The gift of salvation

The great season of Advent is a period in which all Christians all over the world fervently prepare to celebrate Jesus Christ’s birth at Christmas while at the same time look ahead in hope to his Second Coming (parousia) in glory and majesty. It is a period of four weeks which represents the four thousand years the Israelites eagerly and patiently waited for the Saviour and Messiah Jesus Christ. Incidentally it is the first season of the Church’s year leading up to Christmas. Through the prophets God warned his people to prepare very well for the coming of his begotten Son the Gift of Salvation through whom as St. Paul says we became “heirs of God” (Rom. 8:17). Verily did Isaiah announce: “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord make straight in the desert a highway for our God’ ” (Is. 40:3). Surely this august proclamation characterized the first coming of Jesus Christ.