1st Sunday of Advent
Merry Christmas, everyone! Now, doesn’t that sound a little odd, a little premature maybe? If it doesn’t, it really should. And yet for much of the world around us Christmas started the day after Halloween. But for us, things are different. At least they ought to be different. Today we begin the season of Advent, which is our solemn preparation for Christmas. It is not our anticipated celebration of Christmas. I don’t say this to be “that guy,” the “Advent enforcer,” much less because I am some kind of scrooge – far from it. I make this point because I think if we get swept into the Christmas frenzy too soon we will have robbed ourselves of something truly wonderful. I would dare say that if we approach Christmas without proper preparation, we run the risk of robbing ourselves of the very meaning of Christmas itself, and that would indeed be sad. It reminds me of a few years ago when I was covering for a parish on Ash Wednesday. At the e