On the first Sunday of Advent, we begin the new life of the Church, a new year. A year is of great importance in life because there are 80 or 90 years in a lifetime (at best 80, and 90 for the really lucky ones1). Of these 80 or 90, 15, if not 20, are wasted, or almost, lived in distraction (for those who have met the Christian community, we could say 17 instead of 20!). So, one year is of great importance in life. And even if from one point of view it might seem artificial to divide time in this way, I think it is more intelligent than artificial to give importance to this division. The Church greatly increases this certainty because, at least in the Western world, by following the rhythms of nature and comparing them with the rhythms of Christian life (of Christian life as history and Christian life as person), in the liturgical year, marking its year with nature’s times, which so closely symbolize and mark the times of personal life and the times of historical existence, the Church carries out a true work of education.
I believe that this moment is really very important. It is important, once we recall it, more for the birth of a new awareness in us, a vigilance, than even for the words that we can hear about it. A few words, though, can help our awareness, but the whole problem lies in our awareness.

1. The incumbency of His coming
The Liturgy of the first Sunday of Advent2 is crucial in this sense. From the second chapter of the Book of Isaiah, verses 1-5: “The vision of Isaiah, son of Amoz, concerning Judah and Jerusalem [a ‘vision,’ an intuition of God’s plan, ‘concerning Judah and Jerusalem,’ concerning the chosen people and its human settlement, which, unlike other human settlements, has an everlasting meaning because the settlement of the people of God is the sign, the sacrament, of the ultimate human settlement, which is heaven]. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”3
The first word that this text of Isaiah suggests is a word that must immediately determine our awareness of finality. The awareness of finality is like our self-awareness: it is fixed forever. It could form the basis for an examination of conscience for the Mass today, or for the day with its sacrifice. The awareness of finality must accompany us as our self-awareness, as awareness of what we are. For self-awareness is the awareness of something definitive, because our “I” is definitive. All the more definitive is the meaning of our “I.” And the meaning of our “I” is Jesus Christ and His mystery, so this finality regards our adhesion to Him, our adhesion according to the formula that He has decided for our life (because there is no other formula, in order to adhere to Him, there is only the formula that He has decided for our life). The awareness of finality is like the most exact symptom of true Christian self-awareness, of the self-awareness that has us perceive life as vocation.
There is a word that immediately brings to life the awareness of our finality. Without this word, finality is not alive; it can be an already-established automatism. Without the word I am about to say, finality is automatism. So, like all automatism applied to conscious life, to intelligent life, to sensitive life, to life as freedom and will, it brings rigidity. And it is a rigidity that seems not to gnaw at our consciences, when it does not lead us to mortal sin, but is a rigidity that carries no sign of Christ around the world and least of all in the “house.”4 Or, automatism brings a rigidity that, in various ways, makes us Pharisees; in other words, it tends to make our attitude the measure for others–the measure of our life, which then becomes pretension, and the measure of the goodness of others, of the value of others, of the usefulness of the house or the usefulness of the relationships. Or it leads to a Pharisaism that, in the end–before our permissiveness, before the liberties we take and that scandalize the house or scandalize relationships or cut us off from relationships, make us useless, futile, ineffective, with no fruitful relationships–makes us say, “What’s wrong anyway?” or, “What am I to do? What can I do about it, after all?” If this is not a theoretical way of justifying yourself, then it’s a way of justifying yourself to yourself, like being indignant when others dare to object to your behavior.
It is an automatism that makes all spiritual life, the life of our spirit, rigid and tasteless, with no sàpere, no taste. Or it is a pharisaic automatism that makes our pretension the measure of our life together (when we want to talk, the others have to talk, but when we want to keep ourselves to ourselves, the others have not to expect anything; we have the right to keep quiet and to talk when and how we like–with that characteristic pretension stagnating deep down in our heart, and even though we dare not admit it, the others sense it, like when they elbow us in the ribs and see our face), or that Pharisaism that justifies our behavior to ourselves, if not theoretically, then at least in practice. Without the word that the prophet Isaiah was the first to announce our finality degrades into all I have said–because I am describing you, I am describing us; and that word is that Christ, His Coming, is incumbent: the incumbency of His coming.
Words are interesting! “Incumbency” has two meanings: it can mean a duty or something that is hanging over you, something imminent. Incumbency means duty and also means imminence. I want to speak first of all about the second aspect, because it is evident that the first aspect derives from it–if something is incumbent, imminent, then it becomes a duty; it produces and imposes a duty.
