Br Ulise Zarza, ofm Dear brothers and sisters, may the Lord give you His peace. Behold, we are beginning with the church the season of Advent. A time when we are called to wait and hope, vigilantly, for the coming of the Lord. And we want to begin our journey precisely from this Shrine of the Visitation, which is symbolic of these two women who waited for the coming of the Lord. First of all Mary, the woman of expectation, who was chosen to be precisely the mother of the Messiah, and then also Elizabeth, who waited not only for the coming of the Messiah, like all the women of Israel, but especially for the coming of her son John: the forerunner of the Savior. It is an important characteristic to cultivate in this Advent season is longing. The desire for the coming of the Lord. The church desires and therefore awaits the Savior. In this sense we can be helped by Augustine, the fourth-century Bishop of Hippo, who made a reflection precisely with the figure of the bride and groom in mind. In one of his addresses and homilies to his church congregants, Augustine says: "As it is evil for a bride not to have desire for her groom, so even more evil is it for the church not to have desire for Christ." "The earthly groom comes to the carnal embrace and is received with intense longing by his chaste bride," Augustine says in this example, and then continues, "he is about to come to the heavenly bridegroom, to give the eternal embrace to his church, while we give you, showing no desire for his coming, showing indeed that we fear him." Here, then, it is most important for the church, but also for the individual Christian, to cultivate a desire or, as he says, to have an intense longing for the coming of the Lord. Not to fear him, but to wait for him just as the bride waits for her bridegroom. So at this point, we also need to see how we want to wait for the Lord; how we can cultivate this desire for the Lord. It is bad for the church not to desire the coming of the Lord, Augustine says, and it is also bad for each of us Christians to live the advent time without desiring the coming of the Lord. But what happens when the church desires the coming of the Lord? Augustine says that she remains attentive, with the eyes of faith, to the Holy Scriptures, like lamps burning in the night. So, Scripture helps the church to desire the coming of the Lord. So, if there is longing, there is vigil and there is also an expectation full of meaning. That is why, for Augustine, the whole life of the fervent Christian is a holy longing. "What you can desire," Augustine says, "you do not yet see, but by living the holy aspirations, it makes you able to wait for the Lord. When he comes, behold, this vision will also be complete." So we are talking about an expectation inhabited by desire, and this is precisely the fuel of our Christian life, this is what keeps the church going. In fact, then, Augustine adds, commenting on the first letter of John and saying this, "by making us wait, the Lord intensifies our desire." "With desire He dilates the soul and, by dilating it, makes it more capable. Let us, therefore, try to live in a climate of desire because we must meet with the Lord," Augustine says, and then concludes by saying "our life is a gymnastics of desire." Now, however, in this time of Advent it is very important also to ask ourselves: what desire dwells in my heart? What desires have taken their place in my life?We must make this soul-searching and put in first place the one great desire that is worthwhile: that is, to wait for the encounter with the Lord. Then Augustine tells us again that "Holy desire will be all the more effective the more we tear out the roots of vanity from our desires". That is, we must make a journey of purifying our desire, leaving aside all other desires that prevent us from seeing the Lord coming, that prevent us from waiting for the Lord, that prevent us from desiring the coming of the Lord. And at this point Augustine then gives us two important elements to do and to live this Advent season. First of all to keep the eyes of faith attentive to Scripture and to what the Lord tells us in his word and then also to pray unceasingly. And here desire plays a very important role because at some point, Augustine says, "our own prayer also becomes desire." Thus, both the prayerful reading of the word and unceasing prayer nourish and sustain our desire for the coming of the Lord. Commenting on the Psalms, Augustine says, "your desire is your prayer: if your desire is continuous, so is your prayer." Dear brothers and sisters, we long for the coming of the Lord and with the church we say, Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus.