Welcome to Advent!
This special edition of the eNews brings you an overview of our parish events for this special season of the church year. And a strange season it is. While our culture leads us in its own directions with shopping and gift-giving, Christmas music, parties and celebrations of family and friendship, our Sunday liturgies lead us in very different directions. We move “backwards” as it were from the Second Coming of Christ at the end of time, to the penitential preaching of John the Baptist, to the time when John was still in his mother’s womb, leaping at the visit of the pregnant Mary, mother of Jesus. How do these seemingly unconnected scenarios fit together?
As you probably know, the word “Advent” means a “coming” or an “arrival.” All the liturgical readings point to the ever-ancient, ever-new coming of God into our world, in the person of the Christ, Jesus. The Divine Life, in Jesus, through the Spirit, is always coming anew – into our world, and into our lives, individually and collectively.
I would suggest an Ignatian approach to this “coming”: Ignatian spirituality speaks of “finding God in all things.” Are we able to “find God” in the midst of all that is arriving as new in our world and in our lives? Even in what seems troubling or disorienting, or is a sharp break from the familiar past? Even in our personal sufferings and challenges? As well as in our joys and hopes and moments of familial celebration? That is the spiritual invitation of this Advent season: are you able to find how God is present, how the Holy Spirit is at work, in everything new that is coming up into your world?