God is the future of man and of the world. If the awareness of God is lost, humanity closes itself to the future and inevitably loses the perspective of its pilgrimage in time. Why be born, why die? Why sacrifice oneself, why suffer?



To these questions Christianity offers a complete response. For this reason, Christ is the hope of humanity. He is the real meaning of our present, because He is our sure future.



Advent reminds us that He has come, but also that He will come. And the life of believers is a continuous and vigilant expectation of His coming. The invitation to watch and wait today is underlined with insistence by St. Mark, who, throughout all the new liturgical year, will lead us to discover the mystery of Christ.



In today's passage, taken from the second of Jesus' great discourses, the Evangelist makes evident the ultimate meaning of history and of creation itself and he exhorts us to make of our whole existence an incessant search for Christ. From the encounter with Him and from the contemplation of His face springs that missionary vigor that makes us come out of our daily dullness to be courageous witnesses of His.



Pope John Paul II, from his Angelus address on the First Sunday of Advent.