Advent: What the fourth candle – ” the Degli Angels” teaches us…”Those who announced the birth of the Savior”
The last purple candle in the Advent wreath is called “degli Angeli” to pay homage to those who announced the birth of the Savior.
On this fourth and last Sunday of Advent we light the candle that reminds us of the Christmas of Jesus, which is now upon us.
Advent is about to end and collective anxiety is growing at the thought of things still to be done. Who is taken from the purchase of the latest gifts, who from the menu for the party, who argues about who is better to invite and who is not, who pin the people to whom to wish you not to risk forgetting someone. In short, we are all worried in this period more than in any other of the year and so we move, indeed we run but in the wrong direction.
The waiting time before Christmas is transformed from a path towards Someone who comes, to a continuous movement towards something else: the shops, supermarkets, restaurants and everything that surrounds the main event. Instead today’s candle wants to bring our attention back to the announcement of the extraordinary event of the coming of Jesus that is about to be born despite all our distractions.
Advent is the metaphor for life
Advent is the time that prepares us for the celebration of Christmas but also reminds us that life is an expectation. Each of us is waiting for something good, if only for a nice sunny day after the rain, which has abounded in the last two months. Each of us generically expects something positive for our life, but many would not even know what exactly.
But we as Christians do not wait for something indefinite, we wait for a person , and the grace we want to ask is to meet Jesus. The risk we run is to be distracted by even good things but not to notice Jesus who is coming. And it’s terrible not to notice anything.
How can we not be fooled by everything that distracts us?
Mary and Joseph come to help us with their example , and become a model to be imitated through the exercise of the virtues that have distinguished them. Here are some useful tips to follow in these very last days of Advent : watch over prayer; cultivate silence, and it is not just a matter of not speaking but of dominating all the passions that shake our hearts, and then prayer becomes adoration, not only in front of the Blessed Sacrament but adoring prayer of the presence of the Lord in the other, in situations daily; to be available to God’s plan, to rejoice in waiting, to reach out to a service of love for one’s neighbor.
And let us remember that the encounter with the Lord takes place objectively in the Word, in the Eucharist, the true body and true blood of Christ, and in everyday reality . The Lord comes to us through all those situations that we live but that we do not decide but that actually happen, and are the place, the means, the road that the Lord takes to come to us. Just like interpersonal relationships, they are a place where the Lord manifests himself.
We make Our Lady’s invitation to Medjugorje our own. “Pray, pray, pray” , and that each of us can turn to God with these words: “Arouse in us, God the Father, the will to go to meet Christ your Son who comes” .
Simona Amabene
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