The imminence of His coming, the incumbency of His coming… St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “Brothers, you know the time, it is time for you to wake from sleep, because salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far spent; the day is at hand”5–it is time for you to wake from sleep. St. Matthew’s Gospel says, “As in those days… they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Watch, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Know this: if the householder had known at what hour of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”6 It is an incumbency, an imminence that has as its privileged meaning, its supreme meaning, the literal one–the incumbency and the imminence of death, because death is the Son of Man who comes, in the whole breadth of its meaning. But this not knowing when death will come, this duty to keep watch, this end of time when the Lord “will establish the mountain of his house,” the fact of not knowing the moment in which the Lord comes, clarifies or, rather, is the only way of making our awareness, all the awareness of our actions, reach out to or be determined by the final meaning.
Our every action, every moment is a step toward the Lord who is coming. So every action and every moment is the Lord who is coming, just as every action and every moment can be the last. If only fear were dominated by desire, if only dread were dominated by expectation! This is what it means to live the imminence of the Lord who is coming, to live the incumbency of Christ, of Christ’s coming. Literally, every action has its meaning in His coming, in the strict sense of the word–death.

2. Vigilance and contrition
When He comes, He will judge. This is the second moment of our reflection, the second topic for our meditation. When He comes, He will judge. Then, as the Gospel says, “there will be two in a field: one will be taken and the other left; two women will be at the grinding stone together: one will be taken the other left.”7 When the Lord comes, He will judge. What a wonderful song is Sing a New Song to the Lord,8 which concludes its joyful shout with the thought that the Lord is coming to judge the earth. This is the expectation and desire that dominate and master fear and dread. Imperceptibly, fear and dread drive out of our mind the most rational thought we can have–there is no thought that is rational unless it is awareness of the end; no action is rational except in so far as it is loaded with awareness of the end. No thought is more rational than that which fills the soul with His incumbency, His imminence, with the imminence of His coming. But fear and dread eliminate this thought, and they only reawaken it now and again–unless expectation and desire flare up like dynamite–to burden Christian life with a rigidity that makes it no longer a witness to anyone but only a yoke without the promised easiness.9
It is expectation and desire that have to determine and control fear and dread. The fear and dread are still there, but as expectation and desire; in other words, they are overcome by love. Because fear remains in love, and the “holy fear of God” indicates both these components of our awareness of relationship with Christ, of the awareness of the relationship of our life with the eternal and with God. But the form of this fear, what determines it, the face of this crude, ugly matter that is fear, is love, where “love drives out fear,”10 as St. John said in his first letter; it “drives it out”–in other words, it transfigures it. For even in love between man and woman, or in the love of children and parents, there is no love without respect, without “reverence,” which is a word derived from the Latin revereor, meaning “to fear.” Our love is not a love between equals. For us, love between equals would be like a business contract–this is the ideal of marriage, in the bourgeois mentality, or according to the ideologies of the student protests, or even the banners of the Paris protests in May 1968. We are dependent on everything, precisely because everything that reveals God’s plan is a word for us–every single thing: every object, every person and every event.
So, in the end, He will judge; His coming will be a judgment. How can we make a judgment become expectation and desire, if that judgment does not tend to become a paradigm, a criterion, the inspiration, the law of every action (since every action is a step, every moment is a step toward that end or that destiny)? Only if that judgment becomes paradigm, law, measure, and inspiration, in other words, tends to determine action (every action, every step), does every step become expectation and desire, expectation of desire; then every step becomes love and love transfigures fear, and the “reverence” becomes “devotion,” a dedication of one’s whole being–in a word, love.
“Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the weapons of light. Let us conduct ourselves becomingly, as in the day [as in ‘that’ day, because it is that last day that enlightens all the days of our life; it is not the first day, because the first day was like a seed; it is ‘that’ day that brings to light all the dimensions, all the implications of the seed; it is desire for the end that brings alive the beginning], not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ [put on judgment, the last judgment, because the last judgment is His coming; in other words, He who is coming, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires do not follow the world’s criteria, despite all the inclinations that original sin arouses in us].”11
“Put on the Lord Jesus Christ”: make yourselves one with the Lord Jesus Christ, so that action is desired as imitatio Christi, imitation of Christ. But, in its most complete form, is imitation of Christ not virginity? “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” so that every action be inspired by virginity, have the form of virginity! “Whoever wants to follow me…”12 “Follow me.”13 Follow me: “Where the master has passed, there the disciples will pass”; “as they have treated me, so they will treat you, too.”14 Every action and every moment, therefore, anticipate the last judgment.
