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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Today we
begin our new Church year as we celebrate this First Sunday of
Advent. Happy New Year! We light our first candle on our Advent
wreaths. We pull out the purple vestments. And we get ready to
sing
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”
as best as we can. It’s a new start for all of us. These are truly
awesome days!
These are
days of opportunity! We have the chance in the next four weeks to
really prepare our hearts and souls for Jesus’ birthday. I pray
that each and every one of us take advantage of this opportunity.
We can have more peace, more faith, and more love in the next four
weeks than what we can possibly imagine. But we’ve got to give
Advent a chance. We know all too well just how many people started
celebrating Christmas, not Advent, but Christmas, weeks ago. As
Catholic Christians, we must be very careful not to be dragged into
“cultural Christmas”. There’s a pagan version of Christmas that is
already in high gear and is going on around us even as you read
this. This pagan, materialistic version of Christmas has nothing to
do with Jesus, with the Incarnation, or with the Gospel. It is a
thinly disguised version of consumerism, wrapped in paper trappings
of the Great Christian Feast of Christmas. So Lowe’s Home
Improvement stores sell “holiday” trees as opposed to Christmas
trees. And Honda invites us to join in their celebration of “Happy
Honda Days”. And Long John Silver’s wants us to believe that we
can’t really have a Happy Holiday IF we don’t rush out and buy their
limited-time offer of Holiday crystal! Come on! Is there really
anybody out there who’s truly going to have “a happier holiday”
because they bought or were given a glass cup from Long John
Silver’s? There’s got to be some limit to this. I keep thinking
this, and it just gets worse every single year. Big business, the
retailers, Madison Avenue, the media, and companies have so
perverted this time, this Feast, and in reality, our lives, that
they will never change. And so we must! This is possibly the most
important time of the entire year for all of us as Catholic
Christians to really live counter-culturally. “They”, the great
“They”, have so taken over and messed up Advent and Christmas, that
it is now up to us to get this right, and to bear witness to the way
that things are supposed to be, leading up to December 25th.
We have so much to do BEFORE we decorate, or go shopping, or start
having Advent parties. There are so many prayers to be prayed.
There are Masses to be attended. The treasury of Sacred Scripture
readings from the Old Testament, that make such a wonderful prelude
to the Christmas story, need to be read and shared. There’s
service and help that needs to be given to others. There’s the
forgiveness of the Sacrament of Reconciliation that we need to
receive before we dare to welcome Jesus again. There’s holy silence
that is yet to be enjoyed, and prayed, and put into effect in our
lives, as we listen for God in the silence of our own Advents. As
Catholic Christians, we’ve got a lot to do in the next four weeks.
Don’t miss this time. Don’t miss this opportunity. Your December
25th
will mean so much more to you and to your family if you get your
priorities right in Advent. My brothers and sisters, this IS
Advent. It’s NOT Christmas yet. It can’t be. It’s not time yet.
And I know
that I write about this every year on the First Sunday of Advent.
Several of you asked me last weekend, if I had written my “Advent”
letter yet for the bulletin. It’s become a St. Maria Goretti
tradition. And I know that more than a few of you think that this
is “Fr. Kevin’s thing”. But I guess this Advent I’m hoping there
are a few more of you joining me in “keeping” Advent. It is worse
this year. It is probably going to get worse every year, unless WE
do something about it.
Next
Saturday is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It IS a Holy
Day of Obligation, even though it falls on Saturday. It is also the
patronal Feast Day of the United States. And here at St. Maria
Goretti it is the third anniversary of the Dedication of our Church
and the twelfth anniversary of the First Mass held at St. Maria
Goretti. The U.S. Bishops have asked us to remind all Catholics of
how important it is to go to Mass next Friday for the vigil or next
Saturday morning for the Feast Day. Masses on Saturday evening,
Dec. 8th,
will be for the Second Sunday of Advent, and NOT for the Holy Day of
Obligation. Put most directly, the bishops are reminding us that we
should all go to Mass TWICE next weekend. Our Masses here at St.
Maria Goretti are Friday evening at 5:30 PM and Saturday morning at
8:00 AM for the Holy Day.
It is a
great honor for us to have the Little Sisters of the Poor here with
us this weekend. Please be generous when it comes time for our
second collection for them and for St. Augustine’s Home.
Have a
blessed week! Listen for God in your life. Sometimes we just have
to be very quiet.
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
He became what we
are so that He might make us what He is
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