Those who reflect on the times of the Second Coming and the Last Judgment for some reason pay more attention to the cataclysms accompanying those critical times than to Jesus' very clear words that at that expected moment normal everyday life will continue: neither customary labors, nor weddings, nor even the taking of food will stop. The main upheavals will occur not in the earth's crust or in the atmosphere, but in people's lives, in their souls. The choice the Lord offers us is made already now, and it is made quietly and unnoticed by most of those around us. Completely similar people make the choice, but they make it differently. Until a certain time they are side by side, but the hour of parting will come, when each will go along the path he has chosen for himself.

It is interesting that here Jesus again mentions the fig tree, offering it to the disciples as an example of one that can sense the changes of the times. These words once more make us remember another fig tree, the one that gave no fruit. We are called to be constantly ready to bear fruit and place it in the Lord's hands.

The texts for the first Sunday of Advent call us first of all to watchfulness. Not only because we cannot determine the moment when a child will be born. But also because our expectation of seeing Jesus now must be like what parents feel when they have already been waiting eight months for the birth of a child. There is no patience left at all: when at last will we be able to see, to know who this is, what He is like? Life is about to change at any minute, and there are too many of those minutes.

The changes in our life that Jesus gives us are immeasurably greater. He will come to us as a newborn infant, who cannot speak and who will not get anywhere unless we carry Him. In the time left to us before His birth, we must accustom ourselves to the thought that, like any little child, Jesus means cares, constant anxieties, and watchfulness at any time of day or night.

Is He well with us? Is He warm? Will we teach Him to smile? And will we unlearn how to wage war when He appears in our life?

The apostle Paul tells us today that in Christ we have been enriched in everything. Not in "something," but precisely in everything: "in every word and every knowledge." In other words, God has given us all the knowledge of Him that is necessary, precisely necessary, because to know Him in fullness, as He is, is impossible for a creature, at least in this world. He has given us every word, and if He calls us to bear witness to Him, then we cannot say that we do not know how to preach. He has given us the ability to proclaim the gospel. And we "lack no gift," that is, all the gifts that can be needed, meaning that He will need us to use them, He has already given us.

This does not mean that we do not need to ask for anything, because the fact that He has given something does not mean that we have received it. But it is important that He has already done everything. We have been given everything that is needed. Let us be grateful.