1st Sunday of Advent

Happy Advent to everyone! 

As we begin this new liturgical year, it is a great moment to look back with gratitude and look forward with hope! We look back in gratitude for all the many ways the Lord has blessed us, individually, as well as our Parish community. It is the season to be grateful as well, as we have just celebrated Thanksgiving. And out Stewardship Campaign was also a special moment for our community to grow in our gratitude to God, recognizing all of the ways he has blessed us. 

Our very life is a gift, and each one of us is a gift. We desire that this vision of stewardship may become a way of life for us as Christian disciples. Only by first recognizing that all that is good comes from God, will our generosity and giving have the proper order. As you look back at this past year, what ways to you find yourself especially blessed? In what ways does the Holy Spirit inspire feelings of gratitude within you? 

Beginning a new year is also a time to look forward. Advent is a moment of expectation, and the word itself means “the coming.” We await the coming of our Savior. Do you also recognize your need for a Savior? Or are we enticed by the world’s proposal to: “Save yourself”? Even within Christianity, we often succumb to a spirit of “saving ourselves,” thinking it’s all about us and our efforts. “Try harder, do more, pray more.” Efforts are not bad in themselves, but should be rooted in the vision of stewardship that understands everything as a gift that we are entrusted with for a mission. 

Jesus tells his disciples in the Gospel this Sunday, “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.” Allow this Advent to be a time of renewal, to awake to this vision of seeing everything as a gift from God, and of our need for a savior. And we ask the Holy Spirit to awake within us the desire to encounter the Lord and his love for us.

Patrick Travers, SCV

Newman Director