December 15, 2024
He is coming!
What are we waiting for at Christmas? What is the meaning of this Advent season, and why this preparation?
We're waiting for the most important person in our lives: our Savior, Emmanuel, God-with-us forever. His coming is not just a memory of what happened in Bethlehem in the time of Caesar Augustus, it's a present mystery for me in my life, today.
When a friend comes, someone we love, someone who has a place in our lives, we prepare for it. And how do we do that? Isn't it first and foremost through desire? I desire this coming, this personal encounter.
I desire it because I have a longing in the depths of my heart, a thirst to love, to be loved.
Advent awakens this longing in us to lead us to the encounter: God made flesh for me. There's a personal, intimate gift that God wants to make to each of us at Christmas. He gives himself, in the vulnerability of a child, in silence, he who is the Word. He wants us to feel the full extent of his love for us. It's always new. There is a rebirth for us in this feast of the Nativity, a rebirth in faith, hope and charity. The Christ child wants to make “all things new” (Rev 21:5).
The Virgin Mary, who conceived the Word in her faith and in her flesh, wants to help us enter into a new intimacy with her Son, so that this Christmas may be a true encounter: Jesus is waiting for us, He comes to earth for us, He, the light of the world, comes to illuminate everything.
