Cedric Pisegna - Advent Maranatha (01/21/2026)
Father Cedric proclaims the Advent message from Mark 13: Be watchful and alert for Christ's Second Coming, which will be sudden and glorious, visible to all. Like preparing for storms or death, we must ready ourselves through repentance—turning from sin and addictions—and good deeds that fill the "book of our life" opened at judgment. With living hope in resurrection and heaven, Advent wakes us from complacency: repent, act with passion, and cry "Maranatha—come, Lord Jesus!"—for those prepared will lift their heads as redemption draws near.
Opening and Gospel Reading
Welcome to «Live with Passion»! I’m Father Cedric Pisegna, the host of the program. It’s Advent, a brand new season, and I want to proclaim to you the gospel. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark, «Jesus said to his disciples, 'Be watchful, be alert. You do not know when the time will come. It’s like a man traveling abroad. He leaves his home, places his servants in charge, each with his own work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch. Watch, therefore. You do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening or at midnight, at cock crow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you I say to all, watch, '» the gospel of the Lord.
Facing Mortality and Readiness
What would you do if you only had six months to live? A friend of mine who actually prays for people in our ministry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And she visited her doctor, and after many tests the doctor said to her, «You have six months to live». How devastating that was for her, and what would you do if that was said to you by the doctor? Well, she’s a believer, and she knows that the Lord is going to take her home, and she has such a great attitude, but the bottom line is, is she’s ready. And that’s what Advent is calling us to, it’s wanting us to be ready for the second coming of Jesus, and I’ll talk about that, but also ready for our own passing.
It was St. Benedict the founder of Western Monasticism, he would always tell his monks to think every day about their death and to live accordingly. Now, I’m not tryin' to be morbid here, I’m just tryin' to be real, and what I mean by living accordingly is to be ready for your own death. «Teach us to number our days,» Psalm 90 says, «That we may gain wisdom of heart». That means, teach us to be ready for our death so that we can have wisdom and be ready for our death. Be prepared, be ready, that’s the great message of Advent. Advent has dawned. That word advent means, coming or arrival, and at the beginning of Advent we stress being ready for the second coming of Jesus. Now, however long you’ve lived, Jesus has not yet come, and you might be thinking, well, yeah, yeah, I know he’s gonna come someday, but it’s not gonna be right away. That’s why we gotta be ready for our own death.
As I’m filming this, there was a building collapse in Florida, right there on the beach. One hundred and fifty people are missing, right there in the middle of the night, 1:30 in the morning, most of the people were asleep, all of a sudden the building just collapsed, and now they’re missing. No one knows the day or the hour. We must be ready, we must be prepared.
Preparation in Everyday Life
That whole thing about preparation and being ready, we’re very familiar with that. We prepare for hurricanes and storms, for example, on the Weather Channel, they get everybody ready, be prepared, you know, take precautions, do what you gotta do, get the water and everything.
I remember Hurricane Harvey came to Houston some years ago, and it was a horrible storm, for about a week or two the thing camped right over Houston, and it wasn’t so much the wind, it was the rain. And it was flooding any everywhere, and it caused over a billion dollars worth of damage, over 100 people got killed, and it was a horrible disaster. But for those who are prepared, we were ready. We had the supplies on hand, we did the best we could to prepare for it. In the same way, a preacher needs to be prepared. When I come into these television programs, into the filming of it, I work for weeks on these scripts. I write them myself, I prepare by studying them, I outline them, and then I give them. I don’t just come in here, rent a studio, hire a producer and all the people involved, and then just come into the studio and tell you whatever’s on the top of my head. No, I’ve gotta prepare for this, and it’s the same way in life.
When it comes to getting a job, going to college, going to school, you have to prepare for your employment so that you can work well. We’re used to preparation and getting ready, and this is what Jesus is telling us that Advent is about. He’s saying, I’m going to come again in glory. Every person on the face of the earth will see it, but you must be ready for this. You must be prepared, because a lot of people won’t be prepared. And it says that they will lament and mourn when Jesus comes in glory.
