| November 1, 2024 Dear Companion of St. Anthony, Please join me in a bit of an imaginative exercise. It’s December 26th and we are so excited because the Christmas Season has just started. We look forward now, after an intentional and prayerful four weeks of the Church’s Advent Season and a deep and meaningful Christmas Day to enter more deeply into the mystery of God with us in Jesus His Son. The Christmas Tree is fresh and decorations beautiful, bringing hope into our lives. The Church names the first eight days of this holy season, The Christmas Octave. We are welcomed to enter more deeply into Christmas as our celebration continues forward until the Feast of the Epiphany. If we were to follow our Church’s liturgical calendar and not blindly follow our consumer cultures interpretation of things, I suggest that we might in fact arrive at the actual beginning of the Christmas Season-Christmas Eve (Dec 24th), refreshed rather than anxious or warn out. I suggest to you that we will benefit in this month of November leading up to Thanksgiving, if we approach it as our Church invites us to. It is in fact the last portion of the Season of Ordinary Time. I invite you to put the brakes on Christmas for now and start gathering the necessary items to create a beautiful Advent wreath. Try approaching Christmas with a fast or a reflection on the gospel readings of the season. This would assist in acknowledging the truth that often gets missed, that we are preparing to celebrate God’s great gift of love for us in Jesus. We are going to have to be intentional about this. This will not be easy. The good news is that we have some helpers in our corner. The two Feasts that fall on the first two days of this month, the Solemnity of All Saints and All Soul’s Day, can help us. All of them both Saints and Souls, I imagine, would love for us to have a deep prayerful Advent in preparation for a joyful Christmas. Let us enlist them all in our effort to pray to God for us. That we may be spiritually prepared for the celebration of Christmas. May the Saints and our deceased loved ones, friends and benefactors guide us, protect us and guard us from anything that would cheapen or rush our preparations. May they help us live these holy seasons of our Church year in ways that are meaningful in God’s sight. Peace,  Friar Gary W. Johnson, OFM Conv. |
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