From today’s first reading: “The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah."

From today’s second reading: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones."

There are many things that we may think of right now when we hear “[t]he days are coming": end of the semester, final exams, grades due, Christmas break, Christmas celebrations, family gatherings, the start of a new semester. Yet today’s readings, and the Advent season itself, call us to be more present in the moment during this season of preparation. The promise of the Lord is the coming of Jesus, who is love incarnate. So Paul reminds us to be models, to “increase and abound in love for one another and for all. . . to be blameless in holiness . . . at the coming of our Lord Jesus. . . ." A daily obligation, implies De La Salle, as “we will have to give an account not only of the idle words we have spoken, as Jesus Christ says in the Gospel, but even of the good works we have performed . . . ." (De La Salle, Meditation for the First Sunday of Advent)

Our preparation for coming of Christmas is important, for “[t]he days are coming." But let us pray that our own preparation turns us each day to love, a love that is Christ, a love that we share in order to prepare our students, that they too will turn to Jesus in their own lives.

Live, Jesus, in our hearts!