First Sunday of Advent
To be vigilant not to lose the route
“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth. Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.” Lk 21,34-36
The present time is not the waiting room of an airport, where nothing is done other than to turn over the pages of a magazine, but it is the real aircraft which carries us to destination. However, we are the pilots of the plane, having the task to drive it to the right destination, to the purpose of landing in the country where the Lord preceded us. During the journey, while we pray the Holy Spirit to have him as the radar allowing us not to lose the route, we have to make the right maneuvering for landing. The meaning of the vigilance and of the active waiting is all here: the pray and the action. These are the answer of the man of faith to the distressed question of the Qoèlet: “Vanity of vanities, says Qoèlet, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity! What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays” (Eccl 1,2-4). The Qoèlet symbolizes the man who, although having reached some human wisdom, has not yet found the faith in the Lord, meanwhile the man who believes in the message of the gospel is really wise and he operates to change the world which surrounds him. Taking into account the today passage and these believes, we wonder, then, what is the meaning of our actions and what our acts have to be. It seems to us that the global mandate of Jesus can be summarized as an action in three directions. The first is to actively enter into the Church, working to make united the community of the believers and to cause the charity to be spread around which, as Paul says, is the symbol of the perfection. The second is the announcement of the gospel to every creature: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mk 16,15). The third is to search the social justice into the charity: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’…. ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Mt 25,35-40) If this is the global mandate of the gospel, our pray has the task to require to the Holy Spirit the strength to pursue it in full. We think that the all of us have the responsibility for a double check: the Church as Church, the families as families and the persons as persons. If we think that our way to practice the mandate is different or quite not existing, we have only to increase the prayer, which is the source of each spiritual action. We think that this is the way to master the commands of our plane to drive our route to the place where the Lord is waiting for us.