This year, we are given the verb of waiting turned into a clear word: TO WAIT FOR YOU! And as we wait for you, we discover that waiting is not absence, but a presence polished by the memory of what is to come. It is not a silence that falls, but a breathing that becomes more finely tuned, a step that finds its order, a candle that is lit with patience. Welcome, Advent, year of hope: may your coming not be a whisper lost in the crowd of days, but a promise that settles in the heart, a pulse that sets the course.
To inhabit this Advent is to inhabit the house of the gaze. To look, not in order to gather pretty images, but to see with the clarity that transforms. To look a lot. To look where no one looks, or where you forgot to look because of weariness. For the gaze, when it is faithful, does not condemn the world; it invites it to lean out towards the truth: the truth of our fragility which, nevertheless, holds the power of grace. In that gaze that does not give up is forged the capacity to forgive, to reconcile, to choose the narrow path that leads to life. And so, every Sunday, we light a candle not to fill a void with light, but to remember that the light is already there, waiting on the threshold of every dawn.
This Advent is not a calendar, but a pathway of Sundays that stretch out like a promise repeated and deepened. Each candle lit is a memory that rises up: of those who taught us to believe, of those who showed us the value of patience, of that child who knew how to look at the world with wonder. A candle is lit for each of the seasons of the heart: justice that questions, compassion that embraces, humility that welcomes, hope that sustains. And when the shadows lengthen, the flame does not go out; it adjusts, it steadies, it is transformed into a compass for the road.
As we await your coming, Advent, I say to you: here I am, with my doubts and with my faith, with my tired rhythms and my pulses surprised by grace. I will wait for you, and to wait with you becomes a way of life. Not to hurry you, but to learn to discern your signs in the everyday: in the laughter of a child, in the simple words of an elder who keeps memory alive, in the music that rises like a sigh from creation. I will wait with you, attentive and expectant, patient and walking. For waiting, when it is well lived, is not passivity; it is a form of openness: to open the door of the inner house so that what we do not yet see may enter, so that what is already there may be revealed.
And when the day grows hard, when weariness weighs like a stone, I invite you, Advent, to bring Mary with you as companion, our gentle counsellor. May her silence, her faith, her trust in the mystery teach us to sustain hope with tenderness. May Joseph, man of craft and of dreams, show us that the work of faith is not the speciality of a few, but a daily task: to believe, to act, to wait, to sustain. For in the simplicity of what is small, the greatness of the eternal is revealed.
Advent, year of hope, is also a call to look at reality from the depth of mercy. To look at the lives of others: the poor who walk beside us, those who have no voice, those who cling to the memory of loss. Our gaze cannot remain curiosity; it must become an action that relieves, that accompanies, that transforms. The path proposed is not a mere spiritual itinerary, but a journey of compassion that takes shape in concrete gestures: a word that heals, a hand that holds, a table that opens.
The Son who longs to become flesh seeks a womb ready to welcome the unknown and to allow life to pass through the house. He does not arrive in a house filled with certainties, but in a house that listens, that waits, that opens to the mysterious. In that process of incarnation, faith is not an idea held in the head, but a presence lived with the hands: hardworking, concrete, stretched out towards others. To seek a shore that waits before the infinite sea in order to become a wave is an image that leads us to the humility of letting ourselves be moved by grace: not to claim the wave for myself, but to allow the wave to be for the world.
Advent is also the discipline of a path we learn to walk with ourselves: to accept doubt as part of the journey, to shed some tear that escapes us and let that tear become a lamp that lights the interior. To seek a clandestine route through water and desert, not to escape reality, but to discover, in what seems improbable, the place where life resists, is born, and is offered.
And if the road of life reveals itself as a music that intertwines with the voices of those around us, then Advent fills with voices: of those who bless the fragility of others by their presence, of those who, without words, sustain hope with their gestures. In the stillness of prayer, in the noise of the city, in the rhythm of work and in the pause of the night, we hear the promise that does not impose itself but invites: come, and do not delay too long, for our weariness calls us to rest in the light that already shines.
Thus, Advent, year of hope, we welcome you like one who receives a gift that calls for a response: a response of life. We sing in the hope that what is born in Bethlehem will not remain there, but will become a presence in every home, in every street, at every shared table. May the Christmas that is approaching be not only a date, but a transformation: one that makes us see others with new eyes, that calls us to walk the road of justice, peace and goodness that does not lose its way in the face of adversity.
And when at last the days are numbered and the lights are simplified into a single brightness, may our hearts already be prepared for the great sign: that of the flesh that draws near, that of hope that is made flesh, that of a love that does not give up. For Advent is, in its essence, the springtime of faith: a promise unveiled, a summer anticipated, an autumn that prepares for harvest. It is the story of a path that begins in the humility of a manger and reaches the heights of a promise fulfilled for the whole world.
Come, Advent, with your patient rhythm. Lead us to Bethlehem, not as weary pilgrims seeking comfort, but as seekers who accept the surprise of what is revealed. And may we discover, in that encounter, that true waiting does not consist in God showing himself to us in our way, but in our life adjusting itself to his: a life that gives itself, that forgives, that shares, that loves. Thus we shall walk together towards the light that does not go out, towards the truth that sets free, towards the life that gives meaning. And the world, when it looks at us, will know that we are not alone: we are gathered by the hope that does not disappoint, by the love that becomes flesh, by the peace that comes. Welcome… Advent of hope!
General Communications Team, TC