2nd Sunday in Advent
Background: We are a work in progress. Even including our catechumens, God’s good work has already been begun in us and is moving on to completion. Yet once again we have to do our part; we must face the ways that sin has crept into our lives and give God a chance to lead us to a deeper liberation.
Discussion Questions
- What desert are you living in?
- What herald is calling you to change, to be a better person, to find new hope in your life?
- For whom is God calling you to be a herald of repentance and new life?
- How does our church or society need to repent if we are to move forward together to God’s kingdom/reign?
Practice: Once again this week pray St. Ignatius Loyola’s prayer the Suscipe/Take, Lord, Receive, and each day give over to God another part of your life.
3rd Sunday in Advent
Background: Advent leads up to the celebration not only of Christmas but also to the Epiphany to the Magi and the Epiphany at the Baptism in the Jordan. Nor are we celebrating in those feasts just events in the life of Jesus since we too are caught up in Christ’s life by our rebirth by water and the Spirit. As St. Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria said, “God became a human being that human beings might become God.”
And so, there are baptismal references all through Advent since one of its purposes was to prepare catechumens for initiation at one of the winter feasts. For us who are already baptized, these references are a call to understand and live our conversion more deeply. Once again, we are urged to repent and rejoice!
Discussion Questions
- It is in the little things of our everyday life that our honesty, integrity, and living concern for others are most revealed. What needs to change in your daily life for you to achieve real integrity as a Christian?
- What change within you, a change that you are deeply anticipating, might God’s grace work within you as you welcome Christ into your heart once again?
- Luke says that the call to repentance is good news and not bad news. What still makes if feel like bad news to you? How might love change that feeling?
- How can you personally make this a more just and caring world?
Practice: So much of preparing for Christmas is about getting the right “stuff” for people close to us. But Christ needs us to be his presence for the poor and vulnerable. This year just do not make a donation to a charity, but find some way to give of yourself to others in need. That might include the old person who lives down the block or in the adjoining condo. It might be your child’s teachers. Ponder, and then do it!
Christ needs us to be his presence for the poor and vulnerable. This year just do not make a donation to a charity, but find some way to give of yourself to others in need.
4th Sunday in Advent
Background: Christ still comes into this world when people of faith surrender to God’s call to live lives of love, a love that sacrifices everything so that God’s will may be accomplished.
Discussion Questions
- Which person has most revealed to you the presence of Christ? How did you welcome them?
- Elizabeth is open to growth. In what part of your life have you never expected that Christ could come to you? And yet he has?
- What outlooks, values, or preconceptions has Christ’s coming to you already called you to give up?
- How will you bring peace this Christmas as you welcome others into your heart and your home?
Practice: Each morning or evening till Christmas, pray—hopefully with your family—the prayer called the Angelus.
The Feast of the Holy Family
Background: Any parent, indeed anyone who has ever worked with teenagers, can relate to this gospel selection, the only one set between Jesus’s infancy and his Baptism. For it reveals to us a boy struggling to find his own vocation in life, his own core values which will guide him. And it reveals two parents who must still guard and direct him but who must also stand back and ponder what God is trying to do within him.
Notice also how in Luke’s gospel, which is clearly addressed to the Gentiles, both Jesus’s roots in an observant Jewish family are highlighted and how this first journey to Jerusalem in obedience to his Father’s business foreshadows his second journey later in the Gospel when he heads up to accomplish the Father’s will by his death and resurrection.
Discussion Questions
- When did you first hear God calling you to some direction or purpose in your life? Have there been other ones?
- How have you struggled with that call?
- Who have been your best supporters and guides on your journey of faith?
- How has your life of love brought others to know a sense of purpose in their lives?
Practice: What teenagers do you know? This week each day pick one of them, and pray for them individually, not with an agenda but to ask God to guide them. Ask Mary to help you as you ponder. How might your prayer turn into words or deeds of encouragement?
