From Our Pastor

Someone in love knows that the person they love will always be in their thoughts, dreams, fantasies, and conversations. Believing in Christ means falling in love with Him. Jesus does not abandon us. In Cycle “C,” we are beginning this weekend with the First Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the 2025 Liturgical Year. The evangelist Luke highlights the tenderness of Jesus towards the least, the marginalized, the excluded, and the sinners.

As I said, this Sunday is the first Sunday of the Advent season. The word Advent referred to the visit of a king to a city or the day of the king’s coronation. Christians adopted this term to indicate the period of preparation for the visit of God, who manifested himself in Jesus.

Perhaps some of us have had the experience of waiting for a visit from a friend or family member, and we were waiting for their arrival at the wrong station or bus terminal, or we were late and missed the appointment time and could not meet with that person. The same thing sometimes happens with God. He has already come many times in the history of humanity. He showed us the “place” where he could be found, but perhaps we did not understand him well because we ended up waiting for him where he did not arrive. Advent is a time that helps us prepare well to receive the Lord into our lives. And not wait for him in “places” where he will not arrive.

Today’s Gospel gives us some dramatic expressions of something that will happen. We could easily confuse it with predictions that Jesus gives in advance about what will happen at the world’s end. But that is not the meaning of the text. The apocalyptic images used by Jesus do not refer to explosions of stars or catastrophic collisions of planets. The message is symbolic and talks about what is happening today. It becomes impossible to live in our world. People commit abuses and injustices, hatred reigns, and there is violence, war, and inhuman conditions. The exploitation of resources destroys nature itself.

Jesus does not intend to provoke fear but to achieve the opposite. He wants to free us from fear, inspire joy, and instill hope. Today’s Gospel invites everyone to “lift our heads.” There is no chaos from which God cannot obtain a new and wonderful world.

How do we stay awake, alert, and ready to take advantage of the time and place where the Lord is? It is very easy to get confused, deceived, and wait for him where he is not; that is, in our bad habits, our attachment to the goods and positions of this world.

There is only one way to remain vigilant: to pray. Jesus himself has told us that prayer will have two effects: it will give us the strength to see all the events of life with the eyes of God, and it will prevent us from being overcome by fear. Prayer will prepare us to welcome Him and go with Him wherever He wants to take us.

Fr. Lalo Jara, OFM
Pastor, Mission San Luis Rey Parish

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