But for us who are ready, who are prepared, who have done the work, who have believed, who have written the book of our life and done the deeds, Jesus said, raise up your heads, lift up your head, for your redemption is at hand. And the beginning of Advent, we focus on the coming of Jesus at the end of time. As Advent goes on we focus on Jesus is coming at Christmas. And remember, when he ascended into heaven, everybody was looking up as he went away into the clouds and the angel says, why are you looking into heaven? Get to work, because Jesus will come in the same way that you’ve seen him go. It will be a glorious coming, and everybody will see him.
The Glorious Second Coming
That’s what the Scriptures tell us over and over again. Revelation chapter one verse seven says that «he’s coming in the clouds. Every eye will see him, and they will wail, even so, come Lord Jesus».
By the way, the the early cry of the the early church was maranatha. And that’s an Aramaic word that means, come, Lord Jesus. The sun lights up half of the earth, can you imagine, I’m trying to, tryin' to get a picture of what this is gonna be like when Jesus comes again in glory. I think the reason why a lot of people don’t prepare for it is they can’t imagine what this is gonna be like. The sun itself, as powerful as it is, with all of its energy and radiance and heat and light, lights up half the earth at one time. Imagine what it’s gonna be like when Jesus comes and lights up the whole world at one in the same time. What kind of energy, what kind of power are we talking about? Jesus in Matthew chapter 25 says, «The Son of Man will come in glory with the angels of God».
One angel can stop an army. Well, what’s it gonna be like when many angels come, legions of angels come with Jesus? The trumpet blows, the glorious second coming of Jesus that has been prophesied for 2,000 years. Where is the earth heading? Yeah, we know the earth is revolving around the sun, the sun is moving throughout the solar system, the solar system is moving throughout the universe, where are we heading? We’re heading for the glorious Second Coming of Jesus and the judgment at the end of time, and we must be ready.
Every year in the Catholic Church, we have a three to four week period, season, we call it, called Advent, because the church wants her children to be ready, to be ready for the second coming, to be ready for Christmas, to be ready for your own death. Jesus said, «Pray for the strength to stand before the Son of Man, because when he comes, you will faint he will be so glorious». My sisters live in Florida just south of Daytona Beach, my parents used to live there, it’s a place called New Smyrna Beach, and every once in a while when I would go down there to visit I would see the rocket ships go up, Atlas V or the space shuttle or SpaceX, you know, they send up these ships, sometimes they go at night. When they blast off, you stand there, and this is like 30 miles north, the whole sky lights up, there’s a reflection off the ocean, it’s almost like daylight, and that’s just a rocket ship.
What’s it gonna be like when Jesus comes? We have to fire our imagination to try to understand this glorious event that Jesus predicted that every person on the face of the earth will see. And even so, maranatha, come Lord Jesus, even though some will wail and mourn and break away in shame, those who will be ready, lift up your heads for your redemption is at hand.
Repentance and Preparation
The color of advent is purple. It should ring true in your memory, because in Lent we have the same color, it’s color of penitence, of penance, of repentance, of getting ready by turning away from your sin. Are you stuck in any area of your life, like an addiction? I wrote a book about that called, «There is a Solution».
And about being freed from your addictions, or a better word to use is to come into recovery from your addictions with God’s help. Are you stuck in a sin of anger or maybe resentment, and you’re not forgiving somebody? Well, it’s time to move forward. This is how you get ready, by making a move. The great prophet of Advent is the prophet John the Baptist. We will be hearing from him during the second and the third weeks of advent, and of course John the Baptist appears on the scene in the desert, and he’s baptizing people, and his great announcement was, «I am a voice crying out in the desert. Prepare the way of the Lord». It’s the great season of Advent, and I want to prepare you, and I really want you to take a look at your heart. I know it’s not Lent, but Advent is a season of penitence also. Take a look at your heart and say, am I stuck in something? Do I need to repent and make a move? And I want you to be prepared, Jesus is coming, we must be ready.
