We are always in Advent!Advent, a time of mercyCaminito de Belén: Living Advent with the familyWith the first Sunday of Advent we inaugurate the new liturgical year. The Church resets its counter to zero weeks before the civil calendar does so because it cultivates a virtue in low hours: that of hope.
Today we are all in a hurry, nobody wants to wait, everything is "fast", here and now, "melon and slice in hand" as we say in the south. If the subway takes more than 8 minutes, it destroys our morning; if in the supermarket line there are more than two shoppers in front of us, we are already asking the cashier to call a colleague to open another box; and the "roscones de Reyes" are already sold in all supermarkets lest we die with the craving a month from now, which is when they were traditionally put on sale.
Anxiety eats us, with serious consequences for the mental health of children, young and old; and addictions are the order of the day because we are unable to curb the instincts that demand immediate satisfaction.
Lollipop cooking has been supplanted by fast food or home delivery establishments. Relationships forged during years of courtship with the goal of forming a family for life, have given way to living together for no longer than the life of a dog with shared custody or fleeting encounters via Tinder, if not a simple virtual release. Children no longer spend the dead hours playing stew or elastic, but run from one place to another with a multitude of extracurricular activities and steal hours of sleep to play online video games until the wee hours of the morning.
Clothes, cars, appliances, furniture and so many other consumer goods have a shorter and shorter life and are in fact designed to be replaced soon. More than an hour without answering a Whatsapp is impolite; not putting a heart on a friend's post this morning can cost you friendship; not returning a missed call is ugly... We have dehumanized time, we have become its slaves. For God's sake, what stress!
The Christian year, which on this occasion we open with the month of December, helps us to give back to time its human dimension, with the week (Sunday) as the central axis. The feasts are distributed throughout the year, alternating strong times with "less" strong times, but equally full of meaning and punctuated with significant dates. The daily memory of the saints also humanizes the day, because they are examples to our measure that loving without measure is possible.
The liturgical calendar brings together the Chronos and the Kairos. Chronos, in Greek mythology, refers to the accounting of time for which we use the clock or the almanac. With Kairos, time is expressed as an opportunity, as a transcendent moment. The Christian year tries to propitiate throughout that long list of hours, days, weeks and months, moments in which God becomes present in the particular history of men and women. It seeks that the Eternal One, who has no end because he has no beginning because he is outside of time, opens cracks, portals between the chinks of the universe to meet and merge in the embrace of faith with those who sense that their lives have an infinite destiny.
Bringing forward the beginning of the year to live the Advent, the waiting, we cultivate the true celebration, because there is no better kiss than the long-awaited one, no better sip of beer than the first one after a hot day, no better prize than the one achieved after long hours of work, study or training.
He who waits despairs only if he has allowed himself to be dwarfed by the current tendency towards immanence, forgetting that we are celestial citizens. The lack of birth rate is the clearest proof of this wave of despair that is sweeping the West.
In the face of the prophets of calamity and the dark omens of the news, I place my hope in that grandfather who, every morning, waits hand in hand with his disabled granddaughter for the bus to the day care center; in that migrant who rescued a neighbor by pulling her out of the danger of the flooding in her street; in that priest who, after hours sitting in the confessional, decides to wait a little longer in case some stubborn person still needs God's mercy. These are the signs of the times of which the Pope speaks in his convening bull of the Jubilee of Hope. "It is necessary - he says - to pay attention to all the good that is in the world so as not to fall into the temptation of considering ourselves overcome by evil and violence".
They are simple signs, nothing spectacular, but, added together, they shine brighter than the sun.
Stay tuned. Hope is making its way around you at every instant, in every crevice of space and time, and we have a whole year ahead of us to experience it. Happy New Year!
Journalist. Graduate in Communication Sciences and Bachelor in Religious Sciences. He works in the Diocesan Delegation of Media in Malaga. His numerous "threads" on Twitter about faith and daily life have a great popularity.
