Dear Friends in Christ,

People who haven’t grown up in the Church could understandably be startled on the First Sunday of Advent to hear at Mass Scripture readings about the end of time and the Last Judgment: “What’s up with that?” We’d have thought this season was about preparing for Christmas, about preparing for the celebration of Jesus’s birth!” We know the explanation. That in the Season of Advent our eventual focus on the Lord’s humble coming in the stable at Bethlehem leads us first to think about his final “advent” in glory, when he will come again to judge the living and the dead.

As we begin Advent this year I want to consider with you another coming of Jesus – what we can call his “coming in grace” – a third advent that should also be a focus for our prayer and meditation in the weeks before Christmas. I invite you to keep in mind Christ’s coming to us every day.

The first advent and the final advent of Jesus shape his ongoing advent into our lives.

God’s Word “was made flesh” and entered into human history over 2,000 years ago so that in all the “todays” of our lives he could fill us, men and women of flesh and blood, with his own divine life and make his heavenly Father our Father. Every day he uses the ordinary events of our lives, humdrum as they may seem, to lead us in growing in holiness.

This coming in grace is for the sake of our being found without sin on Judgment Day, and so share in his glory. Each day the Lord Jesus offers us the salvation he won for us by his life, death and resurrection at his first coming, so that at his final coming we will take possession of the “dwelling places he has prepared for us.”

The linking of these three comings of Christ helps us understand the advice which the Church gives us throughout Advent, when, day after day she uses the inspired word of God to us to be on watch. Just like the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Covenant watched in hope for the Messiah to come, so God’s people of the New Covenant must also be watchful at every hour of every day to discern how Christ is acting in our lives. We must watch to see where and how he is coming near to call us to repentance, to send us on a mission, to ask us to love him more and to follow him more closely.

Cardinal Albert Van Hoye, a renowned professor of Sacred Scripture gives a description of this attitude of watching that seems to be on the mark. This watching and waiting “is an interior attitude. It is the way in which one goes about his or her ordinary tasks.” That’s where we watch for the Lord. We are watching for Christ when everything we do we do with him, in keeping his commandments with love (See Daily Bread, p. 809).

Advent reminds us that this habit of attention is essential for a disciple. We must watch, lest we miss God’s coming near to us in order to invite us to come nearer to him. Let us begin Advent with a renewed conviction that God is sure to come into my life every day and with a renewed resolve not to miss his coming but to welcome him with generous love and unconditional faith.

Be assured of my prayers that all of us come to Christmas shaped ever more closely according to the pattern of Jesus because every day we welcomed him for whose coming we were watching.