Week 2 - Sunday

Opening Prayer

Almighty and merciful God,
may no earthly undertaking hinder those
who set out in haste to meet your Son,
but may our learning of heavenly wisdom
gain us admittance to his company.

Prayer for the Advent Wreath

Lord, our God, we praise You for Your Son, Jesus Christ,
for He is Emmanuel, the Hope of all people.
He is the Wisdom that teaches and guides us.
He is the Savior of us all.

O Lord,
let your blessing come upon us as we light the first and second (purple) candles of this wreath.
May the wreath and its light be a sign of Christ’s promise of salvation.
May He come quickly and not delay.
We ask this in His holy name. Amen.

Waiting

We light a candle today, a small dim light against a world that often seems forbidding and dark. But we light it because we are a people of hope, a people whose faith is marked by an expectation that we should always be ready for the coming of the Master. The joy and anticipation of this season is captured beautifully in the antiphons of hope from the monastic liturgies:

See! The ruler of the earth shall come,
the Lord who will take from us the heavy burden of our exile
The Lord will come soon, will not delay.
The Lord will make the darkest places bright.

We must capture that urgency today in the small flame of our candle. We light the candle because we know that the coming of Christ is tied to our building of the kingdom. Lighting the flame, feeding the hungry, comforting the sick, reconciling the divided, praying for the repentant, greeting the lonely and forgotten – doing all these works hastens His coming.

Heaven grows in us

by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Heaven is very close to us because heaven is related to a good life in much the same way that an acorn is related to an oak. An acorn is bound to become an oak. He who does not have heaven in his heart now will never go to heaven, and he who has hell in his heart when he dies will go to hell. We must not think that heaven is related to a good life in the same way a gold medal is related to study. Because a gold medal need not follow study. It is purely extrinsic to study. Rather, heaven is related to a good and virtuous life in just the same way that knowledge is related to study. One necessarily follows the other. Hell is not related to an evil life in the same way that spanking is related to an act of disobedience. Spanking need not follow an act of disobedience. As a matter of fact, it rarely follows disobedience today. Rather, it is related in the same way that corruption is related to death. One necessarily follows the other. Therefore, heaven is not just a long way off, we are not to postpone it. It is here. That is to say, it begins here.

Source: Through the Year With Archbishop Fulton Sheen. IgnatiusInsight.com

What Does the Lord Ask?

We all want to "re-form" ourselves from time to time.

New Year's Resolutions are an example of our desire to change. Advent is also a time when we thing about reform – it's the beginning of a new Church year, and we're coming upon the end of another calendar year.

We usually try to reform ourselves by using our own resources…like a self-help program.

In a way, John the Baptist preached that kind of reform. He spoke forcefully about the need for reform…and then people had to figure out how to do it.

But the reform Jesus talks about is never based on our own initiative or our own resources. We turn to Jesus – not to our own self-help plan.

For starters, I need to turn to the Lord to find out what I should reform. My own list can be a fairly stock one, and fairly superficial: lose weight, stop smoking, cut down on my drinking, etc. Maybe I should do those things, but maybe that isn't where I should start.

What would happen if I turned to the Lord first and asked, "Lord what is it you want me to change in my life? It might be something I haven't thought about.

I don't know what the Lord would say, but I do know that I ought to give the Lord a chance to say it.

Advent isn't a self-help program. It's a time when we try to open ourselves more fully to the Lord.