Happy New Year!

This weekend we begin the Season of Advent and a new liturgical year. In the three-year cycle for our Sunday readings we return to Year A. This First Sunday of Advent focuses our attention on the second (or final) coming of Jesus and the establishment of God’s kingdom. Jesus exhorts us to “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come… Be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come” (Matthew 24: 42, 44). St. Paul exhorts us, as well: “It is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer than when we first believed… Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light…  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh” (Romans 13: 11-14).

I encourage each of us to reflect upon these readings and choose some practical way to respond during the Advent Season. Our parish is offering a number of opportunities:  

1. Join an Advent Prayer & Discussion Group which will focus on the book by Fr. Michael Schmitz, Waiting Well. Two groups will meet for three weeks in December on Thursdays 6:30 - 7:30 pm or Saturdays 8 – 9 am.

2. Participate in the Advent – Christmas Novena. It will be prayed in the Church December 16 – 24 at 6 pm, except for Saturday and Christmas Eve when it will be at 9:30 am. You can offer the Novena for someone else and send them a Novena card. 

3. Ask Mary to prepare you for the coming of her Son on the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of the Americas. A Bilingual Mass will be celebrated at 7 pm followed by a Fiesta in the Parish Hall.

4. Ask Our Lady to heal you at our Marian Healing Service on December 17^th. We will pray the Rosary with messages from Our Lady Queen of Peace of Medjugorje, followed by a time of Eucharistic Adoration and healing prayers. (This will replace our monthly Revive healing service.) 

As we begin our Advent journey the Prophet Isaiah also sheds light on our path: 
“In the days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain… All nations shall stream toward it; many people shall come and say: ‘Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may instruct us in His ways and we may walk in His paths’… They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks… O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2: 1-5).
 
We, the Church, are called to be a revelation of God’s Holy Mountain. Together let us walk in the light of the Lord to the Christmas star.