of Mother Anna Maria Cánopi

The liturgical year begins with Advent, the sacred time of grace (kairòs) in which the Church celebrates the great mystery of salvation. Its essential nucleus is the event Jesus Christ: the Son of God who became incarnate and entered the world to lead men to their ultimate goal, to full communion of life with God in the Kingdom of eternal life.
With our participation in the liturgical celebration of the saving events, we become heralds and witnesses of our faith, witnesses, therefore, of the Love of the Father who revealed himself in the Person of the Son, indeed, he gave it to us because "whoever believes in him does not may be lost, but may have eternal life" (Jn 3,16:XNUMX).
The entire time of the Church - the liturgical year - is characterized by a triple dimension: the memory of the past (the wait and the coming of Jesus in the flesh), the dynamics of the present (how today this event still happens and is actualized) and the expectation of the future (the return of Christ in glory: eschatological event).
In our life as Christians the "already" and the "not yet" therefore coexist, the experience, in faith, of "God-with-us", Emmanuel, and that of eschatological expectation all pervaded with hope, when Christ will come again no longer in the humility of the flesh, but in the glory and power of the Spirit (cf. Mt 24,30; 1Pt 3,18).
These aspects emerge clearly from the liturgy which, while celebrating the entire mystery of the Redemption, highlights the subsequent events to draw from them particular grace of participation, so as to experience the "present" moment not as a time that flees towards nothingness, but as a bridge towards eternity.
In the first weeks of Advent the sense of expectation of Christ Pantokrator dominates, of the One who will come to recapitulate history and judge all men. It is therefore an extremely demanding wait. The reading of the prophet Isaiah opens horizons of great hope and consolation, but also insists on indicating the ways to follow, which are ways to be prepared, because they are currently impracticable; they are difficult roads to climb, paths to straighten, since sin, which took us away from God, has made them twisted and bumpy.
«A voice shouts:
“In the desert prepare the way for the Lord,
clear the way in the steppe
for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
let every mountain and every hill be made low;
the rough terrain becomes flat
and the steep one in the valley.
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed
and all men together will see it,
because the mouth of the Lord has spoken"
(Is 40,3-5).
The voice of the Prophet is a pressing invitation to conversion, to listening to the One who speaks, who is himself the Word of Truth and Life and who, alone, can illuminate the depths of consciences to free them from the oppression of the ancient evil that gathers darkness on the path of humanity.
The sonorous spokesperson of this message of conversion and liberation is in a special way John the Baptist, the outrider, who finds himself on the threshold of Advent and accompanies the people of God in their race to meet the One who comes, just as he will accompany them in the first stages of the Lenten journey. While the Prophet sustains hope in the coming of the Expected One – «Say to the disheartened: “Courage, do not be afraid: behold, your God comes to save you” (cf. Is 35,4) – the Forerunner indicates that he is already present: «In among you there is one whom you do not know, one... whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie" (Jn 1,26-27); he points to him as the Savior, as the One who gives a new course to history and as the imminent Judge who puts an end to history and gives it the seal of the eternal Kingdom by saying the last word, the final amen.
Alongside vigilant waiting, another recurring note of Advent is elevation, the longing movement towards Someone who is about to come. In this regard, the entrance antiphon of the first Sunday is very significant, taken from Psalm 25: To you, Lord, I lift up my soul (v. 1): the human creature almost seems to want to lift up on his hands, in a concrete gesture, one's life to entrust it and at the same time pay homage to the Source from which it arose. It is a gesture of total abandonment which, born of trust, leads to peace. The antiphon, in fact, continues: My God, I trust in you. This abandonment and this peace are not passivity, immobility, inert waiting, but rather an expression of the soul's full availability to harmonize with the divine plan, to set out on the new path that is opened before it, as the Psalmist still sings: Show me, Lord, the your ways; teach me your ways.
Along the way we are also guided by the voice of the Apostle who expresses the enthusiasm of those who, driven by desire, leave early in the morning so as not to waste precious time: «Brothers, it is now time to wake up from sleep... The night is advanced, the day is near" (Rm 13,11-12). Waking up, running, letting yourself be enlightened: this makes life beautiful! However, if we were the only ones to move, we would soon find ourselves, despite all good intentions, in difficulty; but in Advent the movement occurs in a twofold sense: from the depths towards the heights (and it is our journey towards the Lord) and from the heights towards the depths (and it is the journey of God, his descent). Indeed, we can move towards God only because He moves towards us first and attracts us, fueling our cry of impatient desire which finds the most touching accents in the words of the psalms: «Show us, Lord, your mercy and give us your salvation" (Ps 85,8); “Make your face shine and we will be saved” (Ps 80,4); “My soul thirsts for you” (Ps 63,2:XNUMX). The grace that Advent brings us consists precisely in making us internally experience the expectation of Christ's coming almost as a sacramental, a baptism that purifies the soul in the crucible of desire.
