Each year in our readings at Sunday Mass we relive the life of Jesus, retracing his footsteps, walking with him and listening to his teachings as they have been handed down to us in the Gospels.
Over the course of the year, the whole mystery of Christ unfolds for us in these readings, from his incarnation and nativity, through his death and resurrection, and on through his ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Through these readings we remember what Jesus has done for us and for our salvation and, through our communion with him in the holy Eucharist, we are enabled to live the new life that he came to give us and to bear witness to our neighbors about the joy and love that we find in Jesus.
The Church is teaching us through the cycle of readings that the mystery of Christ continues in the mystery of his Church, and in the lives of each one of us.
The mystery of our lives is that we are made to become like Jesus. Through the sacred mysteries we celebrate, we are more and more being fashioned in his likeness; day by day Christ is being formed in us.
As we begin the new liturgical year with the season of Advent, it is a good time for us to deepen our awareness of the beautiful mystery of Christ and how this mystery is made present in our lives.
In this season we relive the expectations of our ancestors who waited for the Messiah to come. At the same time, we renew our hope for his second coming at the end of time.
Advent means presence or coming, and in the ancient world the word was used to refer to the coming of someone important, like a king.
In Advent, we are awaiting the coming of Love, the coming of God who “is love” in human form.
“He loved us!” This was the astonishing reality that the first believers in Jesus experienced, as Pope Francis writes in his new encyclical on the Sacred Heart.
We can never forget what a truly world-changing idea this was, this idea that there is a God who loves us, and that this God wants us to love him in return.
Historians tell us that the ancient peoples had no concept like this. In the pagan understanding, the gods had no concern for people on earth.
The idea that there was one true God who created the universe, and that this God could say to someone personally, “I have loved you,” would have struck ancient people as foolishness.
Divine love was a new idea when Jesus Christ came into the world. We need to make this idea new again in our lives and in our personal witness and our evangelization as his Church!
During these few weeks of Advent, I hope we can all try to recover the astonishment that those first followers of Jesus felt. He loved us! And he loves us still. And he calls us to love one another as he has loved us, and to proclaim his love to the ends of the earth.
We need to believe again in the power of divine love!
In the infinite depths of his love, God wanted to enter into our human history and to share in our human condition.
He humbled himself to share in our weakness, to share our struggles and sufferings, our joys and hopes.
We see this on every page in the Gospels. Jesus knows what it’s like to work, he knows what it’s like to have family and friends that he loves and cares for. He knows what it’s like to be tired and thirsty, and what it’s like to be misunderstood and rejected.
Jesus loved with a heart that was human and divine. And the Gospels tell us that he loved to the end, with a love so great that he was willing to suffer death on a cross. God died for love. For the love of you and me and every person.
The saints urge us to never grow weary of talking about the love of God. This love is the heart of the mystery of the universe and the mystery of our lives.
This was what astonished the first Christians and it should still astonish us.
“We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us,” St. John wrote. And again: “We love, because he first loved us.”
Pray for me and I will pray for you.
And in this holy season, let us turn especially to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who bore the Love of God beneath her heart.
May she help us all to open our hearts in a new way to the love of her Son, that he might make our hearts more like his own.
