The coming of the Christ child

My dear Friends

We are now in the 3rd week of Advent and we are eagerly anticipating the birth of the Christ child, the light of the world, coming to bring us out of darkness. It has been a time of watching and waiting, a time demanding patience and even endurance. It is a time of much joy and preparation, but there is even another meaning to all this.

For we are waiting for the Second Coming of Christ, as predicted in the Scriptures, the time when 'He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.' 'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' said Jesus, in other words the Beginning and the End. This thinking about the end time has its place in both Jewish and Christian eschatology-the Rabbis predicted the Messiah would come on the first night of Passover.

When Ely Wiesel, a French Jewish writer and survivor of the Holocaust was invited to speak to a group of American priests, he opened his remarks by saying 'We are all waiting for the same thing.' With all the violence in the 20th Century, some sources say that the 2nd coming is imminent. But we don't know exactly when this will be, only God knows. But let us hope that we may be ready and that we are found watching and waiting.

Shalom and many blessings
Sister Gila