Every action is a judgment. Confession can be so counterfeit, an intellectual game, a spiritual charade for all its apparent sensitivity, an episode without any true effect on life, insignificant for life as a whole–whether it be the Sacrament of Confession or the Act of Contrition that the Christian community requires at the beginning of the assembly! Every hint of judgment, or of the last judgment, is punctually expunged from our day. It was called “examination of conscience,” because “Jesuitism” and the intellectualistic, rationalistic and voluntaristic reduction of the Church of the last 400 years hid the fact that the true expression is “contrition.” The contrition of the centurion, “Lord, I am not worthy…”15 or that of Peter, “Lord, go away from me; I am a sinful man,”16 that contrition must be present in every day we live. And if it is a judgment, like that which Christ gave in Chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel, “Come, you blessed,”17 then it is full of love and is, by its very nature, longing for the realization of His coming into the world; and if it is a judgment like the other given in the same chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (“Depart from me, you cursed”18), then it is at once weeping and grinding of teeth. Thus, contrition eliminates hell and transforms even an unjust act, an “evil” act, into expectation and desire. “Deliver us from evil.”19
But day-to-day contrition, as Christian maturity grows along the way, is always on our doorstep. We embrace it and take it by the hand, we walk along with it, tending always to abandon ourselves to it in all we do, or at least in the evening. Above all, though, the contrition that begins the Christian assembly or the contrition that lies at the heart of our participation in the mystery of Christ–the Sacrament of Confession–this contrition must mark our year. Without this contrition, our expectation and our desire are too childish, superficial, and too easily taken for granted. Only with contrition are the incumbency of Christ and the imminence of Christ splendidly alive in us, and is vigilance achieved. So, vigilance is contrition. Existentially, all through our life, vigilance is contrition filled with love; this is what nourishes our expectation and our desire. Clear awareness, real experience of the incumbency and the imminence of Christ is in expectation and desire. “As in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away… therefore you also must be ready.”20 “Be ready”: this is our action, our expression as judgment, our moment as judgment.
How can we have this self-awareness of being one with Christ? Christ is not the Christ of the dead, but the Christ of the living, so the Christ who is about to come is Christ died and risen. How can we live this Christian self-awareness, if not in the vivid feeling of the imminence of His coming, as the meaning of life that has its summit in death, as the meaning of death, unless by means of awareness of the action that anticipates death? Death is anticipation and action, which is judgment, anticipates this judgment, because that judgment will be the result of this judgment: “Whoever does evil is already judged.”21 We are already judged, and so “we have passed from death to life.”22 “Who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus who died, yes, and was raised from the dead for us?”23 This “for us” must become ours, become awareness.
So, vigilance is the theme the Church places at the beginning of our new year of life, as the meaning of the imminence of His coming, and therefore as expectation and desire for His coming, and, so as not to be superficial and fatuous, these have to arise from contrition, precisely as an exercise of the spirit, as ascesis, as an ascetical act for us; it is like the theme of our personal awareness this year. Contrition during the day, contrition at the end of the day or in the morning, contrition that as far as possible fills our day, and as far as possible tends to become the beginning of every action, of every relationship, always on our doorstep, our companion every time we go out, but above all contrition at the beginning of Mass–true, spoken or unspoken (our saying it must increase the truth of it)–and in the Sacrament of Confession, which the majority of us do not yet live. Vigilance as contrition, the vigilance of the imminence of Christ as contrition.

