STAY AWAKE, PRAYING AT ALL TIMES

I SUNDAY OF ADVENT - Luke 21:25-28,34-36

The Lord is coming. That’s why we have this time called Advent because the Lord is coming. This is a time marked by hope and expectancy because the Lord is near. At the end of the book of Revelation, we can hear the echo of the first Christians’ prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20). And with them, we go on praying: “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Through Jeremiah, the Lord God had promised a time of salvation, when his people may “dwell in confidence” because there will be “honesty and integrity in the land.” (Jr 33:14-16). Jesus will bring in that time, establishing God’s Kingdom.

In the passage of Luke’s gospel read in this first Sunday of Advent, Jesus speaks about the end of times and his second coming. Humanity will go through a time of crisis when “the powers of heaven will be shaken”. As a consequence, people will be terrorised and men will die “of fear as they await what menaces the world”. We may say that throughout the history of the universe people have gone through many catastrophes, remaining bewildered and uncertain as to their future. Nowadays, there are prophets of doom, announcing that the end of the world is at hand due to global warming, preaching that we have passed the point of no return. Meanwhile, we go on living as before. We protest and demonstrate but don’t change our way of life. Our protests are no more than noise and empty words. With his speaking about the end of times, Jesus makes a final call to repentance and conversion. According to Jesus, we should not allow ourselves to be possessed by fear, because the Son of Man is coming “with power and great glory” and he comes to complete his work of salvation. So “when these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high because your liberation is near at hand.” We must face the uncertainties of the future with hope. God is on our side. 

Jesus advises us to be prepared and the alert; otherwise, we may lose the way and be caught by surprise.  Jesus proposes two fundamental attitudes: 

1. Don’t let “your hearts be coarsened with debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life”;
2. “Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen, and to stand with confidence before the Son of Man.”

If we live as children of the light, we will not be subjected to the powers of darkness and we will “make more and more progress in the kind of life that you (we) are meant to live: the life that God wants”. (1 Thes 4:1).