Keep
your eyes open!...
THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT, 2024
(Php
4:4-7) Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I say, rejoice. Let your
modesty be known to all men. The Lord is nigh. Be nothing solicitous:
but in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let
your petitions be made known to God. And the peace of God, which
surpasseth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ
Jesus.
FATHER KIRBY: Rejoice! Celebrating Gaudete Sunday – Joyful Anticipation for Christmas
ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF SINGAPORE: Advent to Christmas Reflection booklet 2024-2025 (Year C)
ALETEIA: Advent can be a time of intense spiritual warfare
BENEDICT XVI GENERAL AUDIENCE (12/08):
Brothers and sisters, it is the season of Advent. In the language of
the Church the word Advent has two meanings: presence and anticipation.
Presence: the light is present, Christ is the new Adam, he is with us
and among us. His light is already shining and we must open the eyes of
our hearts to see the light and to enter into the river of light. Above
all we must be grateful for the fact that God himself entered history
as a new source of good. But Advent also means anticipation. The dark
night of evil is still strong. And therefore in Advent we pray with the
ancient People of God: "Rorate caeli desuper". And we pray insistently:
come Jesus; come, give power to light and to good; come where
falsehood, ignorance of God, violence and injustice predominate. Come
Lord Jesus, give power to the good in the world and help us to be
bearers of your light, peacemakers, witnesses of the truth. Come, Lord
Jesus!
HOMILY EXCERPT:
The great C.S. Lewis touches on this in his magnificent Mere
Christianity: “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has
landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take
part in a great campaign of sabotage.” Jesus Christ was born on a dark,
lonely night in Bethlehem, behind enemy lines, and now is ready to
fight the ancient evil.
This deserves a grand celebration. But He has invited me into the
fight, into the sabotage against the ancient enemy who had reign over
the earth since Adam and Eve. Yes, this season brings rejoicing, leads
to us being joyful and triumphant, and grants us comfort and joy. But
we still have a role in the fight.
The pink candle and vestment invite me into the great battle, where the
Word became flesh and “saved us all from Satan’s power.” Between now
and Christmas, what do I need to do to more fully enter the battle?
Invite someone to Confession or Mass? Get myself to Confession? Be
generous with someone in need? Whatever the case may be, may our
celebrations this weekend and this entire season lead us into greater
appreciation for the Word Made Flesh and our entry into the battle next
to Him.
ADVENT
RESOURCES
ICBC: Advent
Calendar 2024
DYNAMIC CATHOLIC: Best
Advent Ever!
CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY'S ONLINE MINISTRIES:
Praying Advent and Celebrating Christmas
USCCB: Advent 2024
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Humility
48. Syncletica of blessed memory said, 'A ship cannot be built without nails and no one can be saved without humility.'
SECOND WEEK OF ADVENT, 2024
(Php 1:9-11) And
this I pray: That your charity may more and more abound in knowledge
and in all understanding: That you may approve the better things: that
you may be sincere and without offence unto the day of Christ: Filled
with the fruit of justice, through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and
praise of God.
HOMILY EXCERPT:
But God the Father did not need to send His Son from Heaven in order to
teach mankind. He’d been doing that for centuries through the prophets
of the Old Testament. God the Father could have dropped down copies of
the Sermon on Mount from Heaven if He had wanted to. Teaching was not
the chief reason for God the Son to be born at Bethlehem.
The chief reason is summed up in a little saying: “The wood of the crib
is the wood of the cross.” Or there’s another saying that expresses the
same insight: “Jesus was born in Bethlehem so that he could die on
Calvary.” “So that he could die.” What God the Son, as God, could not
accomplish from Heaven is to die in order to wash away both your sins,
and the punishment that your sins merit. That’s why if you won’t
acknowledge your sins as St. John the Baptist demands, you won’t be
able to accept Jesus as the gift that God the Father sent Him to be for
you.
YOUTUBE: FINDING IT WITH FATHER! EPISODE #9 PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS!
DENVER CATHOLIC: The Hope of Christmas
THE CATHOLIC THING: A Eucharistic Advent
CATHOLIC CULTURE: Wishing you a restless Advent
EXCERPT HOMILY: Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney
“Prepare a way for the Lord,” he cries to us in Advent. “Repent and
believe the Good News – for the forgiveness of sins.” Smooth out the
rough bits in your life-story through contrition, prayer, the
sacraments; remove the obstacles of your vices by conversion and the
cultivation of virtues in their place; make a straight path for God in
your hearts. Dress up for the wedding feast of God’s kingdom, not in a
tuxedo or bridal gown, but with integrity and godliness, as our first
reading suggested.
How to get the gear that really
matters? Paul’s prayer for us today is “that your love for each other
may keep increasing, and your knowledge [of God], and your
perceptiveness so that you can always recognise what is best.” That, he
says, is the way to “prepare yourself for the Day of Christ”, to ready
yourself and observe the Advent dress-code. Our hearts are made for
loving, our minds for reasoning, our senses for perceiving: so all
three are the most natural things in the world for us; yet how easy it
is for our affections to go astray, our minds to be warped, our vision
to be distorted. Hatred, prejudice, egotism, indifference – you name it
– these things unprepare us for Christ’s coming, put up barriers, hills
and ravines. But knowing, loving and serving God and His divine image
in our fellows: these things ‘smooth out’ the way for Him.
