Awaiting Hope
By Fr. Matteo Invernizzi, F.S.C.B.
December, 2025
Wednesday afternoon, 4:25 pm. Kids walk quickly past the front desk at Nativity, heading to Cabrini Hall. The younger ones are accompanied by their parents; the oldest are dropped off in the parking lot and run down the stairs, passing in a blur. Catechists are already inside Cabrini, waiting to start the Religious Education program. Ann Marie White takes the stage and leads the kids through some Christmas carols: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; O Little Town of Bethlehem; Silent Night. We are preparing the Christmas play, and the kids, standing in front of the stage, look at Ann Marie and the words projected on the screen behind her. It is a moment of rare unity, many voices raised as one to praise the Lord.
I am there, on the side, waiting for the singing to end. Afterward, I will lead the group in prayer and then tell the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. I observe the forty kids who keep singing with enthusiasm, and I notice a little girl, Naomi, looking in the opposite direction from the stage, toward the hall’s entrance door. While all the other children are happy and engaged with the songs, she looks sad and distant.
I wait a few minutes, then approach her and ask why she is turning toward the door instead of singing. She says, “I’m waiting for Violet, my friend!” It’s now 4:45, and Violet still has not shown up. I doubt she will come today. I try to tell Naomi this gently and help her join the rest of the class. But I cannot stop thinking about Naomi’s longing for her friend to appear in that door. It is as if all the music and joy of the Christmas carols are irrelevant without a friend to share them!
We know that Advent is a time when we prepare to receive Christ who comes. We hear in homilies that He came in the flesh, He keeps coming in the sacraments, and He will come again in glory on the last day. And we are fine with that! But when I saw Naomi waiting for Violet—waiting for her to walk through the door of Cabrini Hall—something pierced my heart and made me ask, “Do I wait for Jesus the way this child is waiting for her friend? Is He such a presence for me that, without Him, no joy, no music, no delight can be complete?”
I’m so blessed to have the opportunity to teach Religious Education to little ones, because they have such a beautiful way of living their relationship with Jesus and their friends! In a way, only those who have experienced waiting for a beloved person can truly understand what Advent is.
When I was in middle school, my mom—who was also my literature teacher at the time—asked us students, for the Advent season, to learn by heart a poem by Clemente Rebora, a poet who, late in life, became a priest:
From the image taut
I mind the instant
with the imminence of wait—
and await no one:
in the incandescent shade
I search the chimes
which unperceivable
diffuse the pollen of sound—
and await no one:
within these walls
stupefied by space
greater than a desert
I await no one:
but he must come,
and will come,
if I endure
blossoming unseen,
he will come suddenly,
when least I expect it:
he will come as mercy perhaps
for all that leads to death,
he will come to assure me
of his and my riches,
he will come as solace
for my and his suffering,
he will come, perhaps he has already
softly speaking.
Only poets, lovers, saints, and children have the sensitivity to wait for the coming of the beloved one. Only they can teach us to live Advent as the time of awaiting hope—of that unseen blossoming hope that cannot wait to reveal itself fully in the flesh of Jesus.
