From The Vocation Director:

As Advent leads us to ponder the incarnation, these words from Blessed Guerric of Igny are a good place to reflect:

Our king and savior is coming! Let’s run to meet him! Good news coming from a far ountry is like cold water to a thirsty person! One who announces the coming of our Savior and the reconciliation of the world, together with all the good things of the life to come, indeed brings good news. Such a messenger bears refreshment for all who thirst for God. We have joyfully been offered water from the springs of salvation. “Why is this granted to me, that my Lord should come to me?”

So let’s arise with joy and run in spirit to meet our Savior. Hailing him from afar, let’s worship him and say: “We have waited for you, Lord, be our stronghold, our salvation in time of trouble!” We must look forward to the day of Christ’s birth. Scripture itself insists that joy must fll us as we strain forward for his coming, impatient of delay to see what the future holds. As we believe that our bodies will rise rejoicing at his second coming, so our hearts must run forward to greet his first.

Between these two comings, the Lord frequently visits us individually, in accordance with our desires and our merits. He forms us in the likeness of his first coming in the flesh and so prepares us for his return at the end of time. He comes to us now to make sure that we don’t lose the fruits of his first coming nor incur wrath at his second. Christ’s purpose now is to convert our pride into the humility which he showed when he first came. We are to let ourselves be refashioned in our lowliness into the likeness of the glory revealed in his glorified body. This he will manifest when he comes again.

My brothers and sisters, though we haven’t yet experienced the wonderful consolation of his coming we are encouraged by firm faith and a conscience made pure to wait patiently for the Lord to come again. With joy and confidence, we can say with St. Paul: “I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he can guard until that day what has been entrusted to me”. He will do this until “the appearing of the glory of our Great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.