Reflection
Advent – A Time for Hope and Peace
This Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent – the four-week season to prepare us for Christmas. Speaking to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the first Sunday of Advent in 2024, Pope Francis said, “Jesus’ invitation is this: Raise your head high and keep your heart light and awake,” as he was addressing a world grappling with what he called “cosmic upheavals and anxiety and fear in humanity.”
The pope noted that many people today, like Jesus’ contemporaries, faced with “catastrophic events they saw happening around them — persecutions, conflicts, natural disasters — are gripped by anxiety and think that the end of the world is coming.”
“Their hearts are weighed down with fear,” Francis observed. “Jesus, however, wants to free them from present anxieties and false convictions, showing them how to stay awake in their hearts, how to read events from the plan of God, who works salvation even within the most dramatic events of history.”
Looking toward Christmas, the pope connected the season’s message of hope with contemporary challenges: “All of us, in many moments of life, ask ourselves: What can I do to have a light heart, a wakeful heart, a free heart? A heart that does not let itself be crushed by sadness?”
The pontiff concluded with a stark warning about indifference to conflict, stating that “the quest for peace is the responsibility not of a few, but of all. If habituation and indifference to the horrors of war prevail, the whole, entire human family is defeated.”
May we all be people of Hope and Peace this Advent season.
Holy Family of Nazareth, be our inspiration and our guide.
Jesus of Nazareth, help us to grow in Faith, Wisdom and Knowledge.
