NOTE: As of yesterday, we have begun in the daily meditations a series entitled “Advent in Apocalyptic Times”. If anyone would prefer to listen to a meditation on the reading or the gospel of the day, you can find it at the following link: http://en.elijamission.net/a-burning-heart/
“Night still covers the earth and darkness the peoples…” (Is 60:2).
We cannot close our eyes or overlook the great darkness that hangs over the peoples. Just as we must not allow ourselves to be swallowed up by it, giving too much weight to the plans of evil and occupying ourselves excessively with them, it would also be a mistake to overlook it or to want to ignore it.
In order to deal correctly with the given situation in the world, it is necessary to perceive the darkness. At the same time, this perception must be connected with the firm certainty of faith that, in addition to counting on God’s intervention, already sees Him working in the midst of the darkness and trusts that the Father will know how to conduct all things according to His plan.
A dense darkness that we perceive in the world is the great apostasy of those peoples who had already received the proclamation of the Gospel. In former times, they themselves had sent their missionaries to the ends of the earth, thus becoming bearers of the light of faith. But now the fire seems to be extinguished and the growing apostasy is also manifesting itself by obscuring the legislations of the nations.
Thus, in the modern world we find ourselves with a great forgetfulness of God. Many people live as if He did not exist. The more the missionaries lose their strength of conviction and adapt themselves to the mentality of the world, the more the obscurity increases.
If missionaries no longer place the encounter with the living God at the center of evangelization and are no longer moved by the conviction that all people must know Christ and embrace the faith, then they will no longer be messengers of the Gospel to the nations, but their voices will be extinguished. Then peoples will no longer experience “how beautiful on the mountains, are the feet of the messenger announcing peace, of the messenger of good news, who proclaims salvation” (Is 52:7); rather they are left to their own fate.
Apostasy and forgetfulness of God often mean that human life is no longer understood as a free gift that the Creator entrusts to us and for which we are accountable. Thus we have arrived at the incomprehensible crime of abortion, the killing of countless innocent children in their mothers’ wombs, which in many nations has become a normality, to the point of being declared a right.
If we add to this the numerous injustices, corruption, immorality and so many other deviations from the way of God and His commandments, we can get an idea of the dense darkness that hangs over the world.
The growing apostasy of the formerly Christian nations and the internal and external weakening of the Church are conducive to the spread of an anti-Christian spirit. This spirit is no longer content with undermining Christian faith and principles, attempting to shape the world according to other criteria; it is now becoming ever more aggressive. Those who cling to the faith and defend the moral values that derive from it, are in danger of being marginalized and have to withdraw into the desert, spiritually understood.
“Night still covers the earth and darkness the peoples…”
If we do not observe God’s commandments, we choose death. Already the people of Israel were confronted with this decision on Mount Sinai: “Look, today I am offering you life and prosperity, death and disaster. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God (…); you will live…, and the Lord your God will bless you (…). But if your heart turns away (…), you will most certainly perish” (Dt 30:15-18).
Will mankind today choose the path of death? It is up to each person to make up their own mind!