We are at the beginning of this New Liturgical Year, marked by the precariousness of a pandemic that is bringing all our false and fleeting securities to the surface.
This year, Advent is coming at a really difficult time! We are part of a bewildered humanity in need of reworking wounds, fatigue, and grief, but perhaps also more eager not to lose, or perhaps to rediscover more human times from which to start over to be rebuilt on both an interior and social level.
During this crisis time, we are called to announce our Hope cherished by the certainty of God’s presence. He is Emmanuel, the God with us, who, in choosing incarnation, prefers the way of weakness, in order to become a quiet travel companion. God does not leave humanity alone along the roads of life, but in Love God sustains each person’s journey by giving meaning and fullness.
During this unprecedented and unfortunate season, the opportunity for us to tend to the Lord with ready hearts is renewed so that our waiting may become a generative place and our hope of encountering Christ may make new trust flourish.
We are suggesting an outline for a personal and community journey for each person with which the Word dwelling in us may transform us and enable our hearts to generate life and carry light wherever we go at all times.
In this time we have been enriched by a very beautiful gift, Encyclical Fratelli tutti that Pope Francis wanted to offer to every man and woman of good will. So the Word of God and a few quotes from this document, so rich, will accompany us to offer us a broader horizon to live with hope and look forward with faith, renewed by the Paschal passage of the Lord.
The Word of God and the encyclical Fratelli tutti offer us a broader horizon for living with hope and looking forward with renewed faith from the Lord’s paschal experience.
First week
BE ATTENTIVE
“At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” (Mark 13:33.37.)
Attentiveness is the first indispensable attitude for going deeper and taking care of ourselves and life in its various forms. Living attentive to the Word, to the cry of the poor, to the world, to what is happening in and around us, enables us to generate a newness, a dynamic spirit, creativity and communion.
Only in paying close attention to God and to others through vigilant listening, do we develop a deep passion about the friendship God established with humanity through Jesus and do we discover we are called to make this divine presence transparent in us.
Pope Francis in the encyclical Fratelli tutti writes: “The attention we pay to others creates an orientation to gratuitously search for their welfare and urges us to seek the best thing for their lives.” ( n.93) to make us a welcoming womb.
It is only by paying profound attention to the Other who is God and to the others who are our brothers and sisters through attentive listening that we become deeply passionate about the friendship that God established with humanity through Jesus. And because of this friendship we rediscover ourselves every day called to be transparency of this divine presence.
In this week, then, we want to ask ourselves:
How do I cultivate attentiveness so as to transform life, my life but also the lives of others?
May the Holy Spirit help us to go deeper and may the attention we pay to others be a generative space for communion and a new covenant.
Have a nice journey.