Primera Semana de Adviento 2024

Mis queridos hermanos, este domingo comenzamos en la iglesia el tiempo de adviento con el cual nos preparamos para celebrar un acontecimiento muy importante de nuestra historia de la salvación y nos preparamos al mismo tiempo para otro grande que aún no ha sucedió y que nos mantiene en espera. El primero es la onmemoración del nacimiento de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo y el segundo es la preparación para su segunda venida. Celebramos por tanto la alegría de Aquel que ya se hizo presente en este mundo y al mismo tiempo la espera de Aquel que vendrá a salvarnos de manera definitiva.

En este tiempo es usual que las personas adornen sus casas para la navidad. Hay muchas decoraciones y música especial. Yo los invito mis queridos hermanos para que antes que arreglar nuestras casas arreglemos nuestros corazones, nuestras vidas y nuestras familias. Adviento es tiempo de esperanza y de fe, es tiempo para levantar el corazón y como dice el apóstol san Pablo revestirse de Cristo de tal manera que evitemos las obras del mal y vivamos a la luz de las enseñanzas Jesucristo nuestro Señor.

El adviento es por tanto un tiempo especial para preparar la casa, preparar la vida de cada uno de nosotros para recibir al Señor que llega. Adviento es tiempo para recordar como nos dice Jesús hoy que no sabemos la hora de su venida y que por lo tanto debemos estar preparados para su llegada que puede suceder en el momento menos esperado. Es por tanto tiempo para estar listos y levantar la cabeza para recibir al Señor cuando él venga entre las nubes del cielo a salvar su pueblo. Es tiempo para recordar que no debemos permitir que las preocupaciones del mundo y los vicios empañen nuestra visión y nos impidan reconocer las señales que nos invitan a la conversión. Es tiempo para estar velando y en oración porque se acerca nuestro Señor. Es tiempo para alimentar la esperanza y creer que el rey que llega va a traer la justicia y el derecho a este mundo. Soñemos pues mis queridos hermanos en este adviento en un mundo posible, donde cada nación tenga lo necesario para la vida digna de todos sus habitantes, un mundo donde todos nos sintamos hermanos y nadie sea rechazado por su procedencia, estado social, o color de piel. Un mundo donde nadie tenga que emigrar ni por miedo a la violencia ni por falta de trabajo. Un mundo donde la paz no sea una ilusión sino una realidad.

Pidamos al Señor para que al comenzar este tiempo de adviento dispongamos nuestros corazones para revestirnos de las obras de Cristo, cambiando el mal por el bien, los chismes por la oración, la discriminación por la tolerancia, el odio por el amor, la infidelidad por la fidelidad y la increencia por la fe.

P. Luis Segura M.S.C.

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First Week of Advent 2024

My dear brothers, this Sunday we begin the Advent season in church, with which we prepare to celebrate a very important event in our history of salvation and at the same time we prepare for another great event that has not yet happened and that keeps us waiting. The first is the commemoration of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the second is the preparation for his second coming. We therefore celebrate the joy of the One who has already made himself present in this world and at the same time the expectation of the One who will come to save us definitively.

At this time, it is common for people to decorate their homes for Christmas. There are many decorations and special music. I invite you, my dear brothers and sisters, to fix our hearts, our lives and our families before fixing up our homes. Advent is a time of hope and faith, it is time to lift up our hearts and, as the apostle Saint Paul says, to clothe ourselves in Christ so that we avoid the works of evil and live in the light of the teachings of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Advent is therefore a special time to prepare the house, to prepare the life of each one of us to receive the Lord who is coming. Advent is a time to remember, as Jesus tells us today, that we do not know the hour of his coming and that therefore we must be prepared for his arrival, which can happen at the least expected moment. It is therefore a time to be ready and raise our heads to receive the Lord when he comes among the clouds of heaven to save his people. It is a time to remember that we must not allow the worries of the world and vices to cloud our vision and prevent us from recognizing the signs that invite us to conversion. It is a time to be vigilant and in prayer because our Lord is coming. It is a time to nourish hope and believe that the coming king will bring justice and right to this world. Let us dream, my dear brothers, in this Advent of a possible world, where each nation has what is necessary for a dignified life for all its inhabitants, a world where we all feel like brothers and sisters and no one is rejected because of their origin, social status, or skin color. A world where no one has to emigrate, either for fear of violence or for lack of work. A world where peace is not an illusion but a reality.

Let us ask the Lord that as we begin this time of Advent we may prepare our hearts to clothe ourselves in the works of Christ, exchanging evil for good, gossip for prayer, discrimination for tolerance, hatred for love, infidelity for fidelity and disbelief for faith. 

Fr. Luis Segura M.S.C.

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A time of Awaiting the Lord…

Today Advent begins, the liturgical time which prepares us for Christmas, inviting us to lift our gaze and open our hearts to welcome Jesus. During Advent we do not just live in anticipation of Christmas; we are also called to rekindle the anticipation of the glorious return of Christ — when he will return at the end of time — preparing ourselves, with consistent and courageous choices, for the final encounter with him. We remember Christmas, we await the glorious return of Christ, and also our personal encounter: the day in which the Lord will call. During these four weeks we are called to leave behind a resigned and routine way of life and to go forth, nourishing hope, nourishing dreams for a new future. This Sunday’s Gospel (cf. Lk 21:25-28, 34-36) goes in this very direction and puts us on guard against allowing ourselves to be oppressed by an egocentric lifestyle or by the phrenetic pace of our days. Jesus’ words resonate in a particularly incisive way: “take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly ... But watch at all times, praying” (vv. 34, 36).

