‘Today, with the First Sunday of Advent, we begin a new liturgical year.
This season invites us to reflect on the dimension of time, which always exerts great fascination over us…
We all say that we do not have enough time, because the pace of daily life has become frenetic for everyone. In this regard too, the Church has ‘good news’ to bring: God gives us his time. We always have little time; especially for the Lord, we do not know how or, sometimes, we do not want to find it. Well, God has time for us! This is the first thing that the beginning of a liturgical year makes us rediscover with ever new amazement. Yes, God gives us his time, because he entered history with his Word and his works of salvation to open it to eternity, to make it become a covenantal history. In this prospective, already in itself, time is a fundamental sign of God’s love: a gift that mankind, as with everything else, is able to make the most of or, on the contrary, to waste; to take in its significance or to neglect…
The liturgical season of Advent celebrates the coming of God in its two moments: it first invites us to reawaken our expectation of Christ’s glorious return, then, as Christmas approaches, it calls us to welcome the Word made man for our salvation. Yet the Lord comes into our lives continually. How timely then, is Jesus’ call, which on this First Sunday is powerfully proposed to us: “Watch!” (Mk 13: 33, 35, 37).
The icon of Advent is the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus. Let us invoke her so that she may help us also to become an extension of humanity for the Lord who comes.’
Pope Benedict XVI