Happy New Year! A new season of Advent, a new Liturgical Year and a new Lectionary! But our Gospel is challenging and may suggest that we are living through the terrible times as described in Luke’s Gospel. During Advent we Christians wait for more than a day; we await a person – Jesus Christ. His second coming brings a time of judgement of our relationship with him. The way we live now makes all the difference in the world. The paschal mystery is all about our entering into Jesus’s dying and rising, and therefore in this season it is the great way by which we live our waiting. The Gospel today challenges us to die to ‘dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life’ so that we may live in hope and ‘blameless in holiness before our God and Father’, as we shall hear in the second reading.
