"Watch every day and every hour, and be ready to do perfectly what is pleasing to God,

knowing that the Lord comes at the hour we do not expect"

                             Basil of Caesarea.

We might say that our existence unfolds in expectation – from one event to the next. Waiting to be born, I wait to grow up and mature, I wait to die, and finally I wait for the "fulfilment" of life, which stands above all expectations. The season of Christmas, which is preceded, as its preparation, by the season of Advent, already offers us a pledge of that fullness of divine, eternal and blessed life which has been communicated to us in the Spirit of the Risen One. Advent reminds us that we are all truly in a state of expectation. For this reason, we cannot afford to live as in the days of Noah, in the superficiality that is "the supreme vice of our age", as Raimon Panikkar puts it.

We live in a time of anxiety about our tomorrow, with uncertainty about the future, with difficulty trusting others, and with a longing for someone to appear who will change our fate. Alessandro D'Avenia says: "We are all waiting for something or someone. Only those who wait, who strive towards something, are truly alive. We are alive because we are always waiting for something, but the moment we attain it, a new waiting begins. Then we ask ourselves: 'What will happen next?' And does this waiting ever come to an end?"

Peter Canisius says: "Look, Peter is asleep, Judas is awake." That is something that makes us think: the drowsiness of the good. Pope Pius XI said: "the great problem of our time is not the negative forces, it is the drowsiness of the good." The wise man is the one who does not let life pass him by, but enjoys it, takes the initiative, takes risks. The opposite is the one who stands still, does not act, does not move. He may put himself "in a safe place", but in the end realises that he has not really lived.

Sleep and death, wakefulness and life – it is not always clear to us where we currently stand. We believe we are awake, but in reality we are too often switched off. Walking dead, at times. Unable to desire life, to let ourselves be carried by its strength, to put our whole self and all our energy into it. We are already dead before we die, and when our time comes, we cannot go back and start again. "Waiting is life," wrote Victor Hugo.

The present age is like a long night. The life we lead resembles a dream – the frenetic activity we live within it is, in reality, a kind of sleep. The seventeenth-century Spanish writer Calderón de la Barca wrote a famous play on this theme: "Life Is a Dream" (Vida es sueño).

Life as a dream reflects, above all, brevity. A dream unfolds outside of time. In dreams, things do not last as they do in reality. Situations that would take days and weeks happen in a dream in a few brief moments. That is a picture of our life. In deep old age a person looks back and has the impression that it was all just a breath. When I asked my grandfather, who had turned a hundred, what it was like to live so long, he answered very briefly: "It all lasted three seconds."

The second characteristic of a dream is unreality, or vanity. Someone may dream that he is at a banquet, eating and drinking his fill. He wakes up and has to face the fullness of his hunger. One night a poor man dreams that he has become rich: in the dream he exults, puts on airs, even despises his own father, pretending not to recognise him, but then he wakes up and finds that he is as poor as he was before! The same is true when we wake from the dream of this life. A man here on earth may have been very rich, but then he dies and finds himself in exactly the position of that poor man waking up after dreaming he was rich. What is left of all his wealth if he did not put it to good use? A handful of nothing.

The third characteristic of a dream is the absence of responsibility. You may have killed or stolen in your dream; you wake up, and no trace of guilt remains; your criminal record is unstained. It is not so in life, we know that well. What is done and what happens in life leaves a great mark, and what a mark it is! Indeed, it is written that God "will render to every man according to his works" (Rom 2:6).

What keeps us drowsy more than anything else are bad habits. A bad habit is like a vampire. A vampire – at least according to what is believed – attaches itself to sleeping people, and while it sucks their blood, it simultaneously injects them with a sedative fluid that makes the sleep even sweeter, so that the victim sinks ever deeper into sleep and the vampire can go on sucking blood for as long as it wishes. In the same way a bad habit, or some vice, lulls the conscience to sleep, so that a person no longer even feels remorse, believes that all is well, and does not realise that he is dying spiritually. The battle we must fight every day is precisely the battle against bad habits, against giving in to the weariness of heart and love, through a lack of watchfulness, of attention.

