Posted on 12/02/2007 4:46:11 PM PST by Salvation
Sunday, December 2, First Week in Advent
Each 24 hour day has 1,440 minutes.
You are asked to give four to six of those 1,440 minutes each day to read this thread. Thus, giving you an opportunity to pray every day during Advent and Christmas
People who pray regularly will tell you that it works best if you do it at a set time every day. The main thing is to make it part of your schedule, not something you try to squeeze in whenever. It can vary at times, but you need a basic pattern. You can’t simply say, “I’ll do it when I get a chance.
The first posts for each day will vary in topics. The second post for each day will ask you to reflect on a passage from Scripture.
Spend today’s four to six minutes with the Lord sketching some ideas out on how you can spend these 23 days of Advent with your family, or if you are single, by yourself. Your plans can include items that are spiritual (deciding where and when you will pray each day)…or practical (your gift list)…or personal (sending a Christmas card to someone you’ve not been on good terms with)…or charitable (doing something for the poor)…
Before you write anything, spend a few quiet moments with the Lord and ask for His guidance
In today’s reading, Jesus talks about the coming of the Son of God, the end of the world, and the great judgment.
The whole point of Advent is to help nudge us out of a kind of apathy as we go about our day to day things, while forgetting that life is going to end for us individually.
Sometimes we forget that the whole point of everything we do is to lead the world toward the kingdom of God.
The kingdom may be millions of years away – who knows? It seems so distant that there would be a world at long last transformed where there is no war, no sickness, no tears, no fights, and no arguments – a perfect world.
It’s a long haul.
That’s why I need what some call a “radical perseverance”. It’s hard to have. To persevere and try to build peace in the world and know that when I die, there will still be war. To persevere and try to build love in society and know that it is a seed planted, but one I’ll never see the harvest of in a lifetime. To persevere in trying to shape myself into the kind of person I know God made me to be…and to realize that I will never be that person until some day God wonderfully transforms me through death.
That kind of radical perseverance – sustaining a conscious effort and hope even though I’m not going to reach the goal in my lifetime – that’s the kind of perseverance I need to have.
Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Catholic Prayer Ping List.
Immaculate Conception Novena -- starts November 30th [Catholic/Orthodox Caucus]
Making Advent a Reality (the seasons are out of whack)
The Advent Workshop -- lots of information and activities
Jesse Trees (genealogy of Jesus activity for families)
Advent Wreath & Candles (Prayers for the Family)
Reclaiming the Mystery of Advent, Part One: The Meaning of Advent
Celebrating Christ’s Advent [Archbishop Raymond Burke]
Praying through Advent -- 2006
Advent: the Reason for the Season
Advent Activity - The Jesse Tree
That incredible shrinking Advent-Christmas season (Christmas should start, not end, Dec. 25)
Advent Thoughts: Some of the Church Fathers on the Divinity of Christ
The Relationship Between Advent and the Change in the Seasons (Dom Guéranger)
Thank-you and God Bless. :)
My pleasure. Keep tuned.
Blessed Advent. Looking forward to next reflection.
Hopefully I will get the one for tomorrow posted sooner in the day.
The Scriptures read as Sunday Mass are not arbitrarily chosen by the pastor or parishioners. The Church has a three-year cycle of set readings.
In this cycle, Year A centers on Matthew’s Gospel, Year B on Mark, and Year C on Luke. (Passages from John are interspersed in the sequence of Gospels every year.
Weekday Gospels
The weekday Gospels, however, are usually the same every year. Since there are many more weekdays than Sundays, they cover a greater part of all four Gospels.
Generally speaking the weekday Gospels use passages that are never read on Sundays.
This year, these readings will use the Gospel passages assigned for the weekday Masses. This will give many people a chance to reflect on and pray passages of the Gospels that they have seldom heard proclaimed or preached about during the Liturgy of the Word.
Monday, December 3, First Week in Advent
As the above passage continues, Jesus will marvel at the faith of the Gentile centurion. He will then send the centurion home with the assurance that his servant is healed. Matthew will note: “And the servant was healed at that very moment.”
The centurion had no doubt that Jesus could heal from a distance. It was only a question of whether Jesus would choose to heal the servant at all. When Jesus says to him, “Go. Let it be done for you according to your faith,” the centurion fully believes that the servant is indeed healed.
It might be worthwhile to think about the level of my faith. When I pray and ask God to do something, and it doesn’t happen, what kinds of thoughts cross my mind?
• Do I wonder if God could really do it.
• Do I believe that God could, and wonder why God wouldn’t, and decide that it’s more or less because of my own sinfulness?
• Do I believe that God could, and trust that God didn’t because there’s more to it than I can see?
Don’t answer too quickly.
Talk to the Lord about it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/1933753/posts?page=14#14
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/1933753/posts?page=15#15
Oops, those should have been for Tuesday, December 4.
Oops. Now I see what I did. Reposts!
Tuesday, December 4, First Week in Advent
Today is the optional memorial of St. John Damascene.
Born about 676 in Damascus, Syria, John’s Christian education for a captured Italian monk was supplemented by Muslim schools.
He became chief counselor for the caliph, but when the new caliph became hostile to Christians, John left Damascus to become a monk at St. Sabas Monastery, southwest of Jerusalem.
After ordination, John lived a quiet life of prayer and writing. He wrote commentaries on St. Paul, adapted choral music for liturgy and composed hymns. He also successfully defended the use of icons (painted or mosaic religious art) against critics who felt venerating icons was akin to worshipping idols.
John died in 749, and was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1890.
Tuesday, December 4, First Week in Advent
This small section of Luke’s Gospel has what would be called a “very high theology” which emphasizes the divinity of Jesus.
In the story of Jesus’ birth, the angel Gabriel said to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you…Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”
Make no mistake about it. The child born in Bethlehem is not simply a great prophet…not simply a miracle-worker…not simply someone specially chosen by God. The child born in Bethlehem is the Son of God.
In our relationship with Jesus, we always have to balance intimacy and reverence. Jesus did not come for us simply to look at him from a distance. He came so that we could join intimately with him and share in his own relationship with the Father.
On the other hand, we need to be reverent. We need to be aware of who it is we are relating to so closely…whom we are joining with in the Eucharistic prayer…whom we are receiving when we take the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ at Communion.
Intimacy and reverence. I could work on both right now as I spend some time with the Lord.
Wednesday, December 5, First Week in Advent
On this day in 1791 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died, leaving unfinished one of his most famous and most “mysterious” works, the haunting “Requiem Mass in D Minor.”
The composition fueled speculation and mystery for two centuries after it was anonymously commissioned as a funeral Mass.
Mozart died before he could complete more than half of the composition, but his widow, Constanze, directed Mozart’s pupil, Franz Xavier Sussmayer, to finish the work.
Scholars have since ascribed mythological qualities to the “Requiem” and Mozart himself is said to have viewed the piece’s peculiar genesis as a foreshadowing of his own death.
Mozart died at age 35 of rheumatic fever. Some academics theorize that Mozart was destined to never finish the work.
Baptized Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfganus Theophilus Mozart, Mozart often signed his name Amadeus, which is the Latin equivalent of Theophilus.
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