My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence.

I ask your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful.

My immaculate mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We are almost at the end of his journey that is bringing us closer and closer to your

birthday, my Lord, to the day of your nativity, to the day that changed history forever.

And speaking about journeys, I remember once I was on a ski trip, and we got stuck really early, really into the snow, because it was a blizzard.

And a journey that should have taken 20 minutes from the ski resort to our house took us four hours.

And we were rescued by the police and got home and I remember that day very well.

Because it is scary.

When you're in the middle of a blizzard,

everything is confusing.

There's no sense of

where the direction of

my house is or my destination

and it's cold, obviously.

Advent and the whole

journey of the Old Testament is similar.

The confusion after the original sin, the mess in history took so long to be repaired.

But the good news is that going through that gives us a sense of atonement, a sense of gratitude,

because we're getting finally to the gates of the encounter with you of heaven.

And heaven started in this world to be a reality when, as the Gospel of today says, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town

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