DAILY MEDITATION: 'Stay awake, then, for you do not know on what day your Lord will come'

Liturgical day: First Sunday of Advent (A)

Gospel text (Mt 24,37-44): Jesus said to his disciples, 'At the coming of the Son of Man it will be just as it was in the time of Noah. In those days before the Flood, people were eating and drinking, and marrying, until the day when Noah went into the ark. Yet they did not know what would happen until the flood came and swept them away. So will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. Of two men in the field, one will be taken and the other left. Of two women grinding wheat together at the mill, one will be taken and the other left.

'Stay awake, then, for you do not know on what day your Lord will come. Just think about this: if the owner of the house knew that the thief would come by night around a certain hour, he would stay awake to prevent his house to be broken into. So be alert, for the Son of Man will come at the hour you least expect'.

'Stay awake, then, for you do not know on what day your Lord will come'

Mons. José Ignacio ALEMANY Grau, Emeritus Bishop of Chachapoyas
(Chachapoyas, Peru)

Today, 'just as it was in the time of Noah', people eats, drinks, marry and give in marriage, with the aggravating factor that man takes man, and woman takes woman (cf. Mt 24,37-38). But there are also, as in patriarch Noah’s day, saints in the same office and in the same place than the others. And one of them will be taken and the other left, because the Just Judge will come.

We must be awake for 'only those who are alert are not taken by surprise' (Benedict XVI). We must be prepared with our love enkindled in our heart, as the torch of the wise virgins. This is precisely what it is all about: there will come the time when we will hear: 'Behold, the Bridegroom is here!' (Mt 25, 6), Jesus Christ!

His arrival is always causing joy to those who carry the torch fastened in their heart. His coming is something like the parent who lives in a faraway country and writes his family: —when you less expect it, I will be there. From that day on, all is joy in that home: Our Dad is coming! Our model, the Saints, lived like this, “waiting for the Lord to come”.

The Advent is meant to learn to await with peace and love, the Lord who is coming. Nothing of the despair and eagerness typifying the nowadays man. Saint Augustine gives us a good recipe to await: 'live your life as you would like your death to be'. If we await with love, God will satiate our heart and our hopes.

Stay awake, for you do not know on what day our Lord will come (cf. Mt 24, 42). Clean home, pure heart, thoughts and sentiments in Jesus’ style. Benedict XVI explains: 'To watch means to follow the Lord, to choose what He has chosen, to love what He has loved, to conform one's own life to His'. Then the Son of Man will come… and the Father will embrace us for resembling his Son.

Source: evangeli.net