Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This is an important weekend in our parishes. The Advent purple and the Advent wreath in many of our churches mark the beginning of a new year in the life of the Church. This weekend, too, we celebrate Mass with the whole of the new translation of the Roman Missal.
It is a season of change and movement and uncertainty. As we adapt to new words in the Mass, the pace is gathering in preparation for Christmas. We are being bombarded with special offers. But that cannot disguise the worry and uncertainty about jobs and security for many of us. It is a very distracting time.
That makes Advent more relevant than ever. We hear a wake-up call to focus on the things of heaven. At the end of this short season, we shall celebrate the birth of our Saviour. But, at the beginning of Advent, we look to the second coming of Jesus. As we heard in today’s Gospel, “Be on your guard, stay awake, because you never know when the time will come.” (Mk 13:33)
There is an urgency in the message, not to frighten us, but to wake us up to what really matters – the coming of our Saviour. In the Creed we profess, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.” After the Consecration at Mass in Eucharistic Prayer III, we hear the words, “as we look forward to his second coming” After the “Our Father” the priest prays that “we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
Woven into the prayer of the Mass is the Advent of our Saviour at the end of time. As we look to that coming of Jesus this Advent, we are invited to be refreshed with the gift of faith in Jesus and confident in living out that faith in our different vocations.
In their message on the first anniversary of the Papal Visit, the Bishops of England and Wales urged us to be confident, faithful and courageous as Catholics. Recently, Pope Benedict announced a “Year of Faith” beginning next October to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.
Confidence in our faith was one of the major themes in the Diocesan vision, Walking Humbly with Our God, which I presented just four years ago. I am looking forward to reviewing the progress we have made in March of the coming year. Thanks to your enormous generosity our campaign to provide much needed resources, Together in Faith, is just coming to a wonderfully successful conclusion.
As with Mary, the mother of Jesus, a confident, constant and humble faith begins with openness in prayer to our heavenly Father. May we mark these weeks of Advent, these distracting times, with moments of faithful prayer.
With every blessing,
Peter, Bishop of Northampton