December 2021

The last Sunday of this year’s Advent is the first day of celebration. Advent ends. Christmas begins. Four candles are lighted on an Advent wreath. It’s not a decoration, it’s a clock reminding us of how great gift the time is. We live in time. No moment comes back. Every hour is a gift and a task. Each day brings new challenges and new grace. New hardships and new joys. How much do we respect our effort? No doubt a lot. But if the time would not be given to us, it would not be anything. Together with time and its passing, everything is a gift. We can multiply and improve this gift. 

Therefore, when something ends, something also is a beginning. That is why Christians should be happy. What is the biggest gift? The time? No. The biggest gift is the coming of God’s Son in the time and the space of our earthly history. It was announced by the prophets. The biggest gift is that God the Father gave us His only Son, and the Son gave himself. Since that time we start to count passing of years. It is not an important mistake of time – the reference point itself is important: the day on which God said His “yes” and Mary replied “yes”. Soon she went on the road and went with a hurry to Elizabeth, carrying th Mystery yet invisible to eyes. Many people passed the young Miriam carrying Jesus’ already conceived. How many of them felt that this beautiful and smiling girl is not someone ordinary? How many felt the presence of God? 

For sure Elizabeth: Blessed you are among women! – she cried – Blessed fruit of your womb! She guessed by herself? No. This is the third gift of God: the evangelist says that the Holy Spirit filled Elizabeth. I would like to have a heart as sensitive as she, so I wont miss the biggest gift. To not miss the moment when Jesus will stand at my door. I need the gift of the Holy Spirit. Faith is not naivety. On the contrary – the naive is that it seems that everything can be explained and prove. We know that the faith is God’s gift. So you can always multiply it. You can also, unfortunately, turn off this spark of faith, and to lose the gift. While a man lives, while the time of earthly life flows, while we light up further candles on an Advent wreath, while you can free yourself from naivety and self-confidence – there is a hope to ignite the spark of faith. 

The last days of Advent, are for Christians, for me and for you, days of gratitude: to God of Father – for giving us His Son. To God the Son – for the fact that He wanted to be one of us… that He had a mother, a donkey, Bethlehem … and after years – the cross, to actually be one of us to the very end. To God the Holy Spirit – for the fact that with a gift of faith, He allows us to see further than the most courageous human expectations. The days of great gratitude are about to begin …

People gathered at the Jordan River were shaken by the words of St. John the Baptist, they also felt the near presence of Jesus. They stood and cried: “What should we do?” St. John said: Love your neighbors with your attitude and word; a man is the greatest value of the world. The world without humans would be nonsense and nothing.

Advent is a time, where we especially have to sensitize our hearts for the needs of a second person. Living in the Church community, we have to think about how we will experience our Christmas time. Are we going to have sad, crying, unhappy and broken faithful? Such sense have words: “If anyone has two dresses … and who has food, let them do so.” Because we are children of one God.

But St. John the Baptist goes deeper. He reminds about the greatness and dignity of man. “Do not bully no one … do not oppress anyone”, that is love your neighbors. In the community, such as the Church, there is a place for all people: and this newborn who will be baptize soon, and the elderly who cannot do anything on his own. For healthy and sick, strong and weak, for everyone! Today in the world, and also in our country, what is weak, fragile, which seemingly does not bring profit is reject, and a faithful person, living in a godly manner and life according to the Jesus’ Gospel feels anxiety, breaking and humiliation.

St. John the Baptist does not demand that people – like him – will go to the desert to live an ascetic life, but calls and encourages us to see another person, and to understand that Christ also comes to the earth for other people.

Today’s Gospel evokes the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord, straighten the paths for Him, every valley should be filled, each mountain and hunts, the winding roads let them become simple and bumpy with smooth roads. And all people will see God’s salvation.” This meaningful picture of work related to the equalization and preparation of roads shows an extremely artistic way what to do in human life: a complete internal change. Our daily experience tells us that the tasks which we have to do or the effects of professional work every day, you can easily verify, evaluate and reward. However, when we penetrate into the heart of man, we are thinking about this work, which is called “work on yourself“, it turns out that achieving specific effects and their evaluation is not so simple and obvious.

I encourage that the Advent time, especially the confession preparing us for Christmas celebration, did not leave anyone indifferent on calls to prepare the Lord’s ways in our lives. Just as the setting of a new road demands a specific, planned work of many people, so our way to God needs an internal commitment that will not stop on saying of several learned sentences, but through specific resolutions and actions will lead us to authentic improvement.