Where Are You?

This very first question, asked by God in Eden after our parents committed the original sin, echoes throughout the history of mankind ever since. We are getting lost from tike to time and God is looking tirelessly and patiently for us. 

When Advent comes, the same question resounds in the sacred space of the holy season with increased intensity. Where are you? God is searching for us. It is a continuous Search and Rescue Mission. The four weeks of Advent represent four seasons of our lives - childhood, adolescence, adulthood and the autumn of our lives. The primordial Divine Question is present in all four of them... 

This SAR mission, intensified in Advent time, is constructed upon three major keywords. 

The first keyword - the voice of the messenger of God crying in the wilderness. St. John Baptist reverberates the everlasting desire of God the Father to gather us anew in His House. But we must go out of our routine lives and seek this voice in the wilderness, in solitude of our private prayer, times of meditation and reflection, private visitations of the Blessed Sacrament, participating fully in the Advent Liturgy, where we can actually hear this voice, at the same time detaching ourselves from the noise of this world, cacophony of sounds which, in part, we create ourselves or entertain too much!

The second keyword is the road. The road which interconnects Jesus with me, with us. This road cannot be laid out and constructed unless we find ourselves first! We know who is Jesus and where we can find Him. The problem lies with the starting point of this journey towards Him. Where am I? Where am I in this particular point of my life? If I know the answer to this question, then I will know how this road to Jesus should be built.

The Advent brings forth the first question of God and dresses it in our own personal experience. The question - where are you? - becomes a question which I, as a conscious person, who wants to live in truth, no matter how painful it may be - should ask myself - where am I? so I could understand how to trace and laid out anew this interconnecting road between me and Jesus...

So, in my personal understanding, the Advent is a very special time in which God gives me a unique grace and light to figure out where I am in order to rediscover myself, redefine myself, to find the truth about myself, the full picture of my present state, what is good and wrong in me and around me, to understand what to do precisely, what obstacles to overcome or remove - to connect myself anew with Jesus, and through Him with others...

Once I know where I am in this particular point of my life, and what is good and wrong with me, I will know what to do (with the help of the Liturgy and the Living Word of God and Sacraments, especially - the Reconciliation and the Eucharist) to construct and maintain properly this interconnecting road between me and Jesus, allowing my life to be merged again with the LIfe of God Himself. This spiritual, organic work I will undertake with the help of the Holy Spirit living and working tirelessly in His Church.

Four weeks of Advent. Four seasons of our lives. The primordial question of concerned God. And unavoidable task of finding myself anew each day of my life to stay connected with HIM.