Pastoral Corner - Second Sunday of Advent

Dear Parish Family,

The Divine Remedy is Love! ❤️❤️

The holy season of Advent in meaning is a combination of understandings that celebrate the reality of the First Advent the Nativity of the Lord, and the Second Advent anticipating the Second Coming.

It’s important that we as Catholics focus upon these dual themes of the Advent Season because we gain better perspective of the benefit that is experienced because God became man, becoming one of us so that we would respond with the heart of our being. You see God is all about relationship in wanting to engage us in relationship to Him. This is the whole point why Jesus comes to us as one of us. In a sense the Nativity of the Lord brings us into focus of acknowledging the significance of the human piece of God’s plan of salvation. To understand God and His unconditional love ❤ of humanity we must first understand God in the second person of the Trinity in Jesus Christ. You see we are called to know Him as friend, and as one who loves with open arms and also to love Him in return. He came to us as a baby and grew into his humanity in order for us to know such love, to know mercy, to know compassion, but these are often challenging as human beings often treat one another without dignity or love. We disregard the unborn child, we devalue the human person by disrespect, we dismiss undocumented immigrants as subhuman by calling them illegal aliens. Let the Nativity of the Lord soften our jaded hearts of stone, preparing to receive our king. As humans we assassinate people with our tongue, and often say love with the mouth, but do not show love with our actions. People of faith, who are Christ centered love and are compassionate in this greatest sense, to even give dignity and love to those we may not prefer. It’s in the human encounter of the Father through the Son, that we are imbued with this knowledge of ❤ love because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, Jesus Christ. We insult God when we reject His Son. We insult God with our spirit of criticism. We insult Jesus when we fail to be like His mother.

To be anything less of love as a Christian would be a major short coming. Advent calls us to the manger to reflect upon the holy innocence of the Christ Child, so that we may open our heart to Him. The second theme of Advent brings to our mind our need to seek repentance and to rectify sin in our lives because sin separates us from the love of God. May we speak more with love and remove the vile from our hearts, by realizing the root causes of our habitual sin, that seems to always get the best of us. This part of Advent puts into perspective the reality of God as Judge, but also that Jesus is the Great Physician that makes things all new again. He is the Divine Remedy. The Second Coming is not some nebulous idea, but is a future event, for which it is not a matter of IF, but only a matter of When. Our prayer is only find us ready Lord! This should invoke in us a desire to be closer to God, and a desire to move away from the attachments we may have in this life, and be awakened in the enlightenment of Advent.

Blessings,
Fr. Michael D. Accinni Reinhardt, MA, Mdiv, MS
Parochial Administrator/Pastor
St. Catherine Laboure Parish