🕯️This Sunday marks the solemn beginning of the Liturgical Year and the opening of the sacred season of Advent, a period of vigilant expectation and penitential preparation. The Church, in her maternal wisdom, not only recalls the humble first coming of the Incarnate Word in Bethlehem but, through the liturgical texts of this day, directs the faithful's gaze toward His second and glorious coming as Judge at the end of times. It is a crucial moment to "wake from sleep," abandoning spiritual lethargy and the works of darkness to put on the armor of light and the very person of Christ. The liturgy combines the salutary fear of the Final Judgment with the unshakable hope in the Redemption that draws near, inviting the soul to purify itself through cooperation with divine grace, so that, becoming blessed earth, it may receive the Savior and produce fruits of eternal life.
📜Epistle (Rom 13, 11-14)
Brethren, knowing that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is passed and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day: not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.
✠Gospel (Lk 21, 25-33)
At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: There shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves: men withering away for fear and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world. For the powers of heaven shall be moved. And then they shall see the Son of man coming in a cloud with great power and majesty. But when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand. And He spoke to them a similitude: See the fig tree and all the trees: when they now shoot forth their fruit, you know that summer is nigh. So you also, when you shall see these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is at hand. Amen, I say to you, this generation shall not pass away till all things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but My words shall not pass away.
🤔Reflections
🌅Advent begins with a striking eschatology, where the Church places us before the supreme end of things so that we may understand the true value of the beginning and the present time. Saint Augustine reminds us with gravity that "God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination," urging us not to delay conversion in the face of the uncertainty of the hour of Judgment (St. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos). The prophetic vision of the powers of heaven being shaken should not generate the desperate dread of pagans, but the confident hope of the children of God. While the world trembles at the collapse of temporal structures and false securities, the Christian is called to "lift up their head." This liturgical and spiritual gesture symbolizes that the destruction of the scenery of this world is, in truth, the necessary prelude to the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God and the consummation of our hope.
🛡️The Pauline exhortation to "put on the armor of light" harmonizes perfectly with the evangelical warning about vigilance. Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that vigilance is strictly necessary because spiritual negligence and excessive attachment to sensible things make us vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy and the torpor of the conscience (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae). The "sleep" mentioned by the Apostle is the lethargy of the soul immersed in materialism, forgetful of its divine origin and its eternal destiny. To put on Christ means, therefore, to assume His virtue and His sanctifying grace as a second nature, transforming ethical behavior not merely into the fulfillment of rules, but into an ontological expression of the new life received in Baptism. The night of sin advances and attempts to seduce, but the day of eternity already casts its rays upon the soul that watches and prays.
🌿The parable of the fig tree teaches us the theological reading of history and the virtue of supernatural prudence. Just as nature obeys cycles that foretell life and summer, historical events, even those most catastrophic in human eyes, are under divine providence which conducts all things to their recapitulation in Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that in Advent we update the waiting for the Messiah, participating in the long preparation of the first coming and renewing the ardent desire for the second (Catechism of the Catholic Church). We are not called to speculate anxiously about dates, but to live in a state of loving readiness, where temperance and chastity are not mere moral restrictions, but the nuptial preparation for the definitive encounter with the Bridegroom. The Christian, seeing the world pass away, does not despair but rejoices in faith, knowing that the Word of Christ shall not pass away and that true Life is about to blossom.
See English version of the critical articles here
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