1. Sunday of Advent 2024: HOPE

“Hope – this is described as a confident inner attitude, coupled with a positive expectation. However, there is no real certainty as to whether or not the desired outcome will actually occur. Hope is the comprehensive emotional and often action-guiding orientation of people towards their future.”

If you think about these lines for a moment, you get the idea that hope always arises when there is dissatisfaction or uncertainty. In view of the almost obvious threats to our actually wonderful earth, this probably applies to the majority of people. There are many reasons for this:

• Whether they are affected by climate change because they are losing their land and homes,

• or whether they fear for their jobs because decisions are being made over their heads that they cannot influence – both are sources of their insecurity.

• Or whether their children cannot receive any or only a poor education for their future, or their own country no longer offers a future due to mismanagement and corruption or through war and permanent criminal activity.

• Whether the country was destroyed by natural disasters and only temporarily rebuilt or not rebuilt at all, or whether man himself has dried up lakes, diverted rivers, destroyed and devastated the land through technology and pollution, rendering it unusable for generations.

We could list many more reasons. But as you can see, there are enough reasons for people to have to leave their homes and embark on an uncertain and dangerous journey into the future. ‘Flight’ and ‘migration’ are present in many parts of today’s world, with all their accompanying phenomena and effects.

Flight – always means leaving everything familiar behind: family, friends and a familiar environment, and venturing into the unknown. How do we see it, we who are not directly affected? – Can we or do we really want to imagine what it means not to know whether there will be anything to eat or drink tomorrow, what it means to have no roof over our head or to have to live in dangerous and undignified camps? So many individual fates are simply ignored, lost in a world that is loud and brutal and driven by greed, competition, success and the pursuit of power. The losers are men, women and children everywhere – all simple and unique people who are just looking for a new life in peace. They fall into the shadows, into insignificance – into a dark nothing…

And yet, here and there, there are small joys, a spark of hope. Be it the smiling, encouraging look of a stranger behind the border fence, the warm laughter of some young people at the train station, or a warm “good morning” from the saleswoman or the policeman. These small glimmers of light in our daily lives remind us that there is something else we can bring to our neighbour – something that gives light and warmth. These little things are like the candles we light during Advent. Where darkness once prevailed, suddenly there is light in the dark. The light that gives us hope again. The glow that serves as a cornerstone and guide to discover the unlit candles that are in the shadows behind them. A path of hope opens up, giving us new energy and courage – and encouraging us to transform the world into a better place again. Especially for us Christians, this means giving hope, passing on our abundant hope to others (cf. Heb 6:11-12). These days of Advent invite us even more to reach out to our neighbours without distinction, but with small gestures of love and hope.

In this way, we can be a first small light in a dark environment, pointing to a much greater light to come.

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