The only salvation, once that "vampire" has attached itself to you, is for something to come along suddenly and wake you from sleep. That is what the Word of God intends to do with us through that cry we so often hear during Advent: "Watch!" Precisely because we know neither the day nor the hour, it is up to us to give shape to our waiting, to prepare ourselves to enjoy fully the beauty of the encounter and the celebration that is to come.

Let us be on our guard, for when the body falls asleep, nature within us takes the upper hand, and our actions no longer follow our will, but an unconscious impulse. And when sluggishness – that is, cowardice and anxiety – takes hold of the soul, the enemy takes hold of it too, and works through it to do what it does not want. Brute force rules the body, and the enemy rules the soul. That is why watchfulness, of which our Lord spoke, is prescribed for both: for the body, so that it does not give itself over to a heavy sleep; for the soul, so that it does not fall into listlessness and discouragement. The tired look on so many faces, complaint as the dominant theme of conversation, disappointment with the most beautiful of things, with love above all, suggest to me that everything, contrary to that image, is becoming motionless, old, repetitive, colourless, stale. It seems as if the great promise of life can no longer be fulfilled.

 "Watch" is therefore more than a good wish not to fall asleep: it is an invitation to live, to keep your eyes and your heart open, to allow yourself to be amazed by something or someone, to know how to read the signs that will appear. To watch is a condition of attention, but also of care: to devote yourself to yourself because you are convinced that it is worth it. "Who has not found paradise here below will miss it above," writes Emily Dickinson.

Chiara Lubich says that it often seems to us as though we are not living life, as though life itself is lagging behind us, and we are waiting for something "afterwards", in which the "beautiful and good" meant for us is supposed to appear: "A truly divine instinct leads us to wait for someone or something that can satisfy us, fulfil us. Perhaps we think it is some celebration, a moment of free time, or a particular encounter, after which, once again, we are not satisfied, at least not completely. And so we carry on with the routine of life, not living out of deep conviction, always waiting for something that never comes. The truth, however, is that there is one hour from which no one can escape: the face-to-face encounter with the Lord who is coming. That is the 'beauty' towards which we unconsciously strive, that is the hour for which we long, because we were made for that encounter and for that happiness. For only he can give us complete happiness."

In this context Paul VI says: "Christ is our Saviour. Christ is our greatest benefactor. Christ is our Liberator. Christ is the truth we seek. Christ is the life we need. Only Christ saves us. Christ is necessary. Christ is enough."

And wishing to sum up in a few words how this holy season is lived – or ought to be lived – we can turn to a beautiful Advent prayer, which reads: "May your help, Lord, keep us steadfast in doing good as we await the coming of Christ, your Son; when he comes and knocks at the door, may he find us watchful in prayer, active in brotherly love, and joyful in praise." A programme for life fully in keeping with "ora et labora, lege et noli contristari" (pray and work, read [the Scriptures] and do not be sad). A time to rediscover compassion in a world torn apart by selfishness, which draws us away and turns us aside from watchfulness, from that Advent cry "Ad te levavi" (To you I lift up my eyes). Advent begins with the prophet Isaiah: "Looking from afar, I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth. Go out to meet him and say: Are you the One who is to reign over his people Israel?"

We cannot live half-asleep or distracted. We must keep our eyes open, know how to recognise danger, avoid mistakes. We need nothing but a watchful spirit: "What belongs properly to the Christian? Watch every day and every hour, and be ready to do perfectly what is pleasing to God, knowing that the Lord comes at the hour we do not expect," says Basil of Caesarea. That means having inner lucidity, intelligence, critical capacity, composure, compassion. Above all we must watch over ourselves, for man's greatest enemy is himself!

