In Advent we prepare for the coming of the Lord. His first coming was at Bethlehem, but we know that He will come again to judge the living and the dead. So we must prepare for His coming. The world forgets this preparation, and then scrambles for six days after 25 December to make resolutions for the New Year. By then, however, it’s too late—Christmas has come and gone, Our Lord has already made His visitation to the earth, and He has found us unprepared. This is precisely what will happen at the Second Coming. Unfortunately, by then it will be too late, and there will be no time to change our hearts and minds. There will be no four-week warning period. Since Advent is a time of preparation, Catholics should remember that Christmas is not here until it truly comes, even though the secular world behaves otherwise. One way to help us focus on the Advent theme of preparation is to make a good confession, read the parables of The Fig Tree, The Man Going on a Long Journey, The Faithful and Wicked Stewards, and The Ten Virgins in the 24th and 25th chapters of Saint Matthew’s Gospel. Another way to help us do this is to think of the Saint who embodies the spirit of this Season more than any other: the great Saint John the Baptist. Consider the message of this voice of one crying in the desert: ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths’. You will note that the readings of the second, third, and fourth Sundays of Advent focus on Saint John, the earthly herald of Christ’s coming, whom Saint Ephraem likened to the Star of Bethlehem, the heavenly herald of His coming.