Isaiah 2 1- 5; Romans 13 :11- 14; Matthew 24: 37 – 44
As the year ends, many of us feel relieved to have overcome challenges and look forward to a brighter future. The world needs hope. We hope for peace at home, in our offices, in our world. We hope for reconciliation and better relationship with our spouse, children, siblings, or office colleagues. We wish for increased financial stability, robust health, and for our lives to become well-organised. It is this hope that sustain us.
Advent is a time when we live with hope. The first thing that comes to us in the first reading is “come let us go to the Lord’s mountain, so that he may teach us, we may walk in his path.” They shall beat their swords into plowshares, nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
It is a funny time in world history because, there is war all over, violence, homeless, hunger everywhere. But Advent asks us to find something positive, to live by our hope. Not to be afraid to hope at the beginning of the year. In other words, to believe that the world can be different to the way it is now, to believe that your life may be different than what it is now.
To find a way to turn all the negative things in the year before the first Sunday of Advent into something that open positive way to God. Begin Advent in a new perspective, believing in your hopes, do not believe in your negativity, believe in what you want, what is possible, not failures. Advent shows us how to do that – stay awake – be alert, notice, see what around you are good, recognize it. What you look for is what you find.
We look for positive things, what might be, what we want the world to be. If we are awake, alert, if we recognized, then advent is the time which you will change, we will change. The only way to change the world according to what you hope for, is to live in your hope, to recognize Christ coming in Christmas and in you. If you do that, that is how we can change the world.
Fr. Alex Osei
SSC-USA Spiritual Director