A Letter from Fr. Tim

Dear Friends,
 
We welcome the beginning of the new Church Year this weekend with the start of the season of Advent. The season greets us as the day’s light is at its shortest, and winter’s chill begins to grip us. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) says the following about this time of year:
 
Beginning the Church's liturgical year, Advent (from, "ad-venire" in Latin or "to come to") is the season encompassing the four Sundays (and weekdays) leading up to the celebration of Christmas.
 
The Advent season is a time of preparation that directs our hearts and minds to Christ’s second coming at the end of time and to the anniversary of Our Lord’s birth on Christmas. From the earliest days of the Church, people have been fascinated by Jesus’ promise to come back. But the scripture readings during Advent tell us not to waste our time with predictions. Advent is not about speculation. Our Advent readings call us to be alert and ready, not weighted down and distracted by the cares of this world (Lk 21:34-36). Like Lent, the liturgical color for Advent is purple since both are seasons that prepare us for great feast days. Advent also includes an element of penance in the sense of preparing, quieting, and disciplining our hearts for the full joy of Christmas.
 
The final days of Advent, from December 17 to December 24, we focus on our preparation for the celebrations of the Nativity of our Lord at Christmas. In particular, the "O" Antiphons are sung during this period and have been by the Church since at least the eighth century. They are a magnificent theology that uses ancient biblical imagery drawn from the messianic hopes of the Old Testament to proclaim the coming of Christ as the fulfillment not only of Old Testament hopes, but of present ones as well.
 
St. John Paul II says this about the beauty of this dark, cold season of Advent:
 
“The liturgy of Advent…helps us to understand fully the value and meaning of the mystery of Christmas. It is not just about commemorating the historical event, which occurred some 2,000 years ago in a little village of Judea. Instead, it is necessary to understand that the whole of our life must be an ‘advent,’ a vigilant awaiting of the final coming of Christ. To predispose our mind to welcome the Lord who, as we say in the Creed, one day will come to judge the living and the dead, we must learn to recognize him as present in the events of daily life. Therefore, Advent is, so to speak, an intense training that directs us decisively toward him who already came, who will come, and who comes continuously.”
 
St. Bernard of Clairvaux reflects further on this season:
 
“It is fitting, my brethren, that we should celebrate this season of Advent with all possible devotion, rejoicing in so great a consolation, marveling at so great a condescension, inflamed with love by so great a manifestation of charity. But let us not think of that advent only whereby the Son of man has ‘come to seek and to save that which was lost,’ but also of that other by which He will come again and will take us to Himself. Would to God you kept these two advents constantly in your thoughts, revolving them in assiduous meditation, pondering in your hearts how much we have received by the first, how much we are promised at the second!”
 
What does this season of Advent ultimately lead us to? Venerable Fulton Sheen observes:
 
“Exiled from the earth, our Lord is born under the earth, for the stable was in a cave. He was the first caveman of recorded history, and there he shook the earth to its very foundations. Because he’s born in a cave, all who wish to see him must be bend, must stoop, the stoop is the mark of humility. The proud refuse to stoop. Therefore they miss divinity. Those, however, who are willing to risk bending their egos to go into that cave, find that they are not in a cave at all; but they are in a universe where sits a babe on his mother’s lap, the babe who made the world.”
 
May God bless you all as we embark upon this new year in the life of the Church by directing our thoughts and prayers to the glory of the Incarnation, and the Father who loves us so much, he gives us the gift of his only Son, so that we might be saved.
 
    —Fr. Tim Fairman