My dear parishioners, the great adventure of salvation history starts with the first Sunday of Advent and offers an entire year of breathtaking experiences. That our divine Lord was born as man and submitted himself to the experience of all things human but sin is the breaking story of the season.
            The first two Sundays of Advent highlight Christ's return in glory. The last two Sundays emphasize Christ's incarnation a human being and the importance of Mary as the Mother of God and the Church. Consequently, the people of God are called to advertise the meaning of Advent and earnestly advise family members and friends to participate.
            What, then, is our mission as Catholics? We are to prepare the world for Christ. We are to tell everyone that Our Lord is to be found in familiar places. That he desires to make his home in our hearts. We are to announce the great works of God's Holy Spirit. That to find Christ, one must surely go among the lost and the poor to seek him out.
            Our message? Seek the Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart! He is Emmanuel (Heb. God with us). He will lead you to his loving heavenly Father. Therefore make ready to celebrate the great holy season of Christmas. The hour of the Lord's holy nativity, the hour of mankind’s hope, is at hand. This is the hour of God’s historical intervention in answer to the prayers of generations.
            The word advent derives from the Latin advenire meaning “to come”, emphasizing as it does an eschatological event of glory which has not yet taken place. A familiar form of the word is adventus which means coming. Alerted by Israel’s prophets that God graciously willed in saecula saeculorum (Lat. in the ages of ages) to embrace human misery, we read, “He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.”  [Deu 32:10]  The people of God long for adventus Christi, to experience the marvelous synchrony of desire and experience, the fruit of a great adventure.
            Why is Jesus' birth so important? If we understand the spiritual meaning of our own birth, we may better appreciate how Christ’s birth is extraordinarily significant. The birth of every child into a family changes that family forever. So it is with the coming of Christ. When Jesus entered into the world, the whole human family through time and space, and the whole of creation known and unknown changed forever for the good.
            When Christ our Lord comes again in glory, he will destroy Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness, all his (evil) works and all his empty promises.  [ Rite of Baptism]  On that day, our Lord, who destroyed the power of death on the cross, will destroy all suffering and death forever.
            Christ, the son of the eternal father, the second person of the Holy Trinity, is light itself and the origin of all light. Significantly, the Son of Man compares himself to light that encircles the earth on the day of his coming, regenerating and glorifying both mankind and the earth on which he dwells.
When Christ appears in glory, every human being on earth will behold him simultaneously. All humanity -- believers and non-believers -- will be revealed by his blazing glory, the purity and holiness of which will shine brighter than ten-thousand blazing suns.
            We should remember that the Church's tradition offers an important message to the people and nations of the world. To those persons who are devout in the practice of religion and to persons who live only for the sake of consumption and pleasure, you will hear a consistent and insistent message: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”  [2Cor 6:2]  God is calling this generation to account for the coming of Christ in truth and power! Sincerely in the hearts of Jesus and Mary. Your pastor, Reverend Richard Barker.
 
 
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