1st Sunday Advent 2021
Every Advent we renew our longing for deeper intimacy with Christ. If we had wandered
far from him, we want to return with greater love. We experience Christ as presence, as
One coming into our daily life. We can look at the coming of Christ in different ways: all
things were created through him, that is coming of Christ in creation; then coming of
Christ, the promised messiah as Son of Mary in Bethlehem; then the coming of Christ
at the end of times when we see him face to face. What makes our life journey to the
end to encounter Christ meaningful is our welcoming him here and now, in the
Eucharist, in prayer, in the family and in the community; we keep the door of our hearts
open for Christ to enter by loving. We are holding the past, present and future of our
faith at this turn of a new liturgical year. Our dampened faith, unexciting life experiences,
toils and pain, all can be turned into a meaningful journey of hope that inspires us to
love and give even when we think we don’t have the energy. Advent invites us to
practice patient hope! Carlo Carretto who lived in Sahara desert as a hermit said; ‘ be
patient, learn to wait-for each other, for love, for happiness, for God’.

Jesus says, be awake, cast off deeds of darkness; gird yourself with love. Some of us
don’t want to get up in the morning, but we get up because the light of the sun seems
more demanding; it is the same with the light of Christ, persuading us to let go
indifference and get up, ready the mind, then a new, fresh experience of the day sets in.
Welcoming Christ is about making each day a better one than the previous day. When
personal world seems collapsing, present is Christ the redeemer, presence of his angels
to help us persevere in faith hope and love.

Writer and professor of spirituality Bob Wicks writes about life shaking experiences:
‘recently, I was swept over with feelings that I was truly a failure. I had done some work
with people who were very committed and under great stress at the time and I was
unsure of my impact. The writing I had done, into which I had put so much effort, left
me with a concern as to whether I was really helping others in what I had written.
Finally, a couple of requests I had asked of others when exhausted and in need of help
myself were left without a response or with the indication that I had asked too much.
After this experience, I was tired, felt rejected, wondered about what good I was really
doing and then I realized in feeling this way I was experiencing something that didn’t
compare with the real difficulties of life that so many others must face. I was guilty of
negative grandiosity. If I were to be involved and live compassionately, there would
always be times when I would feel like a failure. Failure needed to be viewed as a portal
to a deeper commitment that included less of my ego, over concern with success or
how people reacted and seen more as about my faithfulness in the darkness. Failure
was a time to entertain the angels of experiencing more deeply the need for God’s
grace, knowing that we can’t do it alone. I think certain angels only show up when we
feel lost, lonely and a failure. It would be a shame to miss their presence at difficult
times in our life; they have important lessons to teach us that are not available when
things are going well’.