Tuesday of the First Week of Advent
Luke 10: 21-24
A Childlike Heart for an Advent God
As we enter the early days of Advent, the Church invites us to slow down, breathe deeply, and listen with the quiet openness of a child. In today’s Gospel, Jesus rejoices in the Holy Spirit because God reveals His mysteries not to the proud or the complicated, but to the humble-hearted. Advent begins not with noise or urgency, but with simplicity — the kind that lets God in.
Jesus praises the Father for hiding divine truths from those who believe they already know everything. This is not a criticism of study or learning, but a reminder that faith is ultimately received, not mastered. Advent gently asks us: Can I let go of my need to control, analyse, or predict everything? Can I allow God to surprise me again, as if seeing Him for the first time?
To know Christ is not to catalogue ideas about Him — it is to meet Him, to let His presence shape us, to be vulnerable before Him as a child before a loving parent.
Jesus then reveals the Advent’s deepest mystery: only He truly knows the Father, and only through Him do we come to know God. We often imagine God from afar, as if peering across a great distance. Yet Jesus steps into that distance. He becomes flesh so that God’s heart can be seen, heard, touched, and loved. Advent is the season when we remember that God does not remain hidden; He comes close. He enters our ordinary lives — our wounds, our hopes, our anxieties — and says, “If you want to know who God is, look at Me.”
Finally, Jesus tells His disciples that they are blessed to see what countless generations longed for. Advent reminds us that humanity has always been searching for God, stumbling through history, longing for light. In Jesus, that longing is fulfilled. He is the One to whom every prophet pointed, every hope reached, every human prayer stretched.
Let us allow this season of Advent to lift our eyes, renew our hope, and awaken in us the childlike wonder that can recognise God already drawing near.
© Claretian Publications, Hong Kong, China
Cum Approbatione Ecclesiastica 2025
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