Monday - Second Week of Advent

Readings: Isaiah 35: 1-10; Psalm 85; Luke 5: 17-26

It is very easy in our busy lives to put religion on the “back burner” – we try to get to Mass every Sunday, we say a prayer every now and then (when we remember), but other than that, we can very easily let our faith slip our mind. We are so busy worrying about organising our lives and solving the various problems that arise that we forget that it is ultimately Jesus who is the organising principle of our life, and the solution to our problems.

Thus, in Advent, with its theme of vigilance, the Church puts before our minds the various images of the end times and of Christ’s second coming that we find in the Scriptures, the point to which all life is tending. In today’s first reading, we find a beautiful image of the results of our salvation, when all that hinders our joy will be taken away. It is an amazing thing to hope for. In the Gospel, however, we are reminded of the particularity of Christian hope: this salvation which Isaiah foresaw has already worked itself out in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the historical life of Jesus, in his many miracles and most of all in his Passion, our salvation has already been won, and through his Church, which makes that salvation present in the world of today, we come to share already now in God’s gift of eternal life: so our hope looks forward not to some future event, but to the full realisation of what has already been given to us ‘in sacramental guise’ (as St Thomas Aquinas says in his prayer before Holy Communion).

In this season of Advent, then, let us pray for an increase in the gift of hope, that we may come to a deeper awareness of the salvation given to us in Baptism, and so order our whole lives towards Christ, in whom is the consummation of all things.