2nd Week of Advent / Getting Ready

Today, Sunday, December 9, 2012 is the 2nd Sunday of Advent which is the period that the Church asks us to prepare for the upcoming Christmas Feast Day.  We human beings are always getting ready for something.  For example we are getting ready for work, for school, for the big meeting, for the big test and so on.  The Church asks us to ready ourselves to greet Jesus when He comes.  Some of us prepare for the Christmas feast by shopping, sometimes to excess as we find out in January.  We prepare by decorating our homes with light up Santa Claus figures, reindeer figures, blinking lights and so forth. All of this is good and proper and fun, and we should do these things, except we might want to watch what we spend for gifts.  We should do more too.

The season of Advent should impel us to ready our hearts to receive the King of Glory.  Along with all of the other decorating, we should take time to decorate our souls.  We should spend a little bit of time each day in prayer, we should spend a few minutes reading the Bible, we should think about our lives and how we can improve them.  Then we should decorate our souls with ornaments of charity, garlands of prayer, and the bright lights of contemplation.  If we do this Christmas will arrive and we will feel the joy the shepherds felt that glorious night when God came to Earth to experience the very life he gave us.

Saturday was the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception, who is the Patron Saint of America.  It celebrates the special favor that was granted to Mary by God.  God, who is not limited by time or space, applied the grace of the Cross of Jesus to Mary and preserved her from the very moment of her conception from original sin.  God rescued us when we fell into the pit of original sin because of the disobedience of Adam and drew us out.  For Mary, she saved her by not allowing her to fall into the pit in the first place.  This was His will and His pleasure and a special gift to the young girl who would become the Mother of God.

May God be with you this week and may he be seen through the kindness you grant to those around you.