Brothers and sisters in the Lord
In the first reading the first thing that we should hear from all of the prophets, and we hear it today in the reading from the Prophet Zephaniah, is that God wants to love us, the God pardons us and that God invites us to be renewed in love. We are renewed because God loves us and we are renewed because we are able to love others.
The second thing that we need to hear is in the second reading, from the Letter to the Philippians: “The Lord is near.” Because of that we can ask God for all that we need. We don’t need to by shy! We can ask that our hearts be changed, we can ask for all that we lack, we can ask for love and for strength, we can ask for chastity and for goodness—and all of this with confidence in this God who loves us so very much. Advent should make us absolutely convinced of God‘s love for us and should invite us to love God in return!
When we come to today’s Gospel, we hear the wonderful commonsense advice of Saint John the Baptist: If you have something extra, give it to the person who does not have enough. If you are doing wrong, then begin to do right.
When we meet anyone who seems to have a true sense of right and wrong, we are impressed. We can even begin to think, as did Saint John the Baptist’s contemporaries—that this person is a special person of God, perhaps even very close to God. But if the person really is from God, then the person will point us to God and not to himself or herself.
This is such an important lesson! Whenever we are impressed with anyone, we must stop for a moment and ask ourselves: Where is this person leading me? If the person is leading me deeper into the mystery of God, that is fine. But if the person is only binding me to himself or herself, then I must move away from that relationship. This is a difficult teaching, but one that is at the heart of any authentic spirituality.
So in this time of Advent, we are invited to look clearly at the teachings of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We are invited to meditate on His word and to consider what His word asks of us. May our hearts come to know that God is the whole meaning of our life and that we are invited to live in that relationship. We can say with the people who wrote the Bible: “Bless the Lord my soul, all my being, bless His holy name!”
May this time of Advent draw us deep into the mysteries of this God who loves us and may we know God’s love and compassion. Let us respond to the Lord by loving one another! Let us rejoice in the Lord always!

This post is not 100% composed by me