On the Second Sunday of Advent each year, we are introduced to one of the most important persons associated with this season of preparation: St John the Baptist.
I feel squeamish when I see those paintings of Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, which depict this trio as the ideal family! In reality, no one in the Middle East, either now or 2000 years ago, would consider a mother+father+child as a family unit.
As the Vatican Christmas tree and Nativity Scene adorned a St Peter’s Square filled with faithful this week, Pope Leo XIV highlighted the importance of Advent as a time of preparation to welcome the birth of Christ.
He offered the encouragement in his various greetings to pilgrims from different language groups during the Wednesday General Audience on December 17.
Advent and Christmas have been celebrated in a variety of different ways across the SVD Australia Province, from multicultural carols to Christmas lights, concerts to shared meals and gifts – all with the common theme of highlighting the nativity of Jesus Christ.
From the Indigenous communities in the Tiwi Islands, Central Australia, and Balgo to city suburbs in Australia and New Zealand and across to villages in Thailand and Myanmar, the Province has expressed a range of different cultural celebrations of Christmas.
As Advent draws us onward towards the coming of Jesus at Christmas, I take this opportunity to wish everyone the hope and much-needed peace of the season.
And, as this will be my last message as Provincial, I also wish to thank everyone who journeyed with me and supported the Divine Word Missionaries over the last six years. I have been reminded again and again that we never walk alone when we walk in faith.
Today’s first reading gives us an image of the Kingdom of Heaven which we require to aim at every moment of our life. The second reading today comes from the Letter of James and recommends us all to be patient for the coming of the Kingdom of God.
At a Christmas Mass for children one year, I passed the statue of the baby Jesus among the children asking them to touch and feel it, then tell me their feeling about the newly born baby Jesus.
A Christmas quip goes: “Don’t get so preoccupied in what the world has to sell that you miss what God has to give."
Advent and Christmas have been celebrated in a variety of different ways across the SVD Australia Province, from multicultural carols to Christmas lights, concerts to shared meals and gifts – all with the common theme of highlighting Jesus as the reason for the season.
From the Indigenous communities in the Tiwi Islands, Central Australia, Daly River and Balgo to city suburbs in Australia and New Zealand and across to villages in Thailand and Myanmar, the Province has expressed a range of different cultural celebrations of Christmas.
This Christmas will not only open a Jubilee Year for the Universal Church, declared by Pope Francis, but also comes as the Society of the Divine Word celebrates its 150th Jubilee Year.
The theme of the SVD Jubilee is ‘Witnessing to the Light: From Everywhere for Everyone’ and that theme makes a great Christmas meditation, because it was on that first Christmas, more than 2000 years ago, that the Light of Christ came into our world. And we, as followers of Christ and missionaries, are witnesses to that Light.
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