The prophesied and long-awaited Saviour is about to be born and nobody notices anything. The world goes on completely oblivious to this greatest event, and only Mary and Joseph know. The world is in darkness and Christ is still in Our Lady’s womb. Those times are similar in many ways to today, when most seem to be oblivious to His Second Coming which is close. Advent is a time of waiting.

In the Gospel, St John the Baptist comes on the scene. His whole life and mission is to prepare the way for the Lord in the hearts of the people. As prophesied by Isaiah he is a: Voice crying in the wilderness calling the people to repentance. He received his vocation from his mother’s womb and was sanctified at the Visitation. The preparation to receive the Lord necessarily always involves repentance because there can be no genuine conversion without true sorrow and a turning away from sin. People from all over Jerusalem and Judah went to receive John’s Baptism in the Jordan. This however, wasn’t the same as Christian Baptism, which is infinitely greater. St John the Baptist lived a very austere life, completely detached from worldly comforts and pleasures. He wore camel skins, a leather girdle and lived on locusts and wild honey in the desert, relying totally on divine providence. St John fully understood his mission and when Jesus commenced His public mission, John would say: I must now decrease, and He must increase. Some of Jesus’s first disciples had been disciples of the Baptist.

We live in a neo-pagan world where the prevailing culture doesn’t support the Faith and is often hostile to it. Many people have become victims of materialism, they have been swept along with the flow and thrown themselves heart and soul into possessing material things, as if these were their last end. The times we are living in are times of great apostasy, the general loss of the Faith. They are times of tribulation, and in order to stay strong, we need an assiduous prayer life, regular sacramental Confession and to make the Holy Mass the centre of our lives.

Let’s ask Our Lady, Queen of the Holy Rosary to help us to prepare for Christmas and the Second Coming. In addition lets aim to bring others to know and serve the Lord, the source of every happiness. Praise be Jesus Christ, now and forever!

Praise be Jesus Christ, now and forever!