We are not a people, that are like we read in the Old Testament, in anticipation of the coming of Jesus. We know that Jesus has already come so this is not our focus. We can learn from them and participate and deepen our desire for Jesus= coming that way but ours is richer than that. We have to have a stronger kind of faith. One element of faith is that as Msgr. Guissani says: AIt=s the openness to, the awareness of. an exceptional presence.@ That presence is blocked by us.

        If we follow what Bernard says: AWe make false judgements, not fully on the truth of things, then when we pursue them then we don=t achieve the outcomes that are necessary. @ That=s because we have also desires, that is, there=s in us a desire to shape our own destiny. To force things and make things happen according to our meanings, our goals, our values, our pleasures and thereby really block out the presence of God who is there offering us the real meaning of the present moment.

        Merton says that Advent is the time to desire that the eternal and time become one not merely in Christ but in each of us in our world and in our time. If that=s going to be possible then it means that we have to put ourselves aside. We have to die, and let the life of Christ take over. We have great need. Great need for humility to profit from this season. Von Baltazar said that it takes more humility to acknowledge our mediocrity, our complacency, then to admit we are sinners.

        This is where we need to turn to the Blessed Mother since in the season of Advent we celebrate the Immaculate Conception we have someone who is precisely this way. Who is open to the eternal, the exceptional presence all her life, but especially already here at the very beginning? That grace of her Immaculate Conception is not simply for herself, but like any mother, she wants to share what she has been given and she will give this grace to us. It=s like the woman with her child who came to Castel Gondolfo. After the Mass the Pope was passing out rosaries and he gave her one and she was so emotionally upset about it she began to leave. The Pope grabbed her arm and placed another rosary in her hand for the child. At first the woman didn=t catch on. The Pope was saying that child too has a relationship to the Blessed Mother. So the mother took the rosary and placed it into the hands of the child. Later on in his life he could say he received the rosary from the Pope.

        The Blessed Mother, because she=s been given this great grace of the Immaculate Conception, grants us also a participation in that openness. So she will grant this grace to us so that we can make our Advent of 2005, at least the liturgical year, fruitful and deepening into the exceptional presence that embraces us.

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