At its outset the Church casts its gaze forward and calls us to hasten towards the Coming, towards its newborn King. But he is still veiled in that mystery, in expectation itself. A cloud that seems to darken the day, yet lets the light be seen: the sun of righteousness that scatters every darkness; the first voice we hear is Ad te levavi: "To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame" (Ps 25:1-2). Not only does the gaze reach further, but the soul too rises up towards its Lord. Although the road is still long, every song of Advent is a cry for the Coming, in expectation of this Good News, of a complete newness. And it is spring! Yes!

In medieval treatises the beginning of Advent is described as the arrival of spring, when the darkness in which man finds himself begins to be broken by the first rays of light, full of hope and expectation of what is new: "Take note: in spring the birds begin to sing, and so too does the Church, which begins its song in Advent." The Church as a choir of birds eager to begin their song for the Lord, who comes in spring. And it is a song of awakening! For if someone's heart is still asleep, the singing is the peal of bells that wakes it. It is precisely the melody of Ad te levavi that expresses that ardour, "describing what is awakening". And the liturgy of the Word only confirms this: "Now it is full time to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand" (Rom 13:11-12).

Advent, then, begins with the dawn of spring: with the expectation of the birth of the young Sun from on high, of Christ who floods us with light. This is how William of Auxerre (1145-1231) commented on that part of the Letter to the Romans which says: "Let us put on the armour of light. [...] Put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (13:12-14). The invitation was to begin the liturgical year walking in the light, "becomingly and in good works".

For life is built day by day, responding to its challenges, its promptings, to the unforeseen that always sets us moving again. The way we respond helps to shape us, to make us who we are. That is why we cannot live other people's lives, or answer in their place. And there is no going back, once we realise that perhaps we ought to have lived differently.

"Watch" is, above all, a call addressed to our freedom. If life interests us, we will remain awake and turn the night into a fitting moment for the encounter that gives meaning and beauty to our lives — a beauty we could never create with our own hands. If we fall asleep, if we let ourselves be stunned or seduced by other calls, we will have only ourselves to blame for not taking part in the banquet of life that has been prepared for us alone.

Only the new overcomes routine; only the new gives blood back to what has grown bloodless. That is why it is beautiful to fall in love: the heart is renewed, and a breath of light and freshness reminds us what we were made for. To be eternally the same, on the other hand, is hell. Watchfulness ("Watch!") is therefore the first thing asked of a person who wants to be truly human: his complete availability to the present moment, an elastic openness to the gift of each instant, whatever it may contain. Augustine called the presence of the present "attention", as distinct from that of the past (memory) and of the future (expectation).

"Behold (as the original Greek has it, more often translated 'See'), I make all things new" (Rev 21:5). This is what God says in the book of Revelation to a person who fears failure, weariness, crisis. A person cannot, of himself, begin something new, renew what is old. He needs to receive this newness moment by moment, and to discover that every moment is full of this newness, which can only rarely shine forth if we try to shape it with our own meagre strength. To enter into the unceasing renewal of all things, a person must rise to the level of one who truly sees, recalling what Montale already lamented in his verses: the contempt of those who believe that all reality is only what they see. But there is a source that renews, and a reality that needs to be renewed.

Pope Francis, speaking precisely about the importance of watchfulness, says: "If watchfulness is missing, there is a very great risk that everything we have gained will be lost. This is not a danger of a psychological order, but of a spiritual order – a real trap laid by the evil spirit. In fact, this means precisely that moment when we become too sure of ourselves; that is the danger: 'I am sure of myself, I have won, now everything is fine for me…' – that is the moment the evil spirit waits for, when everything seems to be in order, when things are 'blossoming' and we have, as they say, 'the wind at our back.'

Everything is in place, everything seems fine, but where is the master of the house? He is not there. There is no one to watch over the house and guard it. And that is the problem. The master is absent – he has gone out, distracted, or he is at home but asleep, so it is as if he were not there at all. He is not watchful, not attentive, because he has become too self-assured and has lost the humility to guard his own heart. We must always guard our home, our heart, and not allow ourselves to be distracted…".

We conclude with the word of Jesus that opens our hearts to trust and hope: "Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes; truly, I say to you, he will gird himself and have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them" (Lk 12:37).