Today, our Advent time of waiting turns the final corner, and the promise of light in darkness begins to sparkle on our horizon. Our readings speak of signs that proclaim God’s love — God’s closeness, God’s entry into our lives in ways big and small, and God’s unending renewal of creation with hope and possibility.

The centerpiece of the Mass readings today is the breathtaking passage, from the prophet Isaiah, in which God promises that one will be born who shall be named Emmanuel — a name that means “God is with us.” 

And that promise is all the more striking—and needed today—because we modern people can often be so skeptical. Skeptical about the state of our lives, or our families, or our nation, or our church, or even our whole world. We can, like Joseph, find ourselves facing sleepless nights of questioning and doubt, wondering if that long-held promise of God will ever be fulfilled in our midst. But Joseph, like us, is greeted in a dream in which he is reminded of the faithfulness of God, a fidelity that which will take tangible form in his life through the child to be born — who will forever be “God with us.”

So love, and hope, stir in him, and he is able to do his part. Inviting Mary into his home. Becoming a foster father par excellence, and by extension, opening his home to every person in need. Transforming his household so that it looks each day a bit more like the Kingdom of God. 

When the Jesuit universities gathered from around the world in Bogotá, Colombia, this past summer, Fr. General Arturo Sosa, S.J., the worldwide head of the Jesuits, called us to be pilgrims of hope, “living as if we were already in” the world we dream to see. 

In this final week of Advent, let us open our hearts more and more to “God with us,” embodying the love that pours forth in the arrival of a tiny child in our midst. And may this transform our lives, our communities, and our world.