This Sunday, with the beginning of the Advent season, we start a new liturgical year to celebrate the Lord’s coming into this world. We know that from Bethlehem emanates the joy of His first coming, and we wait expectantly for His glorious coming. As today’s Gospel tells us, the Son of Man will come to come on “a cloud with power and great glory” (Luke 21:27) These words give us a message of hope and salvation: Christ will make a glorious return at the end of time, bringing the fullness of His kingdom of justice, peace, and love.

At the same time, as we wait for His glorious return, the Lord does not stop coming to us every day. As He promised to us: “I am with you every day until the end of history” (Matthew 28:20). The Lord visits us in His Word, He visits us in the bread and wine that becomes His Body and Blood in the Eucharist, and He visits us in our neighbor, especially the one who asks us for our charity. As our Constitutions say: “The face of every human being who suffers is for us the face of Jesus” (8:124).

Now, as a senior citizen myself, one of my ministries is visiting other senior citizens in San Roque Parish in the Peñalolén neighborhood in Santiago, Chile. Part of old age is to live in waiting—waiting for the call of the Lord. For some, that produces anxiety; for others, I can see on their faces a peace and hope. They inspire me. They have the confidence of having fulfilled their mission, but even more, they have confidence in the Lord. They trust that as He has always come to them in their lives, so He will come to take them to our eternal home with Him in heaven.

These days of Advent invite us to cultivate this same confidence and hope, that by recognizing ever more the coming of the Lord in our daily lives, we will recognize Him clearly when He comes to say in His glory: “Come, follow me ...”

Brother Joaquín Parada, C.S.C., is a member of the District of Chile-Peru. He is the first native Chilean to become a Holy Cross Brother. He worked for many years in Chile as a professor of literature and religion, both in public high schools and in the Congregation’s Nuestra Señora de Andacollo School. When Brother Joaquín retired as a professor, he did post-graduate studies in Gerontology. Since then, he has dedicated himself to working with older and ailing adults—a ministry that he continues to exercise until today in San Roque Parish. He lives in Juan XXIII House in Peñalolén.