Signs of the Times and Suddenness
The disciples asked Jesus, when are you going to come? And that’s maybe a thought that you have in your mind. Okay, I know about the Second Coming, I’ve read about it, I’ve heard about it, Father Cedric, you’re exactly right, but when is it gonna happen? Hasn’t happened for 2,000 years, but I can tell you this, I believe with all my heart that it will happen. And as I said, it’s going to happen on the day of our death, and we don’t know when that’s gonna be. We must be ready, we can’t take things for granted, nobody’s exempt from this.
By the way, I was riding my bike a few months ago, and just riding down the road I guess I was going a little too fast, came up to a curve, hit the brakes, and I hit them too hard, I flew over the handlebars, I almost got killed. Broke my left arm, hit concrete, the concrete hit me right about here, little higher, would have lost my jaw, who knows, might have broke my skull. I went home, I was bleeding, all scraped up, broken arm, I laid in the bed, and I realized that I came that close to dying just riding a bike. We are all going to pass away, and nobody knows the day or the hour. Like I said, that building just collapsed in the middle of the night. Jesus referred to something like that when he talked about the Tower of Siloam that collapsed and killed those people in the gospel, and he said, unless you repent, you’re going to have the same end.
Read the signs of the times. He said there will be wars and rumors of war, that nations will be in dismay, people will be dying of fright. We just went through a pandemic, over 4 million people around the world died from this. And then of course, there’s no war now, thanks be to God, there’s no war and the United States, but I’m worried about Russia and China. These are great nations with a lot of people that have a lot of militaristic power and great nuclear power, and then throw in Iran and North Korea, and the world is a tinderbox.
The slightest provocation can set it off. Wars and rumors of war. People are angry politically and even religiously, there’s a great polarization going on in our society right now, there’s mass shootings, climate change, floods, pollution. Jesus said, «Read the signs of the times». There are earthquakes, hurricanes, and intensity, the polar caps are melting. We are heading for something, and we must be prepared. «Read the signs of the times,» Jesus said. The end is coming, we are in the end times, don’t be secure. And the interesting thing about what Jesus said is he said it will come like a thief in the night, that it’ll be unexpected, that it’ll happen suddenly.
Waking Up: The Story of Alfred Nobel
Advent has a word, and Jesus used it. He said, «Be awake, be aware, wake up, because you don’t know the day or the hour». What does it take you to wake up in the morning? Do you have to have coffee, an alarm clock, a hot shower, TV morning show? What about reading your own obituary? Here I go again with your death. That actually happened to a man whose name was Alfred Nobel, and he was the inventor of dynamite. Well, his brother died, this is back in the 1800s, and he was reading the paper, his brother was named Ludvig. He’s reading the paper, and as he’s reading the paper, he saw his own obituary, and it said that «The merchant of death is dead».
The man, who invented a way to kill people faster than anyone who ever lived has died, and they were talking about, mistakenly, they were talking about Alfred Nobel. This so traumatized him, so woke him up, so sobered him up that he actually started giving his money away to work for peace, because he wanted to be remembered, not to be the inventor of dynamite, but a man who worked for peace. You know who I’m talking about, Alfred Nobel, The Nobel Peace Prize was named after him. He changed his life, he woke up, that’s what Advent is. It’s meant to wake us up, break us out of our malaise and our lukewarmness, because everybody is going to have to face this, we must be ready for the judgment, we must be ready for Jesus’s coming, we must be ready for our own death. And nobody’s exempt, nobody’s above the law, I already told you about my bike accident, what happened there.
The Parable of the Ten Virgins and Good Deeds
Jesus told a parable one time, now I’m talking about how you get ready, I already talked about repentance, turning away from your sin. And if you are stuck in some area, then please make a move, it’s advent, it’s a new season. The flip side of that is that God is gracious, God is merciful. He’s quick to forgive, he will help you to get out of that addiction and to come into recovery, he will help you to forgive the person that you need to forgive, he’ll help you to turn away from lust and greed and anger, and he’ll help you to walk humbly with God. Jesus told a parable about these 10 virgins, and this goes in the Advent time, five were wise, five were foolish, and they were waiting for the bridegroom to come.