At the same time the Liturgy also gives our waiting and our search a holy joy, animating them with a living hope: People of Zion, the Lord will come to save the peoples and will make his powerful voice heard for the joy of your heart, it states the entrance antiphon of the second Sunday. The prophetic announcement is already full of certainty, but the soul wants to have confirmation from the same living voice of the Desired One and does not hesitate to ask him together with John the Baptist: Are you the one who is to come or should we wait for someone else? (Mt 11, 3).
It's you? This search for the You, the Unique in which the soul finds itself and its completeness, constitutes the deepest need of human existence. It is, obviously, a search that not only tends to possess the You, but also and above all to give oneself to him, that is, to achieve such a communion of life with him as to suppress duality. "Who are you?". And Jesus responds with the concrete manifestation of love: "The blind regain their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are purified, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the Gospel is proclaimed to the poor" (Mt 11,5).
Where there is love, the Lord is already present. Therefore we can truly rejoice, as the Apostle invites us to do, in the passage from the letter to the Philippians which characterizes the third Sunday of Advent: "Rejoice always in the Lord, I repeat to you: rejoice" (Phil 4,4:XNUMX).
Perhaps someone will say: «But how is it possible to rejoice, while there is still so much evil and pain throughout the world? Wouldn't it be an affront to those who cry?". No: the joy of the Lord and in the Lord is a gift of consolation precisely for the poor and the suffering; it is the smile of Heaven that bends to kiss the earth, to dry the tears.
In this time, Mother Church teaches us to invoke, for ourselves and for all humanity, He who is Joy: Jesus. With one of her beautiful hymns that embellish the sacred Liturgy, she makes us sing: «Come, oh King Messenger of peace, brings the divine smile to the world: no man has ever seen his face; only you can reveal the mystery to us", "Come, Lord Jesus!".
In the last days of Advent the eschatological perspective and longing expectation - which also includes a penitential and purifying note to be ready for the event - is approached and almost superimposed by the evocative dimension of the historical fact of the Incarnation; the attention focuses on the birth of Jesus from the Virgin of Nazareth in a condition of extreme insecurity and poverty. John the Baptist decisively gives way to Mary, to whom however the gaze is directed from the beginning, in particular in the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, which the Church has wisely placed right in the heart of Advent. From the fourth Sunday and even more from December 16th - the beginning of the popular Christmas Novena - until the end of the Christmas season, the liturgy celebrates Christ born of Mary. By harmoniously associating the Christological theme with the Marian one, it shows how the divine plan of salvation implies the collaboration of humanity and in particular of femininity.
Advent is the time of the "anawim", of Yahweh's poor, of those who place all their hope in God. Among these Mary is the one who can be said to be the poorest of the poor, the most humble and unaware of herself, because she refers entirely to God. The mystery of the incarnation in which she feels totally involved, places her in the deepest adoration, and after the Having said "yes" to the announcement brought to her by the angel, her entire being is surrendered to the Lord as a sacred place reserved for the fulfillment of the ineffable mystery of the Word made flesh.
The "here I am" of total availability pronounced by Mary flourishes in the "here I am" of the Word - Emmanuel, God-with-us - who enters the world to carry out the will of the Father.
By synchronizing our hearts every day to the divine music of this "Here I am" of obedience and love, we open ourselves to the grace and joy of Holy Christmas, the celebration of "newness" in the heart of winter.
At the dawn of Dies Natalis the Church, in fact, will explode in the hymn that sings the new spring of humanity:
Jesse's bud has blossomed,
the tree of life has given its fruit;
Mary, daughter of Zion,
fruitful and ever virgin,
the Lord gives birth.
(Hymn to Matins)

The presence of Mary, which fills the anxious wait for Advent with adoring silence, also remains at Christmas and until the Epiphany as a background of light, an atmosphere of tenderness and peace, of silent adoration.
Verbi silentis muta Mater: this is how another hymn of the ancient liturgy sings, inspired by a commentary by Rupert of Deutz on the Song of Songs.
Yes, silent Mother of the silent Word, since the divine Word became in-fans, a child who does not yet speak. But this silence contains Life, it is the substantial Word of love with which the world is full and from which the history of the human race is leavened as it runs towards the day and hour of the glorious return of Christ: when all men they will see and recognize him as the only Lord.