Advent - coming of Christ

I like the Advent season, for the obvious reason of course, but also because it is a great way to keep the "secular Christmas fanaticism" away. Advent asks that we wait and watch for Jesus, that we do penance ( one of our parish priest's homily was all about reconciliation, that we need to be reconciled with Jesus and our neighbor - he suggested that we go to confession at least once during this advent season. In fact, my friends and I tried to inform others, especially other Catholics, that the official Christmas season does not start until Christmas day - we are in Advent season not Christmas season. That said, my family still does some Christmas secular stuff like putting Christmas lights on the house, decorating the house before Christmas eve, talking about Santa Claus with the kids, etc. But we definitely don't act fanatical on this stuff, some people already had Christmas lights on after Thanksgiving and all those stores that open at 5 AM on Friday - we don't do that stuff. We got our advent candles out and bought an advent calendar for the kids. My big point on Advent that I try to tell people all the time is that we are also preparing anew for Jesus' 2nd coming. He said he would be coming again and the Church wisely has us contemplating this "coming again". So we basically get a two-for-one deal with advent - waiting for the anniversary of his 1st coming and waiting for his second coming. I would urge everyone to slow down this Advent season - no need to rush doing all those Christmas activities - they can wait - in fact, Christmas season goes from Christmas Day until Baptism of the Lord in the middle of January - two weeks to display your Christmas stuff.
I was teaching at Children's ministry for our prayer meeting and I went over the historical aspects of advent, the liturgical aspect of the season and went over some of the symbols used in advent. Also, since there is no meeting next week, I also included a discussion of St. Nicholas
whose feast day is on Dec. 6th. Giving some gifts on St. Nicholas day ( especially in a shoe left out) is a great way to change up the Christmas season - St. Nicholas was known for his generousity and also his humbleness and is the model of all Christians. It is rumored that Santa Claus is a derivative of St. Nicholas especially when pronounced in Dutch (sinter klaas - watch Miracle on 34th street - there is a scene when a dutch girl comes to Santa and she does say sinter klaas). So May God bless your advent season, that he may slow down your days and help you to contemplate Jesus' 2nd coming.

End of the Year of the Eucharist

The Year of the Eucharist has ended and Pope John Paul II's last gift to the Church has come to a close. I love the statement from the bishops at the end of the Eucharistic Synod:

"At the end of this Synod", they wrote, "we experience that peace full of hope which the disciples of Emmaus, with burning hearts, received from the Risen Lord. They arose and returned in haste to Jerusalem, to share their joy with their brothers and sisters in the faith. We hope that you will go joyfully to meet Him in the Holy Eucharist, and that you will experience the truth of His words: 'And I am with you until the end of the world'."

This is the essence of the Eucharist, that it will be create burning hearts like those at Emmaus so that all will go joyfully and spread his truth to all. I haven't been able to go to Eucharistic adoration as much as I wanted to but I do know there is a groundswelling at my Parish to have a full day each week with eucharistic adoration and we got a new priest who is devoted to adoration and may be helping that cause. Also a new type of eucharistic adoration has slowly been working its way around Catholic parishes here and that is worship and adoration - Life Teen calls it XLT and that is what has come to my parish. What XLT is (I haven't experienced it yet myself, but my wife told me about it) is a combination of worship music and adoration - I first thought it was together which I thought was different but may work, but I have found out that it is like side by side, worship music is first and then adoration. As a charismatic Catholic, I see this as a beautiful coming together of two great ways to show your love to God - worship and adoration - also I can see that the worship will build up a love and emotion for God that will be poured out in adoration and make it a truly spiritual experience. I do think our culture is changing to one of noise, people are more at peace with noise nowadays and so the worship music brings the noise into adoration so it isn't a totally boring situation for most young people. I am excited about this and hope it causes more devotion to the eucharist and to the Church and ultimately to the love of Christ for all people.