Dear Friends,
This weekend we begin the season of Advent and a new liturgical year, and so, I guess I can wish all of you a Happy New Year! This new Year of Grace 2022, as we call the liturgical year, will feature on most Sundays passages from the Gospel of Luke. Luke is a Gospel that has much for us on which to meditate. Luke emphasizes, among other things, the plan of God that has been unfolding across time through the ages of history even until the present, a plan that will reach fulfillment when all time ends and Christ returns in glory. God has not abandoned us, even if we at times feel that he has. God continues to work in and through history to accomplish his purpose and his plan. Luke also emphasizes the importance of prayer, the place of women in the life and ministry of Jesus (and therefore in the Church, which Pope Francis has been stressing as well), the importance of reaching out to and caring for the poor, and the importance of striving to bring back to the fold those who have strayed, those who have been lost, and those who have been forgotten or pushed to the peripheries of society. Luke, rightly so, has been called the “Gospel of Inclusion” and it offers us much to reflect and meditate upon as we make our way through these next twelve months.
Advent is a season that is grounded in the virtue of hope, often called the “forgotten” or “neglected” of the three theological virtues, the other two being faith and charity (love). As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches (cf. ¶ 1817), “hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” Within each one of us, God himself has placed an “aspiration to happiness” that shapes and molds our everyday lives, inspiring and purifying all of our actions so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven, to what God wills. Hope, properly nurtured, preserves us from discouragement, sustains us in times when we feel abandoned, and opens our hearts to expect eternal, everlasting happiness.
Hope helps to keep us from selfishness and leads us to love God and others, thus finding that happiness in this life that God wills and leading
us ultimately to everlasting happiness and fulfillment.
During these next four weeks, amid all of the hustle and bustle of this time of year, take time to sit quietly in prayer, asking God to deepen and strengthen within you that gift, that virtue of hope that God wills for all of us. We have, all of us, been through some trying times. We have survived the challenges of the past twenty months. We have done so because God has been with us, sustaining us, bolstering us in hope. May God continue to bless us with the greatest of all gifts, as St. Paul calls them, “faith, hope, and charity.”
Have a good week!