First Sunday in Advent

 

In our personal lives, waiting is not a very popular pastime. Waiting is not something we anticipate or experience with great joy and gladness! In fact, most of us consider waiting a waste of time. Perhaps this is because the culture in which we live is basically saying, "Get going! Do something! Show you are able to make a difference! Don't just sit there and wait!" So, for us and many people, waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. We do not enjoy such a place. We want to move out of it and do something worthwhile.

Dear Lord, help me be patient as I await your arrival.

Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on the new liturgical year

 This Sunday we begin again a new liturgical year. And each new liturgical year starts with the season of Advent, which is joyfully waiting for the advent, the coming, of our Lord, remembering both his birth and his final triumph at his Second Coming at the end of time. There are two temptations during this season. The first is consumerism. Seeing this as a time of shopping and gifts and parties first, and only distantly about preparing to celebrate Christ’s incarnation. We ought to strive to be faithful witnesses in our families and in the marketplace that the most important thing about this time of year is not material things we accumulate but the gift of God to humanity in Christ.

But a second temptation is to overly domesticate the Advent and Christmas seasons, to make them into cozy and sentimental celebrations of welcoming a guest, Jesus, into our homes. The true meaning of Advent is much more dynamic and challenging than that. Stop for a moment and ask: If Jesus were to walk into my home this very day, what would he find? Would he find us, his servants, dutifully and joyfully giving themselves to faith and love? Or would he find a lack of fervor and possibly turmoil and strife?

So Jesus is saying to us today that we must be alert and awake for his coming. This is because Jesus is no mere cozy guest but rather the new King of Kings, the one to whom all allegiance is finally owed. Of course, this will mean opposition from currently ruling kings. Those other individuals, economic systems, political ideologies, personal pleasures, will often rebel against this new king, which then leads to the cross. We are called in Advent to look within ourselves and root out any opposition to our Lord that may have crept into our lives.

In the Collect prayer for this Sunday, we ask “Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming.” So let us run to Christ this Advent with the gifts that truly last: faith, hope, and charity.

Fr. Frank Reale, S.J.

More thoughts on Thanksgiving

 

A Day of Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving in America began with noble sentiments and is surrounded by traditions, rituals, and stories of hardship, sharing, and giving thanks for survival in a new land. A friend of mine, widely known for her cooking skills, often bemoaned the fact that her children, even as adults, wouldn’t let her vary the turkey and trimmings menu. I’m amused when grocery stores helpfully group all the ingredients for a Thanksgiving meal in the center aisles for convenience and as a help to those who cook only occasionally and have no idea what they need. We might think that the commercialization of Christmas is a twenty-first century phenomenon, but the classic 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street reminds us that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade has long been the kick-off to the retail Christmas season. In just the last decade, we’ve seen the creep from crack-of-dawn Black Friday shopping sprees to late-night Thanksgiving deals, to all-day Internet shopping on Thursday. Each year there’s a growing movement to discourage stores from being open on Thanksgiving Day on the premise that it’s not fair to the people who have to be away from their families due to work schedules. And it’s OK to have one or two days a year with no shopping. But we need to remember that gratitude is at the center of this day of giving thanks. It’s not a bad way to begin the hubbub of the Christmas season. 

—from the book The Peace of Christmas: Quiet Reflections from Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

 

Remembering Others

O God, when I have food,
help me to remember the hungry;
When I have work,
help me to remember the jobless;
When I have a home,
help me to remember those who have no home at all;
When I am without pain,
help me to remember those who suffer,
And remembering,
help me to destroy my complacency;
bestir my compassion,
and be concerned enough to help;
By word and deed,
those who cry out for what we take for granted.

Amen.

—by Samuel F. Pugh, via jesuitresource.org

Thoughts on prayer

 

Why Pray?

Why should I spend an hour in prayer when I do nothing during that time but think about people I am angry with, people who are angry with me, books I should read, and books I should write, and thousands of other silly things that happen to grab my mind for a moment? The answer is: because God is greater than my mind and my heart and what is really happening in the house of prayer is not measurable in terms of human success and failure. What I must do first of all is to be faithful. If I believe that the first commandment is to love God with my whole heart, mind, and soul, then I should at least be able to spend one hour a day with nobody else but God. The question as to whether it is helpful, useful, practical, or fruitful is completely irrelevant, since the only reason to love is love itself. Everything else is secondary. The remarkable thing, however, is that sitting in the presence of God for one hour each morning—day after day, week after week, month after month—in total confusion and with myriad distractions radically changes my life. God, who loves me so much that he sent his only son not to condemn me but to save me, does not leave me waiting in the dark too long. I might think that each hour is useless, but after thirty or sixty or ninety such useless hours, I gradually realize that I was not as alone as I thought; a very small, gentle voice has been speaking to me far beyond my noisy place. So, be confident and trust in the Lord. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on time

 

Time Speeds by Us

Time speeds by, one event falling into another. I see this now. Was I in danger of reaching the end without stopping to see what was being given? I kept looking up and another year was gone. Another holiday. Another birthday. I was living in my mind. I wasn’t really here. Now a door swings open and life is looking back at me. The roses, the trees, the birds, the stars. Everything is watching. I ask myself, where have I been? While I was lost in lists of things to do and goals to realize, where was I?

—from the book Stars at Night: When Darkness Unfolds as Night

Thoughts on despair and division

 

Stars in the Night Sky

In this world darkened by despair and deep division, we fumble dimly, to see past self-interest, fears, and endless feuding. But even looking down we can see beyond, like the pilgrim seeking clarity who found a limpid pool, and bending down glimpsed the Milky Way mirrored in the deep. Then gazing heavenward, gaped and gasped at the cosmic show above, while awe-filled silence taught: the stiller you become, the clearer will your reflection be.

—from the book Wandering and Welcome: Meditations for Finding Peace by Joseph Grant

Thoughts on All Souls Day

 

All Souls Day Prayer

Merciful Father,

On this day, we are called to remember those who have died,
Particularly those who have died in the past year,
And pray for their joyful reunion with you, their loving creator.
As your son taught us to call the stranger 
neighbor, our fallen are many—

Names we will never know,
Voices we have never heard,
In lands we may never visit,
Yet brothers and sisters all.
And so we pray.

For victims of war, caught in the crossfires of
conflicts we could not quell,
for soldiers and civilians,
adults and children, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For those migrants who have died seeking a
haven where they hoped to find safety
and opportunity for themselves and for their families, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For victims of hunger, denied their share in the
bounty you have placed before us, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For victims of AIDS, Malaria, Ebola, and other infectious diseases,
who died before adequate care could reach them, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For those refugees seeking asylum from war,
who died in a land that was not their home, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For victims of emergencies and calamities everywhere,
who died amid chaos and confusion, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

Lord, as you command, we reach out to the fallen.
We call on you on behalf of those we could not reach this year.
You raised your son from the dead
that all may share in his joyful resurrection.

In Jesus' name, we pray …

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Requiescant in pace.

Amen

—via Catholic Relief Services