This is the source of our advent Hope…This is source of our Advent Joy!

First Sunday of Advent. December 1st, 2013

Today we begin the Advent season- our time of preparation for Christmas. Of course, with regards to the “feast days” of the shopping season, we have just passed “black Friday,” and “cyber Monday” is tomorrow. Yet, our time of Advent should not be just about running to and fro in order to buy presents; it should not be just about getting the Christmas tree and lights up or having parties. Advent most especially should be a sacred time for preparing ourselves spiritually for Christmas and for the Lord’s coming.

Advent is for us a sacred time for devout and joyful preparation in expectation of Jesus coming personally and more fully to each of us. It is a time to arise and run toward and greet the Lord who runs to us. Our opening prayer of today’s Mass says it so well. Let us “resolve to RUN forth to MEET Christ with righteous deeds. Our time of advent is this- to RUN to meet Christ. It is a great way to look at our advent preparations. Think of how much running around you will do from now and till Christmas. But the verb run is one that is active. This holiday season, we don’t want to just run to the store, but run to meet Christ.

The Fact is, is that Jesus has come down from heaven in order to run to meet us. God runs to embrace us through Jesus. But we for our part must run to meet him. We can all picture two lovers running toward each other to embrace. This is what we must do with Jesus, Run to embrace the God who runs to embrace us. How do we run to meet Christ? Again, the opening prayer tells us how…We must run to meet Christ with Righteous Deeds. How do we do this?

One way is by beginning this Advent to be more faithful to our daily Prayer. And one of the best daily prayers is the prayer of the most Holy Rosary. By praying the rosary we can ask Mary, Our Mother, to assist us in growing in intimacy with Jesus. She then reveals to us through her Spouse, the Holy Spirit, the meaning of the mysterious of the life of her Son and how they relate to our own daily life. Intimate Prayer is one of the main ways we can run to embrace Christ who comes to us.

Secondly we can run to meet Christ by studying more our Catholic faith this advent, learning more about our God who loves us so much He runs to us from heaven in order to embrace us on earth. He comes in order to takes us back with Him to be one with the Father as He is one with the Father.

To know God more is to be able to love God more. To know God more is to discover His great love for us and to learn how to return that love by forming our intellect in the beautiful truths of our faith. By doing this we can inform our will to chose God in all things in order to do His holy will and not our own; in this we serve God and our neighbor for love of Him. Let us resolve this Advent then to read Scripture daily, to read at least one good book about our Beautiful Catholic Faith or to choose a book about the lives of one of the Saints. We can also listen to some of the fine Catholic C.Ds that Father Parker as made available at the side entrance of the Church.

Another way we can run to meet Christ is through the Sacraments especially Confession and the Holy Eucharist. First confession. The truth is, is that our sins weigh us down and actually inhibit us from running to Christ who runs to us; our sins make us tumble and fall, and not to mention get seriously hurt. Advent itself, is a joyful penitential season, a time to look at ourselves and with the help of God’s grace to pick ourselves back up, better yet to allow Him to pick us back up. We allow this through the active repentance and confession of our sins, along with a firm purpose of intention to sin no more and to amend our lives for the Better. In this sacrament of God’s mercy we are healed more and more from the hurt of our sins, we are lifted up by God as a Father lifts up His child who has fallen. We can then begin again with even more fervor to run to meet Christ.

And finally the best way to run to meet Christ through righteous deeds is through the Sacred Liturgy. Yes, in this liturgical time of Advent we prepare to celebrate the memory of that Most Holy night two thousand years ago when Jesus-God, first came in the flesh, and secondly we prepare as well for His second coming at the end of the world, or at the end of our lives which ever comes first; but even more importantly, as we have been saying, advent is a liturgical time in which we prepare for that fact that Jesus the God-Man desires to come to each of us again right now—He has already come that first Christmas night He is already here on earth in His Resurrected Body through and in the Sacraments of His Holy Church. As the ancient doxology of the Church states, To the God who is, who was and who is to come…

In Jesus, God has come to us and He will come again, yes this is true, but in Jesus God comes to us now! In fact, here at Holy Mass is where God literally comes again from heaven and runs to meet us again in the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist is literally the Lord running to embrace you…He is coming….He is running to meet us at this and every Holy Mass. The First part of every Mass is a type of Advent in which we listen to God’s Word and prepare for His coming again on the Sacred Altar at the words of Consecration. At Holy Communion He then runs to meet us to embrace us in a communion of love.

And so, we can’t just sit here at Holy Mass passively, we must lift up our hearts and run to embrace Him who is coming at this Mass and at every Holy Mass...I don’t mean of course that at communion time you jump up from your pews and run up the isle to meet and receive Jesus in Holy Communion, but that you in the interior of your heart, with the help of the Holy Spirit, you offer yourself fully to Father through, in and with Jesus own offering on the Altar. Placing your heart, better yet asking the blessed Virgin Mary to place your heart, as a living oblation of love on the paten next to the Host so that your heart, along with the Host, can be transformed by the Holy Spirit in order to become one with the Heart of Jesus which becomes truly present in the Holy Eucharist. Again, this is really what it means to take an active and full part in the Holy Mass.

And so, let us use this time of Advent well, in order to prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ, let us not be caught unaware. The time is short, we have just a few weeks to repent and prepare ourselves for the celebration of Jesus’ first coming. And in our preparation let us always remember that at Christmas, we do not however just celebrate something that happened two thousand years ago, but we celebrate what continues to happen in our own day. Jesus still comes to earth and is born in littleness on the altar at the Holy Mass; and so, He wants us to prepare ourselves to receive Him right NOW at this Christ-Mass, to receive Him more deeply and more intimately into our hearts, to draw closer to Him than we ever thought possible. This is the source of our advent Hope…This is source of our Advent Joy

Let us pray. “Our Lady of the New Advent, pray for us; obtain for us a deeper faith, hope and love for Jesus who is truly among us in the Holy Eucharist, so that we may, like you, conceive Him in our heart in order to birth Him to the world. Amen.”