“This evening, with First Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent, the Holy Church prepares to celebrate the Birth of the Redeemer. The first and last Sundays of the liturgical year instruct us with the Gospel of the end times, showing us how everything begins and is fulfilled in Christ, King and High Priest, Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. We find ourselves in an interregnum between the coming in humility of the Incarnate Word and His return in glory; an eternal glory: cujus regni non erit finis, as we recite in the Creed. Well, in this time of trial and mercy that prepares us for liturgical Advent as well as the final coming of the Lord, we have the possibility of meriting the beatitude of heaven by fulfilling the Will of God, in Faith animated by good works.
An eschatological outlook leads us to believe that we are now living in the end times, and that the time has come to look realistically at the struggle to which we are called. Non præteribit generatio hæc donec omnia hæc fiant. This generation will not pass away before all this happens (Mt 24:33), the Lord warns us. We need to understand the privilege we have received of witnessing the final stages of the epochal war between God and Satan; a war already won by Our Lord on the Cross, but which is waiting to be sanctioned by the triumph of Christ and the definitive defeat of the Adversary. It is a privilege that consists above all in being witnesses of this victory, precisely when the apparent success of the enemies suggests that all is lost and the Church has been defeated and overthrown. But was this not also the case after the Savior’s death, after His burial, when the Apostles had abandoned the Lord and shut themselves up in the Upper Room? The Passio Ecclesiæ is not unlike the Passio Christi, and there is no glory of the resurrection through it without first suffering the sufferings of Calvary. In this the words of the Apostle are fulfilled: Instaurare omnia in Christo (Eph 1:10) means precisely restoring all things in Christ, understanding that the Cross is the throne from which the Divine King reigns, and that the Church, His Mystical Body, must also rediscover her own identity and mission by ascending Golgotha as well.
Let us so live that the Child King, whom we will soon adore with the shepherds and the Three Magi Kings, may illuminate this valley of tears, warm our hearts, and inflame our wills: so that at His triumphant return as Rex tremendæ majestatis each one of us may be called to His right hand: voca me benedictis.
And may the Blessed Virgin – whose Immaculate Heart was chosen by the eternal Son of the Father to be the domus aurea, the palace of the King of kings – deign to offer all that we have returned in this life to Our Lord, in the confidence that we will receive back a hundredfold. May the imminent Feast of the Immaculate Conception spur us to trust in the Blessed Virgin, who alone overcame all heresies and who in her humility – a model for us all – deserved to be able to crush the head of the ancient Serpent. To the Immaculate Conception, our Mother, Lady and Queen, I entrust in a very special way the Exsurge Domine Association and all those who support it with the spiritual help of prayer and with the material help of charity. Let us ask her to answer our supplication and make us worthy of Christ’s promises. And so may it be.”
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
December 2, 2023
Last Day of the Liturgical Year and First Saturday of the Month