December 1978

Have you noticed how you usually do not live life, but drag along expecting an 'afterwards' in which something beautiful should happen.

The fact is that a 'beautiful afterwards' should come, but it is not the one you expect.

A divine instinct inclines you to expect someone or something that will satisfy you. Your thoughts dwell on a party or your free time or a special meeting, but once these events are over you are not left satisfied. You go on following the routine of a life lived without conviction. You go an waiting.

The truth is that among the factors which make up your life, there is one which no one can escape and that is the meeting with the Lord, who comes. This is the 'beautiful' moment which you unknowingly are yearning for. You are made for happiness and only He can give you full happiness.

Jesus knows how blindly you and I look for happiness and so he warns us:

Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

Watch. Be careful. Stay awake.

There are many things you are not sure about in the world but there is no doubt about one thing: one day you are going to die. For a Christian this means presenting oneself before Christ who comes.

Perhaps like the majority of people you deliberately try to forget death. You are afraid of that moment and live as though it does not exist. You say with your life on earth as you root yourself more deeply in it: death makes me tremble so it does not exist. But the moment will come. Christ will certainly come.

Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

Jesus is referring here to his coming on the last day. Just as he ascended to heaven in the sight of the apostles, he will come again. But his words also refer to the coming of the Lord at the end of the life of every man. Besides when a man dies, for him the world is finished.

You must watch because you do not know whether Christ will come today, this evening, tomorrow or in a year's time. Like a house owner keeps watch when he knows that thieves are coming to steal, but does not know the exact time, you too must keep watch.

Since Jesus comes it means that this life passes away. The maximum importance must be given to life therefore, life must not be under valued. You must prepare yourself for that meeting with a worthy life.

On the morning of August 6th Pope Paul VI did not yet know and perhaps did not even imagine that the Lord would come that evening at 9.40. He was ready though. He had often alluded to death in his speeches in the period before August 6th. He was prepared. His sudden departure was not a surprise for him. For John Paul I the coming of Jesus was even more unforeseeable.

Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

You too need to watch. Your life is not just a peaceful series of actions. You also have to fight. Your main enemies are the different temptations: sexual temptations, violence, vanity, attachment to money.

If you always watch you will not allow yourself to be taken by surprise. Someone who loves watches well. Love is watchful. When you love someone, your heart always watches waiting for the beloved person, each minute is spent with the person in mind.

A loving wife when working or preparing something for her absent husband, does everything for his sake. When the husband arrives in her joyful greeting there is all the contented work of the whole day.

Someone who loves Jesus acts in the same way. Everything is done with Jesus in mind, and He is met in the simple manifestations of His will in each moment. The solemn meeting with Jesus will be on the day when He comes.

November 3rd, 1974.

In Santa Maria in the south of Brazil a Christian meeting of 250 young people had just finished. Most of them were from the town of Polotas. There were 45 passengers on the first coach which left after a joyful song-filled send-off. During the journey of the young passengers began saying the rosary together. They were contemplating the sorrowful mysteries. They asked Mary to make them faithful to God until death.

While cornering, owing to a mechanical fault, the coach went off the road and plunged 50 metres, overturning three times on the way. Six girls died. One of the survivors said: "I saw death close to me but I was not afraid because God was there. Another said: "When I realised I could move, amid the wreckage, I looked up at the starry sky and I knelt among the bodies of my friends and prayed. God was there next to us." Carmen Regina's father said that before she died she often repeated, "It is beautiful to die, daddy, you go to stay with Jesus!"

Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

The young people of Pelotas were watching because they loved and when the Lord came they went to meet him joyfully.

Chiara Lubich