From the Pastor’s Desk:

The Advent season is a time for us to reflect upon the threefold coming of Jesus Christ: His birth, His death, and His promise to return in glory. The Sacred Scriptures are to help us recognize His coming, thus we have this beautiful season to help us prepare. Each year we begin the new liturgical year with the season of Advent.

As I take different streets to South Cox Hospital I do see some strange things in neighborhoods. For example, in late October, Halloween skeletons and pumpkins in a yard and across the street, Santa Claus and blow up snowmen. Our culture and society have no real understanding of seasons or what they are celebrating. Our culture has become one of seeking immediate gratification. The Advent Season with the expectation of the coming of Christ at Christmas holds very little meaning for many people in our country.

We need to balance the drive of modern culture which pushes Christ and even the time-treasured greeting, “Merry Christmas,” aside in favor of the generic “Happy Holidays.” That said, we need to keep in mind that we are not celebrating Christmas yet. We are celebrating Advent—the time of looking at God’s promise that the Lord will indeed come and we as Christians need to make ready his way. The Advent attitudes are to be joyous and hope filled, trusting in a loving Father who sent His Son. Many of our Advent readings throughout the Sundays, as well as the weekday readings, refer to events long past and persons associated with Jesus’ first coming. Advent’s focus, however, is not on the past but on the future. Advent sees those events and persons as symbols and models for a new advent which stretches from long before our time to the future of human history. It looks to a time when Christ will return in divine glory.

In our path through Advent, we are made very much aware of the theme of promise and fulfillment. This biblical theme is fundamental for Advent, in which we see the present time as a fulfillment with regard to past history and as a promise of future fulfillment. The New Testament times could look back to the Old Testament and see in the writings the promise of what was now fulfilled in its gospel experience. Today we see how the New Testament itself is fulfilled in its daily unfolding, full of surprises, guided by the Holy Spirit. As we celebrate Advent we are called as God’s holy people to open our hearts, individually and communally, to the reality of Jesus Christ.