When a religious makes profession
of their vows or a new priest is ordained, the Provincial or Bishop
uses St Paul’s words from our epistle today: “May the Lord who has
begun this good work in you bring it to fulfilment”. But Paul, of
course, intended this prayer for all of us. So if we try to dress
ourselves in integrity and godliness, if we seek to know, love and
serve God and His people, we are making a space for God – and between
now and Christmas, now and the end of our lives, now and the end of
time, the God, who has begun this good work in us, will bring it to
completion.
A MOMENT WITH MARY: Advent, an eminently Marian time
The fact that Advent is “a time particularly suited to the veneration
of the Mother of the Lord” does not mean that this liturgical season is
a “month of Mary”.
In the liturgical calendars of the Christian East, the period of
preparation for the mystery of the manifestation (Advent) of divine
salvation (Theophany) in the mysteries of the Nativity-Epiphany of the
only Son of God the Father seems to be very Marian, but the focus is on
the preparation for the coming of the Lord in the mystery of divine
maternity.
In the East, all mysteries relating to the Virgin Mary are
Christological mysteries, that is, they refer to the mystery of our
salvation in Christ.
Thus, in the Coptic rite, the praises of Mary are sung during this
period in the Theotokia; in the Syrian East, this time is called
Subbara, i.e. Annunciation, to emphasize its Marian character. In the
Byzantine rite, the run-up to Christmas is marked by an increasing
series of Marian feasts and refrains sung in honor of the Virgin Mary.
ADVENT
RESOURCES
ICBC: Advent
Calendar 2024
DYNAMIC CATHOLIC: Best
Advent Ever!
CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY'S ONLINE MINISTRIES:
Praying Advent and Celebrating Christmas
USCCB: Advent 2024
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Humility
45. The same brother asked him, 'Do you think Satan persecuted the men
of old as he persecutes us?' Sisois said, 'More, for now his doom has
drawn nearer, and he is weakened.'"
FIRST WEEK OF ADVENT, 2024
(Luk
21:34-36) And take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be
overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life:
and that day come upon you suddenly. For as a snare shall it come upon
all that sit upon the face of the whole earth. Watch ye, therefore,
praying at all times, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all
these things that are to come and to stand before the Son of man.
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT: Getting Advent right
CATHOLIC REVIEW: Four ways to follow St. Joseph this Advent
ARCHBISHOP LORI: Advent Message – 2024
As we approach this Advent season, I would like to take a moment and
reflect on the brightness of our Lord’s love. Recently, someone told me
how much she dislikes this time of year. She said, “Daylight is short.
The hours of darkness are long.” My heart went out to her in that
moment, and I shared with her a few words from John’s Gospel: “The
light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Indeed, as December ushes in the winter weather, the darkness and the
long nights – Advent ushers in the light of God’s love. And in the
darkness, God’s love shines all the more brightly through the grace of
the Holy Spirit.
The dread of darkness during these short December days can make us feel
lost at times. We may feel that we have lost God’s friendship or that
God has forgotten us. We may feel we have lost our friends or have been
forgotten by them. Sins, weaknesses as well as spiritual and emotional
wounds are part of every life. But when these get the better of us, we
may think that God and other people have given up on us. This is, of
course, a lie. Yet, the sense of being lost to God and lost to our
friends can seem very real.
In today’s world, many feel isolated and alone. God seems far away.
Perhaps, you may feel an absence of love in your life. Without love,
life make no sense. When love is lacking, so, too, hope is lacking. And
when hope is lacking, it is all the more difficult to deal with those
sins, weaknesses and wounds that bedevil us.
This Advent, please remember: As Christians, we believe that God does
not want us to be lost. So much does the Father love us that he sent us
his only-begotten Son into the world to find us, to save us, to gather
us into his family. To do this, God’s Son assumed our humanity – not
just our flesh but a human mind, heart and will.
As the Lord went about preaching the Good News, healing, forgiving and
rising from the dead, he experienced hunger, thirst, pain and sorrow –
and finally laid down his life for us. This is how far God went to find
us. And by the way, he’s still searching. He searches for you and me at
this very moment.
Let us then prepare our hearts for the Christmas season, the great
reason for our hope. And how do we do this? By allowing the Lord to
find us. Often, when we feel the absence of the Lord’s love, it’s
because we have hidden ourselves from it. We often do this because of
painful realities that are difficult to face. We blame, deflect, hide,
self-isolate.
During Advent, let us allow the Lord to break through barriers that
prevent us from receiving and giving love. This can happen when we make
an unburdening confession of our sins. Or when we have an honest
conversation with a trusted friend or spiritual director. Or when we
reach out in love to someone in need, rediscovering the joy of giving.
On Christmas Eve, Pope Francis will open the Holy Door at St. Peter’s
in Rome to inaugurate a Holy Year, a Jubilee of Hope. The theme of this
special year of grace comes from Romans chapter 5, verse 5: “Hope does
not disappoint because the love of God has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit…”
May your hearts be filled with hope this Advent season as we await the joy that Christmas brings!
CNA: Advent 2024: 4 Catholic resources to help you grow in your faith
ADVENT
RESOURCES
ICBC: Advent
Calendar 2024
DYNAMIC CATHOLIC: Best
Advent Ever!
CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY'S ONLINE MINISTRIES:
Praying Advent and Celebrating Christmas
USCCB: Advent 2024
The
Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Humility
44. 'A brother once came to Sisois on the mountain of Antony, and as
they were talking he said to Sisois, 'Have you reached the stature of
Antony yet, abba?' He answered, 'If I had a single thought like Antony,
I should leap toward heaven like a flame. But I know myself to be
someone who can only with an effort keep his thoughts in check.'
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