And because the bridegroom was delayed, you get the allusion, because Jesus has been delayed, many people say, well, maybe it’ll happen someday, but they live their life the way they want to live, or my death will happen someday, but not right now, eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. The bridegroom was delayed, and finally after a time the bridegroom came. The wise virgins had flasks full of oil, but the foolish ones weren’t ready, and what does that mean? It means that now, during the delay, we are to be wise and get ready, get ready, how? By repentance, I already talked about that, but get ready also by good deeds.
Now I want to make a statement, because some of you say, wait a minute, deeds, works, wait a minute, we’re not saved by that, no, you’re right. We’re not saved by our good deeds, we’re not saved by our works, we’re saved by our faith in Jesus, but if you truly have faith in Jesus, you will do the works and the good deeds that compliment your faith. See, faith is a two sided coin, there’s confidence, and there’s deeds. I’m an author, I’ve written 25 books, and in each book I work at a chapter at a time, and I want to tell you something right now, whether or not you type away at a computer, you’re an author, and you’re writing a book. One day, one chapter, one page at a time. You may not know it, but on Judgment Day, the books will be opened, and the books that are gonna be open is the book of your life, the book that you’re writing right now. One page, one sentence, one chapter at a time, and I want you to write deeds and actions that will be pleasing to God. That is so crucial, you must get this. Your book that will be opened up before the angels of God on Judgment Day must have beautiful things in it.
That’s why I’m always telling people, don’t just live, live with passion, be proactive, realize your destiny, become all that you can be, add value to people. However you get involved, participate, and write a book. You know what they say, those who work in hospice? They talk about people, the biggest regret that people have, they have regrets because they didn’t achieve, they didn’t help people, that didn’t reach out with their life, they just stayed to themselves and they were selfish. And even before the judgment, they know it, and they wish they had it to do again. How do you prepare our repentance? By good deeds.
The Advent Candles and Living Hope
There were four candles in Advent, and we light them each week of Advent.
The first candle is hope, there’s love, there’s joy, the third week a different color, and then there’s peace. Hope means that something good lies in our future, and in this particular case, the second coming of Jesus. If we’re ready, if we’re prepared by turning away from our sins, by doing good deeds, then Jesus said, raise your head, because your redemption is at hand. We are waiting, that’s why the early church cried out maranatha, come, Lord Jesus. We’re waiting for you, we’re ready for you. Paul the Apostle said about the people who had died, he said, we don’t grieve like the rest of the world who has no hope. Rather, the Lord Jesus himself will come with a trumpet blast, and we who are alive will be caught up with him in the air.
Those who have died will rise in Christ. We have a great hope. In fact, it says in the Scriptures that we have a living hope. Emily Dickinson, the great poet, said, «Hope is the thing with feathers,» and you know what feathers do on a bird? Feathers help the bird to fly. Hope energizes us, gives us courage, helps us to face our difficulties, and our great hope is our resurrection, our great hope is that Jesus is coming to take us home, our great hope is that we will stand before God and live forever and be caught up in glory.
I remember one time I had a funeral for a man, it’s a man who had had a near death experience, and I’ve had near death experiences, I’ve had two of 'em. I wrote a book about that called, «Death: The Final Surrender». And at the funeral, I talked about his near death experience. His wife told me this, he said that after his brush with death, he actually became depressed. He was depressed, not because he had a brush with death. He was depressed because he had to come back after he saw heaven and saw how glorious it was, he didn’t want to come back. That’s the great hope we have, the wonderful hope in heaven, and I’ve been given a glimpse of glory, and I know how beautiful it is.
And the truth is, we must be ready. Hope anchors our soul, energizes us, and we have a living hope. Advent has dawned, it’s a new season, it’s a new beginning. I want you to realize your potential, start by participating, getting involved, doing something, because I’m telling you this, your book will be opened before the throne of God on the last day on the Great Judgment, and what’s written in there, we will beg to have good things written in our book, because that book will determine everything. Advent has dawned, be awake, be ready, be prepared, for the great King is coming, and as the early church cried out, so I cry out, and I’m sure you do too, maranatha, come, Lord Jesus, lift up your heads, for your redemption is at hand. Don’t just live, live with passion.