Advent: Wake up!
HOW time flies! We are now ending another year and for Catholics, this Sunday is First ADVENT, the New Year of the church liturgical calendar.
Advent comes from the Latin word “adventus” which literally means “coming.” This “coming” does not refer primarily to the coming of Christmas bonus and gifts, Sta. Claus and Christmas parties.
** * Advent refers to the coming of Jesus the Christ on Christmas as well as his second coming at the end of the world.
In this first Sunday of Advent, the call is to “wake up” (Rom 13,11) or “stay wake” (Mt 24, 43); “Hoy Gising,” in local parlance.
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It does not mean that we are literally in state of dormition--although some people are perennially in that state!--but it means waking up from SPIRITUAL slumber. In short, it is a call for renewal.
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We would do well to pause and ponder where our life is heading to? Am I making any progress or retrogressing? Do I realize how time flies? But most importantly, am I making effort to
change for the better?
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There’s a true story of an American TV personality who reveals how he was heavy drinker during his glory days, and how, for 20 years, he was hooked on alcohol along with taking drugs.
*** Finally, one morning while facing the mirror seeing the wrinkles on his face and droopy eyes, and realizing that his life has had no direction, he asked, “Sid, do you want to live, or do you want to die?” It dawned on him that his life was wasting away by drinking and popping pills. That broke the ice.
* ** He decided to stop the downward skid to self-destruction, and started to reconstruct his life and his relationship with his wife and children.
“I didn’t realize during those 20 years,” the repentant man confided, “that I had stopped appreciating my wife, and I couldn’t even talk to my children. Our family is a lot closer now.
*** “I know I can’t make up 20 years of domestic fighting and drinking in a couple of years, but I’m trying very hard.”
Sid’s conversion happened because he woke up to the call of renewal from within.
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Conversion applies also to us as a nation. It’s been repeatedly said that the cause of national stagnation and economic retrogression is traced to our negative traits: graft and corruption, lack of discipline, crab mentality, greed, to mention some.
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There is no real transformation in society unless there is an inner personal transformation. For whatever is wrong with society is the accumulated result of whatever is wrong with the people who compose it.
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Who fight senseless wars, who cause death and poverty, who pollute our atmosphere and rivers? Society doesn’t do it, people do.
Hence, if more and more individuals change for the better, then society will likewise change for the better.
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Hoy, gising! Wake up! Examine where you have failed and start to reform. That’s the message of Advent. And that’s the best way to prepare for Christmas, too.
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