The WORD in ADVENT - December 23
Malacchi 3:1-4,23-24; Luke 1: 57-66
Let us continue today reflecting on the necessary traits to receive the Lord who comes to visit us...the first trait we had said, was eagerness and the second trait that we see today 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. There is an interesting saying: it is not enough to be prepared, but one needs to be ready! There are many, for instance, who keep preparing themselves for a special moment but are never ready to really live the moment!
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, we need 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. For us, the sacrament of Reconciliation is a wonderful moment of refinement, a great sign of our READINESS to receive the Lord, this Christmas!
The antiphon of the Novena today, O Emmanuel (based on the famous prophecy of Isaiah 7:14), is the key to understand the mystery of incarnation. The presence of God with us is the greatest of all the promises that we can think of. Christ comes as the fulfilment and the most complete expression of that promise: as God among us. The symbol given is the virgin with the child in the manger. The manger is a lovely symbol that unites the heaven and the earth, the Divine and the human!
The prayer today is that the Lord our God, save us by God's saving presence... in simple words it is beseeching the Lord to stay with us, to live with us, to sanctify us, to make us worthy of God who is always with us!