The Spanish Course gets over!!!!! Preached Advent Conference for Friars in Alicante, Spain

Advent is a time of waiting, of waiting for a worldwide celebration of the first coming of Christ and of anticipating his promised Second Coming at the end of the story. The Church gives us this time to help us keep our lives in order, to help us focus on the really important things, such as the four reasons why Jesus came to earth in the first place. When we live this period following the examples of Saint John the Baptist and the Blessed Virgin Mary, we can experience true spiritual renewal and true spiritual growth. We can also make the world a better, more Christian place. That is why God wants us to learn the art of waiting.

But, why is God waiting? A good and faithful Catholic asked me this question, why? Why do not you bring the story to its conclusion at this time? Why do you let it happen year after year without the Second Coming? In a sense, we can never fully know the answer to that question, because we can never fully understand the infinite wisdom of God.

 The advent season is an opportunity that the Church offers us to deepen the meaning of Christmas. The liturgy lends us the materials so that you can reflect, together with believers of all times, but especially with Christians, about the event of God's coming to his people. The voice of the prophets and the first Christian communities accompany us on the way to the encounter with the Lord. Day after day the liturgy prepares us to receive with joy our Savior, Jesus.

But all this reality, while still necessary, is not enough to mobilize our commitment to follow Christ; the readings and all the corners of our life, for that reason it is convenient that we stop to reflect on the incidence of the coming of the Lord in our motivations and in our behaviors. The coming of; Lord in poverty, as Francis liked to experience it, it is not fully accepted just by feeling it at the level of feelings. If any sin has the current society is to have "sentimentalized", Christmas for commercial purposes, preventing a deeper experience that can disrupt all the shed.

But the Franciscan experience of Christmas, although not at those levels, can also fall into the temptation to remain in the simply emotional, without going further inside and wondering about the consequences of that approach of God to us. For Francis it was the beginning of our salvation, the hope that the following of Christ in poverty would bring us to fulfillment, the certainty that our life in the evangelical Fraternity has a future and a meaning.

But the simple confession of our following of Jesus does not guarantee, without more, the evangelical quality of our lives; from there this morning of retreat to reflect on our journey as Capuchins and try to re-discover mountains and fill valleys so that the Lord can reach the most intimate of ourselves and heal the deficiencies that may exist. Although we prepare ourselves for the coming of the Lord in poverty, we all know that it is not a matter of simply reliving the birth of Jesus. What it is about is to celebrate the continuous approach of God to us, which began with his birth but which continues to come closer, now fully and gloriously, until it is all in us.

Hence, we ask ourselves where the Lord is approaching us today, lest we wait for Him where He does not come. The Fraternity, the poor, the service we provide with our work, are theological places in which Jesus makes himself present and approaches us if we know how to perceive it and open our hearts to what comes and goes at home.