Advent began yesterday. "O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!" the prophet Isaiah told us at Mass yesterday. Jesus urged us to be wakeful in Matthew's Gospel: "So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come." Advent is a forward looking season and what is it to which we look forward? Grace.
In a sense, Advent began back in March, on the Feast of the Annunciation. Luke's Gospel tells us that the angel Gabriel appeared to the Blessed Virgin, greeting her with the words: "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you." Advent is Marian at its core, for it is she who is pregnant with the Word of God. The Incarnation happens in her womb. There, the second person of the Trinity becomes the Word made flesh. How proper it is that we also call the mother of God the mother of the church. The body of Christ, which is the church, still becomes incarnate in her womb.
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