December 14th, 2025

Dear brothers and sisters,

This is the cry of the prophet Isaiah: “Tell all the faint hearted: Courage do not be afraid your God is coming to save you!” God is bringing back his people from the exile and is giving them his salvation. There is a glorious way, a holy way, to come back to God prepared also for us. This way of return from exile is the way of conversion and of faith. It is the way that John the Baptist has prepared in the desert announcing the coming of one mightier than he. “I will baptize you with water, but this one will baptize you with fire and the Holy Spirit.”

This one that is coming and that we are also waiting for, like John the Baptist, is Jesus Christ. The Messiah, Jesus Christ, comes to complete and bring to fulness this Holy Way, our baptism and our call to conversion. Abandoning the slavery to sin and coming back to God. Christ is this glorious and Holy Way. This way is prepared for us by the preaching of John, that is the preaching of the Church, that is this word we hear today. Through Christ then, “the blind see, leapers are cleansed, the death hear, the lame walk, the mute speak and to the poor the Gospel is announced” sadness and lamentation will be gone also from our hearts. With Christ we are no longer exiled from God but in communion with him.

Peace,

Fr. Nicholas, Pastor