Letter from the Pastor
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November 30, 2025
In the Church’s wisdom, we need to prepare spiritually for the great feast days of the year. Lent prepares us for Easter, and Advent prepares us for Christmas. Somehow, we find it easier to enter into the spirit of Lent than to overcome the secular influences that make Advent a forgotten season.
Advent is four short weeks of a beautiful season of readings, poetry and music. Sadly each year it seems to get more lost in the “Winter Holidays Season”, which begins sometime before Halloween! We need to prepare spiritually not just for Christmas day, but as the Season of Advent opens it reminds us of something even greater. Are you ready? That question will be asked many times over the next few weeks, both in our conversations and in Church.
Sadly, for a great number of people, including Catholics, there is scarcely any understanding of what the Season of Advent actually means. Advent denotes the time for renewed longing for the Lord who having once come among us, now calls us to a fuller and richer awareness of His mysterious presence in our life and world, and as we await His second coming at the end of this world.
“Stay awake! Be prepared!” are the words our Lord speaks to begin the season, for we do not know when the Lord will come back again. And when He does come, it will certainly not be as a helpless infant surrounded by shepherds and sheep; He will come rather as King radiant with awful majesty and power to judge the world. He, we are warned, will burst into our world at an hour we do not expect. The great mystery of Christ is both already here, and yet not fully present. Advent bears this double burden of being both an arrival of Jesus, 2,025 years ago and the fulfillment of the joy of that first Christmas day at the end of history. His promised return in glory will usher a new world and a new us.
Advent is therefore a time of faith and hope. And yet what is missing in our world is hope and faith. We must be people of both, for faith cannot survive without hope. We have faith and hope not in things, but in a Person—God, and the Godmade-Man. God alone can satisfy the deepest longings of our heart. Advent should be that time we long for Him.
And because it is the aim of Advent to bring all this to mind, we need to keep this time holy, for it is a blessed time we spend in waiting for God. Pray that when He does come again, He won’t find us at the shopping mall or on Amazon.
Have a blessed Advent and try your best to keep and enter into this most beautiful season. Christmas has its season, which begins on Christmas Day and goes for the next 12 days of Christmas, or if you are really in the celebrating mood, until Candlemas 40 days after Dec. 25th.
Lord Jesus,Master of both the light and the darkness,send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas.We who have so much to do and seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day,We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us.We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom.We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence.We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light.To you we say, "Come Lord Jesus!'Amen.-Henri J.M. Nouwen