Most of us can remember being told to ‘wake up’ when we were growing up. Maybe the words came from one of our parents after we tried to catch a few extra minutes of sleep on a school day. Maybe it was in the classroom when we discovered that not only did we not know the answer to a teacher’s question but we didn’t even hear the question! For many of us, waking up is hard to do!

In the next four weeks, the Church invites us to enter into the longing of those who first waited for the coming of the Messiah. Scripture helps us to do this through the figures of Isaiah, John the Baptist and Mary. Advent also directs our minds and hearts to await Christ’s second coming at the end of time, spoken of in Matthew’s Gospel (MT 24:37-44): stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord will come. Advent is a time to wake up to God’s love, and to realize more fully that God wants us to love one another as God loves us – unconditionally. It is a time, especially, to renew our hearts in and through love; for the best way for us to prepare to remember the celebration of God’s coming among us in Jesus is through a conversion of our hearts.

It’s time for us to wake up! Advent invites us to wake up to something wonderful, to some good news – and that news is this: Jesus is coming! Let us prepare ourselves to receive him.