words, should be accompanied by a desire
that we are reminded of during this time of Advent with words of John the Baptist:
“Prepare the way of the Lord: Make straight his paths.”
We have to make them “straight” because our Lord’s coming also depends on our letting Him come to us,
that we leave open the path to our heart, to our souls:
with prayer, with work, in the ordinary circumstances of our life.
Above all, looking ahead now to Christmas.
Christ’s birth is truly a great mystery of God,
who becomes a Child, and who does so for us.
In the Christmas liturgy these prophetic words of Isaias are repeated: “A Child is born for us.”
He is born for us, in the plural, which has great significance.
Certainly for each one, but also for everyone.
This needs to reinforce for us, during Christmas time, our sense of union, of communion with everyone:
with our family, in this year of the family that
we are celebrating, with the great family of the Church, with the Pope, as the head, as the father of everyone in the Church.
And He has also been born for all men and women: for everyone in the world.
Think of all the people who are waiting for us, as Saint Josemaria used to say, in our work, in our prayer…
Now people are suffering in so many places, also because of the pandemic.
Our Lord has also been born for everyone.
It is a mystery, the mystery of God made a Child.
It is a mystery we need to accept through faith.
Looking at the Child, as we will look at Him during these days of Christmas in the Crib, in the Creche.
Seeing, looking at the Child, in order to see with eyes of faith the love God has for us.
Our looking at the Child will also help us to realize something extraordinary,
as Saint Josemaria said in one of his homilies: “realizing we are looked upon lovingly by God at every moment.”
It is a mutual looking. We are looking at the Child, but with the awareness that
God is looking at us lovingly at every moment.
This has to give us strength, despite our own limitations and the difficulties.
Realizing we are constantly accompanied by God’s love.
But for this we need faith, and at times we need to beg our Lord
to “increase our faith,” as the apostles did our Lord.
When looking at our Lord, we can also see Him at Christmas with Mary and Joseph,
and ask them, our Lady and Saint Joseph, to help us to look at the Child.
That they help us to look at Him as they looked at Him, as they look at Him now in heaven.
To see in this Child all of God’s love for us, which gives us security, and also joy.
Because while we need to live the Christmas season with joy, we also need joy in our whole life, a joy compatible with suffering.
For we can suffer and, at the same time, in an apparent paradox, we can be happy.
But this is truly possible with God’s grace.
I wish everyone a very happy Christmas, and may God bless you.