Vatican City – At 9 a.m. this morning, in the Paul VI Hall, the Roman Curia formally opened its Advent journey with the first meditation preached by Fr. Roberto Pasolini OFM Cap., Preacher of the Papal Household, in the presence of Pope Leo XIV. The chosen theme – “Awaiting and hastening the coming of the day of God (2 Pet 3:12). Jubilee hopebetween the Lord’s coming and the universality of salvation” – launches a path that will accompany the Church toward the closing of the Ordinary Jubilee. Exactly one year ago, Pasolini inaugurated his mandate with the Advent cycle that led the Curia into the Jubilee year and through the Holy Door.
The next meditations will take place on Friday 12 December and Friday 19 December.
From the outset, Pasolini clarified the profound meaning of this season: Advent does not look only to the remembrance of the Incarnation, but to the ultimate horizon of history. “Advent is the time in which the Church rekindles hope,” he recalled, noting that Christian faith lives oriented toward “the Lord’s return at the end of time.” In this expectancy, every believer rediscovers he is a pilgrim toward a homeland, called to read the present not as confusion but as a path inhabited by a promise.
The Parousia and the risk of missing the real time
Entering the heart of the meditation, Pasolini introduced the evangelical notion of Parousia – a term that unites “coming” and “presence,” comparable to the visit of a sovereign. In this light he revisited the days of Noah, a pivotal Gospel reference in his preaching. While people carried on with ordinary activities, “they did not notice anything” until the flood swept them away. This spiritual blindness, Pasolini warned, is strikingly contemporary: “What must we learn to notice, without being distracted by the issues we confront daily?”
The decisive answer: we must recognize the silent movement of the Kingdom in history and preserve the capacity to discern God’s action, because merely noticing is not enough to convert the heart. What forms this awareness is grace, “that gift of universal salvation” that frees from fear and illuminates human history. This, he stressed, is the first act of Christian vigilance.
The flood: understanding evil and the patience of God
A substantial portion of the meditation focused on the biblical account of the universal flood, read not as catastrophe but as a revelation of God’s unyielding love for wounded humanity. Evil, Pasolini recalled, cannot simply be tolerated: “Evil must not simply be forgiven; it must be blotted out,” so that life may recover its beauty and truth. Yet this “erasing” is not annihilation. It is the act by which God saves what can still flourish. Hence the command to Noah to build an ark, interpreted as a symbol of the temple, the place where the true image of God is restored in the human heart.
One of the most striking passages concerned the rainbow, interpreted in its original Hebrew meaning as the bow of a warrior: “The sign God places between heaven and earth... is the weapon of an archer.” God lays down His bow – not a poetic gesture, but a definitive renunciation of violence, a covenantal act through which the Creator pledges never again to strike humanity.
Vigilance and responsibility: the heart of expectation
In the final section, Pasolini turned to the theme of vigilance, which he called the essential posture of Christian time: “Keep watch, for you do not know on which day your Lord will come.” Not knowing the moment, he explained, is part of God’s pedagogy, so that every generation may live in expectancy.
He identified two contemporary temptations: forgetting our need to be saved and tending only to image, weakening the radical force of the Gospel. The first form of salvation, he insisted, is not activism but returning to the joy of discipleship: “As in the days of Noah, the first form of salvation is not organizing pastoral activities, but returning to the joy of following Christ.”
Thus Advent becomes an invitation to recognize ourselves as sentinels in the night of the world, sustained by the promise that “soon the Morning Star may rise.” This sacred season is not merely the remembrance of Christ’s birth, but the living expectation of His return, an expectation that transforms the present when grace is welcomed and guarded.
f.G.E.
Silere non possum