Today, the first Sunday of Advent, we begin a new year as a community of faith.   

We are opening a brand-new chapter of our spiritual journal.   

Yet, we realize that, most likely, what we are about to write might be a lot like some of our past entries.   

For some it will be uneventful—again; for others boring, flat—again; still, for others, scary, painful—again. 

Then, for the few lucky ones, it will be exciting, promising, successful, rewarding. 

That’s life, we might say. That’s the way it goes: some, perhaps just a few, will get the breaks; but most of us will get more of the same. 

All this sounds realistic, right? Yet it is unbecoming of people of Faith! 

This realistic view (perhaps even pessimistic) has been around since what the Israelites of Isaiah’s time felt.   

It was, it is the wrong one.  It is a view of the future held by people who face it all alone, or with the indirect support of others who share the same view and dream similar improbable dreams.   

This concept of time, for the Bible, is called CHRONOS.   

It is time marked by calendars and clocks, ruled by the inevitability of fate, inexorable deadlines and death. 

It is for people who do not know or forget that their lives unfold constantly under the guidance and protection of their Heavenly Father.  

But those who know this incredible truth live in KAIROS, i.e., time infused with grace, infused with the attention, the care, the love and protection of our Heavenly Father. 

The first reading (Isaiah 2:1-5) shows us how crucial it is for us, chosen people to live in KAIROS, because, by divine design, we are called to soar above our pain, our anxiety, our dejection, our boredom, our defeats, our self-absorption, and become a template, a pattern of grace-sustained optimism for all people to walk by.  

“That He may instruct us in His ways and we may walk in His paths.” Isaiah 2:3 

For this to happen, for us to lead a life that becomes a pattern of hope, of trust, of optimism, of resolve and dedication for many others, for entire nations, we ought to “awake” from the sleep of a life from which God is kept distant and disinterested. 

First, we must throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Romans 13:12 

We all know very well what the works of darkness are: our conscience points them out to us relentlessly and accurately.  But there is also the darkness of anxiety, restlessness and pain bordering on despair.   

It is the darkness of those fighting a deadly illness supported by a small circle of loved ones; of those   reeling from a sudden, terrible, numbing loss; of those experiencing that all their resources, energies, and wits have been sucked away by an unexpected blow. 

Hence, we who are just plugging along; we who are enjoying a mixture of joys and pains; we who, thankfully, find ourselves going back to God more often, of late, we ought to tell, to shout to them: We are sorry; we did not know; we forgot.  But we pledge to be more attentive to your plight. We, average, tepid Christians embarking on a new liturgical year, want to walk it with you in KAIROS.” 

We want to step away from the exterior chores of decorating, of sprucing up, of getting ready for Christmas, superficially, and focus on our God who has entered our Chronos and turned it into Kairos. 

We promise to get closer to you physically, emotionally, prayerfully, right after an honest listening of the story of your temporary darkness.   

Together we promise, then, to remind each other that our God’s flesh, so tender and charming only once, in the beginning, only for a few years as a child, at Bethlehem and at Nazareth, is now pierced; is now tortured; is now torn again in your flesh.  

And perhaps tomorrow, the flesh of our God who has changed Chronos into Kairos will be pierced, tortured, torn in us or in someone very dear to us.  

We’ll know, then, that he, the Lord of Kairos, sends you to be close to us and to remind us that we cannot afford to forget this comforting truth, and, even less, to ignore it. We must keep celebrating it every year!