Stay Awake: Jesus Christ Illumines the Dark Night of the World

The Season of Advent begins this coming Sunday. Advent is a time to prepare. It makes us reminisce a religious season that is intertwined with hope and spiritual expectation. It is a moment when the Christian community prepares to commemorate the birth of Jesus – the God-is-with-us. Advent is the time to prepare the way of the coming of Christ at Christmas. In Advent, there is a feeling of great joy that Christians communicate to the world.

Stay awake be vigilant. This is the invitation for us because we do not know when the Master will come. This is our Gospel reading on the first Sunday of Advent. We need to be prepared always, so that when God will come, He will find us awake and vigilant for his coming.

I remember my good teacher in the maritime department who said, “whoever falls asleep behind the steering wheel of the ship, wakes up with the ship in danger”. It is a perilous act committed by a seaman to fall asleep; it is like abandoning the responsibility. We all know how shocking it is to fall asleep at the wrong time. To stay awake then, means that we are aware of the presence of God in our midst despite his being wholly other, that is, He is near yet far.

Furthermore, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI beautifully said: “Advent does not, for example, mean expectation as some may think. It is a translation of the Greek word Parousia, which means “presence” or more accurately, “arrival” that is, the beginning of a presence….Advent reminds us, therefore, of two things: first, that God’s presence in the world has already begun, that he is present, albeit in a hidden manner; second, that his presence has only begun and is not yet full and complete, that it is in a state of development, of becoming, and maturing towards its full form. His presence has already begun, and we, the faithful, are the ones through whom he wishes to be present in the world.”

Through the celebration of the Season of Advent, we shall be granted, once again, the time to experience the closeness of Jesus Christ in our world. The God who is Emmanuel, who guided history, and who cared for us to the point of sharing our humanity and who has truly become like us except sin. This is a great mystery of the God-with-us, indeed, the God who became one of us.

This is what we shall celebrate in the coming weeks of journeying towards Christmas. By this celebration of the Advent Season, we shall feel the guiding hand of the Church to accompany us in encountering Jesus in our lives. The beautiful image of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Mother of the Church assists us to experience the joyful expectation of the coming of her Son, who holds us all in his love that saves and consoles.

Moreover, the candles that we light on the dark nights are both an ease and caution. They are ease that the light of the world has already started to illumine in the darkness of Bethlehem where the first coming of Jesus was felt, and that ungodly night of sinfulness has been changed into the sacred night of God’s clemency. It is also a caution: the light of the candles wants us to keep shining. For us Christians, who always do the missionary work, may we become the light in the darkness. At same time, we are reminded that we always do the work of the Lord. Since Jesus Christ seeks to illumine the night of the world with his light by sharing His own light to us, the initial presence of Jesus must grow through us.

May our hope, as a true Christians turn to the future but remains firmly rooted in an event of the first coming of Jesus. May the incarnation of the Son of God be our hope as we celebrate the Season of Advent. As Saint Paul said in his letter to the Galatians: In the fullness of time, the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary: “Born of a woman, born under the law”. We hope and pray that celebrating the Season of Advent, we ourselves may be transformed according to the heart of Jesus.

Through this celebration, may the Lord give us the grace and joy of opening the new Liturgical Year, starting again with the new beginning with its freshness. Every beginning brings a special grace, because it is blessed by the Lord. (Bro. Soren Abellanosa)