Fr Antony Christy SDB –
First Saturday in Advent – December 07, 2024
Isaiah 30:19-21, 23-26; Matthew 9:35 – 10:1,5,6-8
The journey has been commissioned and we are almost at the end of the first week of our Advent pilgrimage of hope. The entire week has been reminding us of the destination towards which our pilgrimage leads us, not just symbolically this week alone but in our entire life of faith; this is the chief task of the Word.
Reflecting these days on the destination, the journey towards which we are engaged in… the Word underlined to us the importance of beholding, seeing and visualizing the Reign – the Word today reminds us, about the peculiarity of our call: freely you have received, freely you give. The concrete exercise that the commissioning of this journey, invites us to, is not just to passively await the ‘coming of the Reign’ but to actively prepare it, nurture it, grow it from our hearts.
Isaiah speaks to us of all the privileges that God has for those who belong to God, despite the times of sadness, grief and strife that they may be going through presently. Jesus in the Gospel endorses that, and goes a step forward to instruct us to build the Reign, together as the people of the Reign, that we grow it, that we nourish it and that we give it to this world.
Reaching out to the other is an essential ‘Reign-quality’ that we are given with and we are called today to act in the name of the Lord, on behalf of the people of the Lord, for the labourers are few and the harvest is abundance. We are called not to just wait for the Reign, instead we are sent to seek the Reign, prepare the Reign, usher in the Reign by our words and deeds of witness.
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005 and has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (specialisation in Catechetics). He has a Doctorate in Theology with specialisation in Catechetics and youth ministry at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the young towards a World of Peace and dialogue is the passion that fires him.