When Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me (…) Behold, I come to do your will.” These words of the second reading are mysterious, because the sacred author puts them on the lips of Jesus when he became man in the womb of the Virgin Mary. In other words, we enter into the heart of the Child being formed in the womb of the Virgin Mother and we hear his heartbeat, full of love and obedience: “I come to do your will.”

Dear brothers and sisters, there is one week left before we celebrate Christmas. Jesus is coming, and he is coming to do the Will of his Father, which is the salvation of the world. St. Paul writes in his first letter to Timothy that God “wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth.” Salvation is about to come to us, as Jesus came to Elizabeth through Mary. At this point in Advent, the question we should all ask ourselves, myself included, is this: "Am I ready to receive him?"

One of the most prolific and important writers of Spanish literature was a priest named Lope de Vega, who lived between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in what we call the Golden Age of Spanish literature. He wrote a very beautiful sonnet that when translated into English, loses its rhyme, but the meaning I can try to share with you.

The first four verses speak of the amazement, the astonishment of one who feels not only loved but also sought after and even pursued by God, the Shepherd promised us by the prophet Micah in the first reading and who wishes to find us and take us home:

What have I that my friendship you should seek?

What wealth from it, my Jesus, could you gain

So that at my front door, bedecked with dew,

You spend dark winter nights in snow and sleet?

What have I that my friendship you should seek? Brothers, sisters, Jesus is seeking you, and we should be amazed. Why do you, who are God, look for me, who am a man? Why do you, who has everything, look for me, who has nothing? Why do you, who are light, look for me, who am darkness? It is the madness of God's love, which on Christmas night, goes out to look for us and remains in the cold streets, waiting for us to let Him in.

Lope goes on to say:

How hard was I within my deepest core

To never let you in! How strangely mad

If of my callousness the frigid ice

Dried up the bleeding wounds of your pure feet!

I am impressed by these words: “to never let you in”. Look at the strength of the image: Jesus, the Good Shepherd, with bare feet, enduring the inclemency of the cold nights and we, inside the house, without EVER letting him in. Isn't that the story of your life? Have you let Jesus into your heart this Advent?

The last six lines of the poem truly stir the heart:

How many times the angel said to me,

“Soul, come now to the window and look out:

You’ll see with how much love he knocks again!”

In the face of our stubbornness in not opening to Jesus, the guardian angel lovingly admonishes the soul, "Look out the window and contemplate with how much love he calls again." Is this not also a description of our life? How many times does the Lord invite us back to conversion, again, and again, and again? He sends us angels, people sent to us, who speak to us of God's love, and tell us that Jesus is still waiting for us, and that we have to open the door of our heart: they are priests, friends, catechists, sometimes even strangers. What has been our response, especially this Advent?

And then, the conclusion, the climax, the last three lines of the poem:

And oh, how many times, beauty divine,

“Tomorrow he may enter,” I’d respond,

only tomorrow to respond the same!

How well we are all portrayed here...! How many times have we said it too...? Tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes, and we say: not today, Lord, tomorrow I’ll let you in. And then another tomorrow comes again, and we repeat the same answer over and over again, no, not today, tomorrow… And so, life passes us by, without conversion, without opening the door, without letting that Jesus who waits, who loves us, who calls us, enter our hearts and convert us.

Dear brothers and sisters, tomorrow is the adverb of the defeated. The time of conversion is today! It is this Advent. It is this Christmas. Do you know what the greatest difference is between a saint and those of us who are not saints? This is the difference: we say "tomorrow", and a saint says "today". This is how St. Augustine, for example, tells of his conversion in The Confessions:

"Somehow I flung myself down beneath a fig tree and gave way to the tears which now streamed from my eyes, the sacrifice that is acceptable to you. I had much to say to you, my God, not in these very words but in this strain (...): Lord, forget the long record of our sins. For I felt that I was still the captive of my sins, and in my misery I kept crying: 'How long shall I go on saying 'tomorrow, tomorrow' Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?"

Well then: The Lord is going to knock on your door again on December 25th, you are going to see the mad love of a mad God who became a Child to save you. Are you going to open the door as Elizabeth did to receive the grace of salvation, or are you going to leave him shivering in the cold outside for another year?

I use the Lord's words in today's psalm, to conclude, "Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved." If you have not done so, make a good confession this week. Don't say "tomorrow," but "today." Here at the parish we will have 24 consecutive hours of Confession on December 23rd and 24th so that you can come when it suits you best. From then on, may your heart be prepared to receive the Child Jesus and may you experience the joy of being deeply saved by Him.