To be mindful and to pray: this is how to live the time between now and Christmas. To be mindful and to pray. Inner listlessness comes from always turning around ourselves and being blocked by our own life, with its problems, its joy, and suffering, but always turning around ourselves. And this is wearying; this is dull, this closes us off to hope. Here lies the root of the lethargy and laziness that the Gospel speaks about. Advent invites us to a commitment to vigilance, looking beyond ourselves, expanding our mind and heart in order to open ourselves up to the needs of people, of brothers and sisters, and to the desire for a new world. It is the desire of many people tormented by hunger, by injustice and by war. It is the desire of the poor, the weak, the abandoned. This is a favorable time to open our hearts, to ask ourselves concrete questions about how and for whom we expend our lives.

The second attitude to best experience the time of awaiting the Lord is that of prayer. It is about standing up and praying, turning our thoughts and our hearts to Jesus who is about to come. One stands when awaiting something or someone. We await Jesus and we wish to await him in prayer which is closely linked to vigilance. Praying, awaiting Jesus, opening oneself to others, being mindful, not withdrawn in ourselves. We await Jesus and we wish to await him in prayer which is closely linked to vigilance.

But what is the horizon of our prayerful anticipation? In the Bible the voices of the prophets are especially revealing to us. Today it is that of Jeremiah who speaks to the people who had been harshly tried by exile and who risked losing their very identity. We Christians too, who are also the People of God, run the risk of becoming worldly and of losing our identity, indeed of ‘paganizing’ the Christian way. Therefore, we need the Word of God through which the prophet proclaims: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise, I made ... I will cause a righteous Branch to spring forth for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land” (Jer 33:14-15). And that righteous branch is Jesus. It is Jesus who comes and whom we await. May the Virgin Mary, who leads us to Jesus, a woman of expectation and prayer, help us to strengthen our hope in the promises of her Son Jesus, in order to enable us to understand that through the travail of history, God always remains steadfast and uses human errors, too, to manifest his mercy. [Synthesized form Pope Francis, Angelus, 2 XII 18]

  Rev. Jos Rajesh Peter M.S.C.

1st Sunday of Advent – 2024 – Cycle C

My friends, today is the First Sunday of  Advent, it is the beginning of a New Liturgical Year in the Church.  I ask God's blessings for a Happy and Holy New Year, filled with peace and joy for us all.

Waiting and Preparing is the Theme or Focus of Advent; a time to prepare and a time to ponder the Lord’s incredible love for us.  In Advent we are also invited to prepare for the coming of Christ Jesus into our lives, in a new way, not just going from Thanksgiving to Christmas with all the busyness of gift-buying and decorating.  Advent gives us the opportunity to enjoy the gift of anticipation.

Our Liturgical Year ends with and begins with the end times.  One week ago was the last Sunday of the Liturgical Year, and today is the first Sunday of the new Liturgical Year, the gospels for both are about the second coming of Jesus. 

Last week, of course, was The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe which is the perfect place for this Solemnity; between the end and the beginning of the Liturgical Cycle, between the old and the new.  Jesus the Christ is the center of the universe; the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and the new beginning.

My friends, for 2,000 years people have been wondering about the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ.  When will Jesus return?  When will the world end? 

People also wonder about heaven.  What is heaven like ? 

St. Paul, in First Corinthians, tells us that in this life we will never know what Heaven is like:  "Eye has not seen and ear has not heard what God has prepared for those who love him”

Probably my life, your life, our life on earth will end long before the end of the world.  When that happens to you and me, we go to other side of life and begin a new life in Heaven.

The Church ends the old year and begins the new year with gospels about the second coming of Jesus.  This is why Advent is such an important time.  In the Season of Advent, we are invited to prepare for the coming of Christ Jesus into our lives, in a new way.  To make choices that will continually develop and nourish our relationship with Jesus.  Psalm 25 gives us the key in verse 14, "The friendship of the LORD is with those who fear [love] him, and his covenant ..."   

Saint Paul blesses us in the Second Reading:

“May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.”

One of the reasons we celebrate the Season of Advent year after year is because we memorialize this wonderful event so that we remember, and never forget, that God sent his only Son as a gift to us, to teach us how to be human.

Another reason we celebrate Advent every year is because we are a changed person; the past year has made us more spiritually mature and our understanding of God is different because of our relationship with God, which allows us to receive God’s message in a new, life-giving way. 

The way of the coming of the Lord which most of us are used to, is the coming of the infant Jesus, baby Jesus, born in a manger in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.  That form is a good form which we memorialize each Christmas.  But as we mature spiritually, we realize that Jesus can and does come to us personally in new and different ways.  As we celebrate the Season of Advent, we realize that God gave us his Son and that Son grew up so we can know that his message of love and forgiveness in the Gospels are meant for us.

We are given this season of Advent as a time of preparation, a time of waiting, a time to learn the art of waiting !  How adverse to waiting our culture is, we are impatient with how slowly our computers are working, when we are stuck in traffic, waiting in line!  Our culture does not like to wait.  But, waiting can be a blessing. Waiting gives us a time to think, to contemplate, and ponder.  

Advent gives us time to listen and to hear what God has in mind for us.