On the vigil of the first Sunday of Advent, an unusual silence surrounds us. It is as if all creation were taking a deep breath before something entirely new begins. We stand on the threshold of the Church’s new year, and after hearing so often in the liturgy about the end times, judgment, and its terrors, today the same theme speaks to us from the Book of Isaiah in a more consoling tone (Is 2:1–5; see also 43:19). And from the Book of Revelation (Rev 21:5) the Lord speaks even more encouragingly: “Behold, I make all things new.” Not repairing, not patching – making new. Everything.
This sentence is at once a promise and an offered possibility. God does not leaf through the scorecard of our past, nor does He count our successes and failures. He does not keep track of our abandoned attempts. Instead, now, on this first Sunday of Advent, He says: let us begin something new. Let us start with a clean slate. Waiting for new possibilities, watchfully.
This is an immeasurable confidence on God’s part toward humanity: I make all things new! For He has seen what became of what He created. He has seen how light turns into darkness, how true speech falls silent, how life becomes death. And yet now, at the dawn of Advent, He begins again. With creative power and hope.
And He invites us to this as well. Advent means “coming,” waiting for the One who is to come. But we do not sit passively in the darkness, hoping that someday something will happen. Advent is an active waiting, in which – although we receive everything as a gift – we ourselves can become collaborators in the emergence of new life. God says: “Behold, I make all things new” – and adds: “Will you join Me in this?”
What darkness is there in your life from which light can be born? What silence longs to become a voice? What part of you, believed to be dead, can come alive again? God does not speak in the past tense but in the present: “I make new” – now, today, in this Advent season.
Darkness is not some kind of cosmic punishment we must endure, but the very possibility in which light can appear even more brilliantly. Death is not the final word, but the passage through which life gains a new meaning. Silence is not emptiness, but the space in which the word can truly become word, filled with meaning and weight.
On the first Sunday of Advent, we light a candle. For now, only a single small flame in the darkness. And that is enough. We do not need a dazzling brightness at once, nor loud shouting, nor a perfect life – as media and public life often suggest. One flame is enough, the first step, the attempted word. For God does not expect perfect creations from us, but readiness to begin anew.
“Behold, I make all things new” – this sentence is special also because God does not say: “Make everything new within yourself,” but “I make all things new.” The strength, the initiative, the possibility come from Him. All we need is openness, the willingness to let ourselves be made new.
This is one of Advent’s mysteries. In truth, it is not so much we who prepare the way for the Lord in the wilderness by our perfection, but He who prepares our way through darkness, death, and silence – toward light, life, and speech.
So let us light the first candle, and let us believe: the small flame that now begins to flicker will shine at the end of Advent as a life-giving light. For when God says: “Behold, I make all things new” – it is not only a promise. It is a reality already begun.
Sr. Anna Farmati SSS
