“If you wish to meet God, go as far as your own heart”.  Dear Sisters, these words of St. Bernard were appropriate at the beginning of Advent, and they are as appropriate right now.  Our gospel reading for this fourth Sunday of Advent is the Visitation.  The encounter of Mary and Elizabeth is an encounter of the heart, heart meeting heart…Without the opening of the heart there would be no realization or awareness of the new birth stirring in the cave of the heart.  We hear Elizabeth in the gospel crying out: “As soon as your greeting came the babe in my womb leaped for joy” (Lk 1:44).

And now listen to similar words from the epistle: “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil 4:4-7).  “Have no anxiety at all…”  “In everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”  Sisters, note: we are to bring EVERYTHING to God.  We hear in other scripture texts, especially the psalms, that God knows the intention of our heart even before we express it…

There is a ‘voice’…do you hear it?  A voice that is crying out in the center of our longing.  What is that voice saying that cries out, that yearns for our attention, that yearns for us to open our hearts even more now as we await the manifestation of God’s ‘new gesture of love’.  Is this something that you need…that I need?  Absolutely. 

Both Bernard of Clairvaux (12^th century) and Thomas Merton (20^th century) describe Advent as the ‘sacrament of the presence of God in the world’.  God is with us and still God will come again, God will once more be born within the human heart and in the midst of our daily lives.  “If you wish to meet God, go as far as your own heart,” writes St. Bernard. 

The orientation of the apocalyptic gospel for this Sunday is toward “the complete fulfillment of the reign of God”.  Sometimes it is important to look towards the end in order to help us live in this precious present moment.  Here is what Pope Francis says about the ‘final goal’.  “Our final goal is the encounter with the Risen Lord. I would like to ask how many of you think about this. ‘There will be a day in which I meet the Lord face to face’. And this is our goal: the encounter” (Angelus, November 15, 2015).  This, the ‘final goal’, face to face with the One whom we have been, day by day growing closer to, in heart and mind, and in our very flesh.