With great anticipation

Bulletin 11/6/11
Each year I find myself getting more and more excited for Advent. While most people are focusing on Halloween and Thanksgiving preparations, I am anticipating a season of anticipation. As children, we love the excitement of anticipating Christmas and, for many, Christmas is celebrated one day. One of the things I love about the Catholic Church is that we know how to celebrate! First we celebrate in anticipation the celebration of Christ’s birth, the Incarnation! For four weeks we prepare our hearts for this joyous occasion and the celebration continues long past the single day of December 25th.

Looking at the Responsorial Psalm from today, I am reminded of the Christmas hymn, O Holy Night. A line that always sticks out to me is “Long lay the world in sin and error pining.” If we look at the Psalm of today, we read “O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts…” This idea of longing and desiring is not foreign to us. Each of us has desires and longings and for some reason many keep these things to ourselves. We suppress them with school work, careers, paying the bills, and other things that “need to be done.” If there is one thing the Lord has taught us through his incarnation, it is that God has desires and longings for us and they are not meant to be hidden. God became man to show us his loving plan for each of our lives. Yet we push our God given desires and dreams aside to be a mediocre citizen of this world rather than an extraordinary citizen of the Kingdom of God.

As I anticipate the anticipatory season with great anticipation, (say that 5 times fast) I challenge each of us to sit quietly each day. In that quiet, discover your God-given desires to serve his Kingdom. As the Psalmist continues, “I will remember you upon my couch, and through the night-watches I will meditate on you” Once we have discovered our hopes, dreams, and desires to serve God and His Church, we must bring them about so that we may “bless [the Lord] while I live.” By truly preparing ourselves for this wonderful season, I guarantee that your Christmas season will be filled with Peace on Earth and Good will to all…