“Brethren: We cease not to pray for
you ... that you may walk worthy of God, in all things pleasing, being
fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God....”
Ordinary of the Mass
Mass Text - Latin
Mass Text - English
Celebration takes preparation. When
you come to Mass on Sunday you may not realize that a fair amount of work
went into getting things ready. Someone bought the hosts and the wine,
someone made the vestments, someone put the flowers on the altar and
polished the brass followers on the candles—the linens don't sparkle unless
someone washes and starches and irons them. Someone had to vacuum the
floors and dust the benches and the pictures on the walls. It isn't much
different in our homes. There won't be much of a celebration on
Thanksgiving or Christmas if preparations are not made in advance: invite
the guests, polish the silver, clean the house, buy the ingredients for the
dinner and get the oven started on time—you just can't count on getting your
turkey from The 7-11 on Christmas afternoon!
In the Church we have a habit of
preparing for the great feasts of the year—like Christmas and Easter—with a
formal period of preparation. For Easter we spent the forty days of Lent,
and for Christmas the four weeks of Advent. In order to prepare for feasts
of such spiritual significance, we spend this time weaning ourselves away
from the more worldly aspects of our lives—we place greater emphasis on
prayer and spiritual reading, on attending Mass and doing good works and
we place less emphasis on parties and entertainment, eating and drinking and
sleeping and watching TV.
We might ask ourselves the purpose
of such acts of penance. Why are we doing them? The answer should not be
prove how strong we are—Lent and Advent are not contests to see who can
sleep the least or who can survive on the least food. It is not even to
stop smoking or to lose weight—although that may be very good for some of
us.
The primary purpose of these
penitential seasons is, of course, to refocus our attentions on God. At one
time in our history, Christian people were quite well focused on God. Not
only did the Church hold her processions in the streets, but religion and
morality formed us in what we did in our everyday lives: they were a part
of our laws and our foreign policy; they played an important role in the
way we educated our children; they guided us in the way we conducted our
business and commercial affairs; they were an integral part of our family
life. Shops stayed closed on Sundays, people prayed before meals, and
no-one would have suggested that the Ten Commandments ought to be removed
from the courtroom walls!
But, today, our society no longer
focuses on God—so it is necessary for us to do that focusing for ourselves.
We have to pull ourselves away from many of the practices of the secular
world, and direct our attentions toward God more privately. And one of the
ways of doing it is to involve ourselves in these penitential seasons of the
Church year. It sharpens one's focus on God to observe fasting, and to
attend Mass a few days a week, and to curtail legitimate entertainments, and
to read spiritual things and do good works. If you do such things
faithfully, God just has to become a bigger part of your life. And God will
reward you for your efforts with the graces to grow even further in the
spiritual life.
Saint Paul warned us yesterday that
if we focus too sharply on the things of the world, we become “enemies of
the Cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly,
whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.” The penitential
seasons help us to discipline ourselves. The things that the Church asks us
to give up for Lent or Advent are legitimate things—by definition we are
already commanded to give up the illegitimate things! But if we become used
to self-discipline, even in legitimate things, then we will find it much
easier to overcome the temptations to do the things we are not supposed to
do.
Right about now, you might be asking
yourself why I am taking about such things before Advent begins. The
answer, once again, is that it takes time to prepare. The Church long ago
relaxed most of her Advent regulations (they used to be similar to those for
Lent). The Masses of the Season are still in purple, as they are in Lent,
and the Ember Days and the Vigil of Christmas are still prescribed days of
fasting and abstinence. But for the most part our Advent observance will be
what we make of it for ourselves. Now is the time to arrange the time to do
so properly. See if you can't budget some time now for daily Mass or saying
the Rosary, some time for spiritual reading and doing good works. It is,
particularly, the time for arranging your social schedule so that you don't
find yourself in the position of spending a great deal of time in frivolous
entertainment—that is tough to do with the Christmas parties that many of
our non-Catholic friends throw during Advent, but we can at least minimize
the partying.
This year Advent will last for a
full four weeks, beginning next week, the last Sunday of this month,
November 27th. Advent is the best preparation there is to enjoy a good
Christmas season. The sharpening of your focus on God will help you to
appreciate the meaning of Christmas that it is more than a time of
over-eating and over-spending; more than reindeer and elves and Hallmark
cards. Christmas is the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became
man to restore us to the possibility of eternal life. A good Advent will
help us to understand just how important that is.
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