My Dear Parishioners, 

For much of America, Christmas itself arrives as an afterthought, not the fulfillment, but only the end of the long Yule season that has burned without stop since the stores began their Christmas sales.

These days, by the time Christmas rolls around, it feels as though we’ve had Christmas every day, at least since Thanksgiving.

The anticipatory elements reach a crescendo by early December, and their constant scream makes the sudden quiet of Christmas Day almost a relief from the Christmas season.

It is this that the Season of Advent, rightly kept, would prevent the thing, in fact, it is designed to halt.

Advent is really a discipline: a way of forming anticipation and channeling it toward its goal. There’s a flicker of rose on the third Sunday – Gaudete!Then its back to the dark purple that is the mark of the season.

And what those somber vestments symbolize is the deeply penitential design of Advent. Nothing we can do earns us the gift of Christmas, any more than Lent earns us Easter.

But a season of contrition and sacrifice prepares us to understand and feel something about just how great the gift is when at least the day itself arrives.

Through all the preparatory readings, through all the genealogical Jesse trees, the somber candles on the wreaths, the vigils, and the hymns, Advent keeps Christmas on Christmas Day: a fulfillment, a perfection of what had gone before. I shall see Him, but not now: I shall behold Him, but not nigh.

Siempre Adelante,

Monsignor Liam Kidney
Pastor