The First Sunday of Advent is on 30 November. Our new Bishop will be celebrating Mass in Plymouth Cathedral at 10.00. Please join him in person or online.
Mgr. Keith Mitchell has shared a reflection to help us prepare for this important liturgical season.
“We have hardly had time to put our shorts and T-shirts away for another year before supermarkets and garden centres were crammed full of festive decorations and Christmas goodies. Already I have received an invitation from the local pub to book for my Christmas dinner before it’s too late. That was in the first week of September! We hardly have time to put up and take down the Halloween decorations before the kids are pestering to have the tree decorated. Christmas, for better or worse, begins now. It is just a matter of days before endless carols are piped at us everywhere and winter-wonderlands spring up in every spare field.
It’s so easy to by-pass those four weeks before, which we call Advent. This year it begins on 30th November. Perhaps, we need to get ready for that too! Everyone will soon be telling us to eat, drink and be merry and we might feel like killjoys but we do so need to celebrate the message of Advent first. This message is a clear one, “The time has come. Sit up straight & pay attention!” (Romans 13.11) The scriptures we will hear during this season ask us a serious question, “Am I ready to meet the Lord?” It is a question worth attending to. There are so many distractions in the hyped build up to Christmas and everyone and everything wants our attention, but we must not let the voice of the Lord be drowned out.
The readings of Advent will remind us that if the people of Noah’s day had been attending to the Lord rather than be distracted by endless merry-making, they may not have missed the boat or at least kept their heads above the water (Matthew 24.37-44). Scripture insists that, “the day of the Lord is at hand”. The Romans would have done well to have paid attention and not been distracted by orgies, promiscuity and the like.
Eating, drinking and making merry may be foundational human activities at this time of year but they can be an escape. While Advent is not a killjoy time for anyone, it does call us to attentiveness if we are to be real and not miss the point.
Advent, of course, means “coming”, the coming of the Lord and that inevitably involves judgment. The first part of Advent particularly calls us to look to that Second Coming when the Lord will come again and which we say we believe in every time we profess the Creed. The second part of Advent looks more directly to his first coming in the stable of Bethlehem. Both involve Judgment. Judgment is for real. Each of us will be called to meet the Lord face to face. Are we ready? If we are attending that is not a frightening prospect, it is a joyful one.”