Needed traits to Receive the Lord #2: READINESS

THE WORD IN ADVENT - 23rd December 

Malacchi 3:1-4,23-24; Luke 1: 57-66

Let us continue with the necessary traits to receive the Lord who comes to visit us...the second trait necessary is, Readiness. 

Readiness does not mean a mere passive waiting... it is an active preparation, without which one would miss the moment of truth.  The preparation would consist, first of all,  of knowing. It's the message we reflected this Sunday... Knowing and understanding, they form the first level of preparedness. 

Being prepared may not be enough. Speaking to a group of graduating students, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, made an enlightening statement, God bless him. He said, it is not enough to be prepared, but one needs to be ready. 

The coming of the Lord is a moment of truth for us, and we have to be ready - which is, to be prepared in heart and mind, of course. But along with that, to be ready in spirit and in action. To know and to live by what one knows, to believe and to live by what one believes - that is being ready! 

The first reading calls us to exactly to this - to be well disposed, to be refined as silver is refined in the furnace, to make our life worthy of the sacred mysteries we are about to celebrate. It is like the period of pain that Elisabeth and the time of muteness that Zachariah had to go through. The sacrament of Confession is a wonderful moment of refinement, a great sign of our READINESS to receive the Lord, this Christmas!

Have you made your confession yet?