3. Building God’s house
We said at the beginning–and this is the third and final point–that incumbency has another meaning. It is synonymous with duty. What duty? That for which life is given us, that for which Christian life has been given us and that for which we are given the vocation to virginity, that for which we have been given life which is vocation. Why have we been called? For what? It would be interesting to hear what you have to answer. Life is given us for the mission, and that’s all, so as to be collaborators in God’s plan which is Christ. And we know this; “We have the Spirit of Christ.”24 “We have the Spirit of Christ;” it is given us for the mission. The psalm we have recited today says, “I rejoiced when I heard them say, ‘Let us go to God’s house,’ and now our feet are standing within your gates O Jerusalem! … There were set the thrones of judgment of the house of David. For the peace of Jerusalem pray: ‘Peace be to your homes! May peace reign in your walls, in your palaces peace!’ … For the love of the house of the Lord, I will ask for your good.”25 And it is here, we ask in the Alleluia verse, “Show us Lord, your mercy, and grant us your salvation.”26 “Salvation is closer to us now than when we first believed.”27
The mission is to build Jerusalem. But what does it mean to build Jerusalem? What does it mean to build God’s house? What does it mean to build the Church? “Peace for those who love her, peace on Jerusalem. May peace reign in your walls. For love of my brethren and friends I say, ‘Peace upon you!’” This is the throne of judgment of the house of David, that which says: “Peace upon you!” It is here that the “mountain of the house of the Lord… shall be raised above the hills, and all the nations shall flow to it. … ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; and nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”28
To build the Church means to build a network of charity, the brotherhood of the children of God. Only from the place of brotherhood does judgment go out over the nations, over the peoples; so it is only from the place of brotherhood that light goes out onto others,so that the nations flow to it. Those who want, those who have open eyes and a pure heart, those who are pure in heart come; those who are poor in spirit know where they have to go. Only from a network of brotherhood does judgment go out; the poor in sprit know where they have to go. Only a network of brotherhood, only a network of charity, only a network of relationships lived as communion, only this judges the world: “Don’t you know that we will judge the world?”29 This is God’s house. It is not built on any hill, but “established as the highest of the mountains;” she is the hill to which all nations trudging across the plain look up, in so far as they are poor in spirit. It is only in brotherhood that our argument is understood, truly understood, not that we know how to repeat it, not that we are able to say it again, not that we are able to build up ideologies on it. Only those who live this network of charity understand the argument, much more than all the so-called “cultured” people. Only by living a network of brotherhood and communion are we missionaries, are we apostles, can we announce.
The announcement is only there. This is why the last judgment will be on charity, on communion, and, at the same time, on witness. These are the only two elements of the last judgment indicated in the Gospels: witness to Christ (“that you bear fruit30), and communion (Chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel: “I was hungry and you fed me”31). This is the last judgment; it is clear because the last judgment has Christ as its criterion, as its content; it is comparison with Christ, not with laws; it is a comparison with a reality that happened in the history of our life–a fact that took hold of us, and involved us in His communion, that’s all.
This is why every action of ours, every moment, in vigilance, must be communion and impulse–as St. Paul says in Chapter 5 of the Second Letter to the Corinthians32–the impulse to witness, to announce, a missionary impulse. On this is judged the action, the moment, on its impulse for mission and on its reality of communion, and that’s all. “Do not be afraid, little flock, I have overcome the world.”33 Even if we were to control the governments of China, Russia and the United States, Christ would still tell us, “Do not be afraid, little flock, I have overcome the world,” not our strength. And the strength with which He overcomes the world is the communion of which He makes us capable and it is the announcement of which He makes us capable–the word of God “convertens animas,”34 that overcomes man.
This, then, is the object of contrition, nothing else, only this: if our relationship has been communion, if our giving up or not giving up has been in communion, if our contribution or our flight has been in communion, if our sacrifice, our work or our rest have been in communion, if they have been dominated by the missionary impulse… So, contrition regards the absence, the disproportion of our charity, charity towards Christ: the zeal for witnessing, in which our life should die–martyrdom! And charity toward others–which is the same thing: communion. Because, it is through communion that witness is given and it is in the impulse of the will to witness that communion is made possible, that relationship as communion is made possible. Otherwise, “Even though I give my body to be burned and give away all my belongings, but have not charity, it would be worth nothing.”35

Notes
1 Cf. Ps 90:10.
2 Liturgy of the First Sunday of Advent, Year A Is 2:1-5; Ps 121; Rm 13:11-14; Mt 24:37-44.
3 Is 2:1-5.
4 The word “house” is used in the sense of a stable community of the Memores Domini association.
5 Cf. Rm 13:11-12.
6 Cf. Mt 24:38, 42-44.
7 Cf. Mt 24:40-41.
8 Ps 97
9 Cf. Mt 11:30.
10 1 Jn 4:18.
11 Rm 13:12-14.
12 Cf. Mt 16:24.
13 Mt 9:9 (amongst others).
14 Cf. Jn 15:20.
15 Mt 8:8.
16 Lk 5:8.
17 Mt 25:34.
18 Mt 25:41.
19 Mt 6:13.
20 Cf. Mt 24:38-39,42.
21 Cf. Jn 3:18.
22 1 Jn 3:14.
23 Rm 8:34.
24 1Cor 2:12.
25 Ps 122:1-2, 5-7,9.
26 Ps 85:8.
27 Rm 13:11.
28 Is 2:2-5.
29 1Cor 6:2.
30 Jn 15:16.
31 Cf. Mt 25:35.
32 Cf. 2Cor 5:14.
33 Cf. Lk 12:32, Jn 16:33.
34 Ps 19:8.
35 Cf. 1Cor 13:3.