First Sunday of Advent
Memorial of Saint Francis Xavier, a sixteenth-century Jesuit missionary in India and Japan.
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Homily
Advent, which opens the liturgical year, is a time that prepares us to Jesus' birth. The liturgy puts on our lips the ancient prayer of the prophet Isaiah: "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down" (Is 63:17; 64:1). Yes, "Turn back, Lord for the sake of your servants!" It is the prayer of this Advent but most of all it is the cry of many who much more than us are waiting for someone who come and save them. We all need the Lord to come back and visit the earth again. Without the desire of greater justice, larger solidarity, broader and more stable peace, the world is deprived of future of sorrow needs you. Africa, bathed in the blood of thousands of refugees, abandoned to themselves, needs you. So many countries where millions upon millions of poor die of hunger everyday need you. The great cities of the West that marginalize countless legions of the weak, the elderly and the sick need you. The hearts of many men and women need you so that their harshness may melt away, that they be moved with compassion for the poor and weak, and that they may work for a better future. "Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!"
Advents asks us to raise our eyes from ourselves and turn them up on high. The Gospel warns us: "Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come" (Mk 13, 33). Jesus compares believers to door keepers who need to beware of the moment the master will return: they must be awake and be nearby the door ready to open the door the master who comes back. It is the door of our heart but also the doors of our houses that need to welcome the poor and those who ask for help. They too are our "masters." We read in the book of Revelation: "Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me" (Rev 3:20).
Jesus' disciples need always to watch. As we know how east is for us to be caught by laziness and concentration on our things, let us listen to this Gospel so that we are not caught by sleep and indifference. Like it happened in Bethlehem, its inhabitants' selfishness and daze caused them not to open any door to Mary and Joseph who were knocking and Jesus will have to be born outside. We have this time of Advent to learn how to open the door to the Lord who is coming. Let us "beware and watch
" so that the same thing will not happen even in our time. St. Basil, knowing the Advent leads us to the heart of our faith, said that a Christian is "one who keeps vigilant every day and hour knowing that the Lord is coming."
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
