“The voice of the one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight...and all humankind shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:4,6).

Advent is a season of waiting for the coming of Jesus. He came in history, He comes in mystery through the Word and Sacraments, and He will come again in majesty at the end of time. We prepare ourselves for His second coming with repentance for our sins of commission and omission.

We are not what we could be in our personal sanctity and in our zeal for the mission. Individually as religious, we need to turn away from our comfort zones and to seek to optimize our engagement in making Christ known because that is our call and He is the answer for all the ills of our world.

Our world is not what it should be. Look at the mistrust and hatred between nations leading to terrible wars, look at the wasting away of the common resources of the earth, and look at the driving away of people from their own homes and making them refugees forever. Our world is in need of liberation.

The Church in France was not an ideal Church when Basile Moreau was born, but we know how he and his band of men contributed their share to revive the faith there and renew the Church. They even further expanded their efforts to more difficult terrains of the world. That is our rich legacy. My long years of pastoral life and missionary work in Northeast India have witnessed what we can do with God on our side to transform people’s lives.

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other but looking in the same direction,” wrote the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Like John the Baptist, we need to make Christ known through the zealous living of our consecrated life, for so many are waiting to know the Savior and thus see the salvation of God.

Fr. Joseph Kuzhikat, C.S.C., known to many by his initials K.O., is a member of the Province of North East India. He was ordained a priest in 1976 and served in the Northeast region of India for over 27 years in parish ministry. For the rest of his religious life, he has served in formation ministry in Bangalore in Karnataka and Shillong in Meghalaya. Since June 2022, he has been Assistant Rector of Holy Cross Seminary in Pune.