From the Pastor's Desk

This year Advent came rushing, but quietly upon us.  We are now celebrating the third Sunday of Advent.  Advent is a time of waiting, longing, a time to pray and prepare.  Once Thanksgiving comes, it seems that Christmas is just around the corner.

With all the preparations that many families or individuals do to get ready for the celebration of Christmas, it becomes tempting to become “too busy” to go to Mass.  Going to Mass is a major part of preparing for Jesus’ arrival at Christmas.  As we attend those parities, run those Christmas errands, perhaps plan for extra holiday travel, bake those cookies, decorate the house, send the Christmas cards, take the time to pray.  The greatest prayer we can pray is the celebration of the Eucharist.  It is this special time when God come to us to give us His strength, courage and grace to meet the world and all our problems head on.

Human life is a promise by our creator God, that one day He will send a Messiah.  We were/are created in His image and likeness and the Messiah would come and show us the way to God the Father.  That event occurred in human history when Jesus was born thirteen centuries after Moses led the chosen people of Israel out of Egypt, one thousand years from the anointing of David as King over Israel, in the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome.

As the Christmas Proclamation states (which I sing at the blessing of the Creche during the 11:00 pm Christmas Eve Mass) in the forty-second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus; the whole world being at peace, Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, and nine months having passed since his conception, was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary.

All of this comes into the realm of prophecy.  That is part of the “spiritual” need of Advent, to take a look into one thousand years of what the prophets said would occur concerning the coming of the Messiah.  We need Advent with all of its’ hectic activity to also be one of preparing for the time when according to prophecy, the Son of God will return once again.