We come together this first day of Advent to witness the opening of the Word of God. Over these next three days, we will have opened our minds and hearts in faith. We will listen to God speak to us in His own language and reveal to us a profound truth about Himself: that He is One, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Blessed Trinity is the Divine Family, which He now reveals to us in Jeremiah: “Judah shall be safe…Jerusalem shall be secure…and The Lord (is) our Justice.” We can recognize in these words our own desire to establish these divine qualities in our own family thus binding our human and divine families together. God embraces His People and re-creates them as His Family.

Within this new structure, God takes on the role of Father, the one who teaches and guides children in Truth. Psalm 25 defines how God sees Himself in our Family. “A Father is good and upright….He shows the way….He guides the humble to justice and He teaches the humble His Way.”

Our role as His children is to wait, to watch and to listen. Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians says, “You know the instructions we gave you…how you should conduct yourselves to please God.” Paul calls us to do even more and so we enter this Advent time of waiting at this Altar, the Footstool of our Father, “in anticipation of what is coming upon the world.”

See, we already wait. We are being taught, Christ the Church to Parents, Parents to their children, in God’s own language how to be ready. We gather within our families (the reflection of the Trinity) and we listen together to the words spoken for us this day: “Be vigilant at all times.”