Another liturgical year is dawning within the Church. Indeed, we assemble in its opening hours. Permit me to share an observation from Our Holy Father, which he voiced during his Angelus message last year. “Today, with the First Sunday of Advent, we begin a new liturgical year. This season invites us to reflect on the dimension of time, which always exerts great fascination over us.…I wish to start with a very concrete observation: we all say that we do not have enough time, because the pace of daily life has become frenetic for everyone. In this regard too, the Church has ‘good news’ to bring: God gives us his time. We always have little time; especially for the Lord, we do not know how or, sometimes, we do not want to find it. Well, God has time for us! This is the first thing that the beginning of a liturgical year makes us rediscover with ever new amazement.”

So, God stands before us on this first day of this new liturgical year, offering us the gift of time, His time infused with the assurance of His presence. In every moment of His gift to us, He is present.

The question for us is: what shall we do with the gift of time which God is giving us at the beginning of this new liturgical year? Again, let us listen to Pope Benedict XVI: “Yes, God gives us his time, because he entered history with his Word and his works of salvation to open it to eternity….In this prospective, already in itself time is a fundamental sign of God's love: a gift that man, as with everything else, is able to make the most of or, on the contrary, to waste; to take in its significance or to neglect with obtuse superficiality” (Ibid.). The question repeats itself: what shall we do with the gift of His time this year? How shall we use this time to our benefit and to the benefit of others, all the while giving glory and praise to God, the Giver of this gift?

The answer begins to be found in the word with which we describe the opening season of this new liturgical year: Advent. Advent means “coming” and in the time of salvation history, there are three moments when Christ comes to us in significant and salvific ways.

The opening Advent liturgy — on this First Sunday of Advent — invites us to become aware of and to expect the third and final coming of Christ at the end of time, when He will come in glory as judge and king. Today’s Gospel account from Saint Luke’s version reminds us: “And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Lk 21:27).

As we move through the Advent season, drawing ever closer to Christmas Day, we are invited to prepare for the reliving of Christ’s first coming to us — His birth as the Son of God made man for our salvation at Bethlehem. His birth inaugurated the process of our redemption to be finalized by His suffering, Death on the Cross and Resurrection on the third day.

But between that final coming of Christ and His first coming, there is a third – a continuous coming of Christ. He comes to us every day, often each day, if we allow Him to enter. As the Book of Revelation reminds us, He stands at the door and knocks and waits for us to open and let Him in so that He can have supper and be with us and we with Him (cf. Rev 3:20).

So, then, what is the attitude, the mindset, with which we must respond to this continuous coming of Christ, this coming of Christ that lies between the first and the final one? Well, today’s Gospel teaches us: be vigilant, be alert, or as we might more popularly say, make the most of the present moment. We need to be alert, to be aware, to be vigilant, and we need to pray with confident hope. After all, do we not say in every Mass, “as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and do we not often pray that prayer that Jesus gave to Saint Faustina, “Jesus I trust in You”? You see, if we are alert, vigilant, praying with confident hope, then we shall be sensitive enough, aware enough, to all those comings of Christ each day. We shall be prepared to follow the advice Saint Paul gives us in today’s second reading when he tells us that we, with God’s grace, must increase and abound in love for one another and for all, when he exhorts us to conduct ourselves in the way he has already taught us, but to do so even more, to make even greater progress. If we are alert and pray with confident hope, then we shall not become drowsy, we shall not be overcome by the anxieties of daily life, we shall then be ready for that final coming at the end of each of our lives. Every time I put away a volume of the breviary, I ask myself: will I be here next year to open it again. We need to be ready for we know not the day or the hour. Yes, the gift of time at the beginning of this new liturgical year is such a precious gift of God so let us receive it with joy and with hope so that we may make the most of it under His loving care each day because it is His gift infused with His presence.

Just for a few moments let me turn our attention to you, the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist. Liturgically, you are observing today the thirty-sixth anniversary of your foundation. When the Holy See signed that Decree back in 1973, that was the first offering of a new kind of time to the new community. It was God’s gift to you and for thirty-six years each of you who have formed this new community have been not only receiving God’s gift of time, but using it as best you can according to His will: the instructions of your Constitutions and Holy Rule, your own individual apostolates and your own individual lives. Now, today, a new liturgical year extends for you the gift of time as members of the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, a new year with more time: time to grow into intimacy with the Lord that lies surely at the heart of every disciple’s life, but all the more for those disciples who are bound, linked to the Lord more closely through poverty, chastity and obedience; time for you to continue enriching the Church wherever you find yourselves, and in this local church with your charism; time to rebuild the Church, repair the Church, in the spirit of Saint Francis and Saint Clare; time to discover, perhaps in new ways, the meaning of God’s Word and even more the implications of His will; time to prepare for His coming at that last moment in each of our lives. So rejoice in the extension of His gift, the gift begun in 1973, the gift that continues in 2009 for as many years as His loving providence wills.

Yes, today, on this opening day of a new church year, a new liturgical year, with great joy and even deeper hope, we accept what the Lord gives us, the gift of His time infused with His presence. Saint Paul’s words so aptly end our reflection: “May God who has begun this good work in you bring it to fulfillment in the day of Christ Jesus.” Amen.