Roman rite
Mal 3, 19-20; Ps 98; 2 Thes 3, 7-12; Lk 21.5 -19
Ambrosian Rite
Is 51: 4-8; Ps 49; 2 Thes 2.1 to 14; Mt 24.1 – 31
First Sunday of Advent (Year A)
The coming of the Lord
1) To think about the end of the world to know the purpose of the world.
In this last Sunday of the liturgical year that marks our lives, the Church makes us meditate on the end of all things in order to begin the Whole Thing that is eternal Life.
The Word of God invites us to meditate on the ultimate realities to know and understand the signs of time with the eyes of faith on the world and our lives. It also invites us to prepare ourselves with confidence to the final meeting with the love of God. Those who have a loving confidence in God, are able to persevere and deserve life forever.
In today’s Gospel passage the Messiah teaches us to live with persevering faith and testimony, maturing in the awareness that “what we could not get because of our weakness, we can receive through our perseverance” (see St. Ephraim the Syrian (306-373), Diatessaron, IV century).
Speaking of wars, revolutions, famines, persecution and other sad events, Christ does not intend to frighten the disciples, but to teach that the difficulties of life, be they large or small, are opportunities to become stronger in faith and firm in hope.
On the one hand, a firm perseverance while waiting for Christ who is our End, is the mode in which the Expected One is welcomed and puts his dwelling among us. He is the Emmanuel, the God with us – always. On the other hand, the time that separates us from the end when we will be forever with the End, is the time of the testimony in which we experience the closeness of God and his love. He does not abandon his disciples, but is always nearby suggesting to them the words to confront their persecutors (see Lk 21:15).
Jesus encourages us to remain faithful to him until the end. Let’s persevere firmly in the waiting. Then, the meeting with Him will transform our difficulties, fears and anxieties, even those of death, in a glorious resurrection.
2) Two witnesses of perseverance and testimony.
Among the numerous saints, who are an example of perseverance and testimony of the true waiting, I choose two, St. John the Precursor, and the Virgin Mary, because they are the two pillars that stand next to the portal that Christ crossed to get into our history.
They both did not expect something, but Someone. They did not seek to discern more or less apocalyptic events in order to decide what to do in the immediate future. They expected nothing less than God. They were not waiting for better times, nor for a vague utopia or a hero, but they really were expecting God.
St. John the Baptist was just waiting for God, the God who was coming to bring order, to judge and to save. The Precursor was a man determined to the last. He did not had scruples calling the leaders of the people “brood of vipers” and accusing king Herod of all the crimes he had committed. He had no fear of prison and beheading. He persevered in being “just” a voice echoing in the wilderness and through everything, even through plugged ears. He was a true, persevering witness who pointed to the presence of the Lamb of God and fortified this indication with the gift of his own life. He shows how we should be witnesses, that is, martyrs. He is a model for all Christians (laity, religious man and women, priests and bishops) of how to be missionaries of Christ. No one should announce himself, nor replace the Word with little talk. We all have to be only the voice of the One who is growing among us, who is always greater than us.
Even the Virgin Mary was awaiting for God. She knew that the angel had told her: “The Holy One whom you carry in the womb shall be called the Son of God, Son of the Most High, and his kingdom will have no end” (Lk 1, 31 and following). However, she did not expect Somebody like the Unimaginable One awaited by the Baptist, one who would come forward with fire, the hatchet and the winnowing-fan. She was expecting a baby. But for a mother a child who is God is it not even more unimaginable? Is that child not coming to “cast fire on the earth”? And will not a sword pass her mother’s heart? However the Virgin Mary persevered in the waiting and welcomed in her and gave to humanity (to each of us) the One who is “meek and humble of heart” and that “cries out in the streets or quenches a smoldering wick “(Mt 11: , 29, 12, 19 ). Mary persevered even in the walk with Christ, from Nazareth, where she conceived through the Holy Spirit, to Jerusalem where Christ gave up his Spirit and recreated the world.
Our heavenly Mother is an eminent model of how we can and must be witnesses.
The final times and the tremendous signs that indicate them, terrify us not only because they are terrifying, but because they indicate that the end that is inexorably coming.
What to do? “Be converted, and do penance” says John the Baptist. “Bring Christ in you for the others,” says the Mother of God. We must move from “I” to “you”, to God. From the sterile and selfish being for themselves, to the fruitful and loving being for the others, following Christ, the Emmanuel with us and for all.
3) The example of the consecrated virgins in the world.
Now a brief reflection on how the consecrated virgins in the world can be for us an example on how to follow St. John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary.
At the school of the Baptist these consecrated women learn not to speak of Christ, but to indicate him by daily putting in practice the phrase: “It is necessary that I must decrease so that He may grow.” The consecrated virgins show that the Precursor not only calls for a sober lifestyle, but also to an inner change, through which we receive the light of the One who is “the Greatest” and became small, “the Strongest “and became weak.
At the school of Mary they learn to live consecrated virginity as intensity of desire and fruitful life. Thanks to their consecration, the miracle of the virginal motherhood of the Mother of God happens again.
From the incarnation of God and the grace of Baptism flourishes that holy progeny of which, during the consecration of virgins according to the Roman Pontifical, the Church says: “Whilst maintaining the nuptial blessing that descends on marital status, there must be more noble souls who sacrifice the physical community of man and woman and tend to the mystery that marriage contains. Giving all their love to the mystery indicated by marriage, they are consecrated to the One who is husband and son of the eternal virginity. “
This is the great mystery of the Church: the union between divinity and humanity in the Virgin’s womb. For this reason the Church blesses the virgins in the consecration prayer with these words: “Bless the Maker of heaven and earth, who has deigned to choose you for communion with Mary, the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Her life is just a prototype. “May the life of Mary from whom, as from a mirror, the beauty of chastity and the rule of all virtue are reflected, be the image of virginity” (Saint Ambrose De Virginibus, II, 2, 6, PL 16, 108) . If the Church wants to remain what it is, “Virgin is and Virgin must be” (Saint. Augustine, Sermon 1.8). It is necessary to have these “noble souls”, who in their own body mimic what happened in Mary and anticipate what the saved Church will receive in glory.