Message from Pastor

My dearest brothers and sisters:

 

Daily life is the best place for learning, provided we are able to open our eyes wide to contemplate what is happening and remain silent to let it settle in our hearts. These past few years, I have had the difficult experience of awaiting the death of people who were with me at the beginning of my life. When that moment arrives, every gesture, every word, every glance becomes filled with meaning and is then treasured in our hearts. Accustomed to wasting time or being unaware of the passing hours, when the end of a loved one’s life is marked on the calendar, every moment counts, allowing us to fill it with a love that extends to infinity and eternity.

 

This personal experience comes to me with force as I listen to Jesus inviting us, on this first Sunday of Advent, to be awake and prepared because we do not know when the Lord of the house will appear. Certainly, we die as we have lived. That’s why I think today’s call isn’t so much to do something special in an extraordinary moment as it is to make the ordinary things of each day special.

 

Being awake means breaking free from the routine that makes us live too fast and infects us with functionalism and the pursuit of efficiency. We can live as if life were a biological cycle in which we pass through stages, or we can, on the contrary, open our eyes to every little detail and put our heart into everything we do, moved by our hope in God.

 

I invite you to be silent and contemplate, because silence allows many experiences to settle within us, and only in this way, through contemplation, is it possible to learn from them. I invite you to listen and to dialogue, because prayer is an encounter with a God who is close to us, who walks, works, laughs, suffers, and waits with us. Being prepared means speaking frequently with Him about what we are going through. Any circumstance in life, however painful, can be an opportunity to encounter God if we are able to contemplate it from the perspective of mystery, read it with the eyes of faith, and keep it in our hearts with hope.

 

In the last days I spent with my mother—since I saw that the end was imminent I frequently asked her, "Are you at peace?" To which she would respond with a serene "yes," a gentle smile, and a firm gaze full of love and trust in the God of whom she had always been a friend. That is being awake and prepared, and that began to take shape many years before the moment arrived.

 

Happy Sunday!

 

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