Month: November, 2010Advent Questions?
Happy Advent! We would like to hear from you! What are your questions, joys, or struggles with the Advent season? Blessings to you and yours in this season of preparation for the coming of our Great King. Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him, Dan Out of Advent darkness into His marvelous light!
Last year, the note below came as a portion of my first post of the new liturgical year and my first personal note to you. Looking back on this today I was moved with particular gratitude. I was struck with the tremendous measure of joy I was feeling because of the coming of Advent, in spite of some challenging circumstances that have arisen this month. It is amazing how God heals if we allow him to. He really is the source of our joy if we release ourselves into his gentle care. I thought I would share a brief portion of last year’s note and then a bit more…
What if I told you that I had a way to get tens of thousands of Catholics to spend thousands of hours absorbing the great treasures of our faith and to thereby deepen their relationship with Christ? What if I told you we had already achieved this amazing feat and desired to do even more by reaching one million Catholics by 2015? For the faithful and regular readers of this site, we have reached and engaged more than 60,000 readers since last Advent and I have been inviting you to join in this life changing effort. Why now? Simply because I have realized that it really is possible to change lives via a medium like this and that there is still so much more that can be accomplished. We can and will keep providing the same solid spiritual food for hungry souls. We can and will keep providing materials to third-world countries who would not otherwise have access to them. What more can we do with your support? We can create video programs, podcasts, seminars, and other resources that reach more completely into the lives of those seeking to better know and love the King of Kings. I want to invite you to join us in this great quest to unite souls more deeply with Christ and his Church. Please consider a tax deductible end of year gift. As you can see, our vision extends far beyond blog posts and web sites. With you, we can accomplish our dream of reaching one million Catholics with the great riches of his Church! Please click below to either learn more or to help us in this effort!
May Christ be more present than ever to you and yours this Advent season. Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him Dan Burke PS: For those of you who are already helping us in this mission through prayer, encouragement, and financial support, Thank You! A prayer of preparation for Advent…
O sweetest Jesus, You come to me with Your infinite love and the abundance of Your grace; You desire to engulf my soul in torrents of mercy and charity in order to draw it to You. Come, O Lord, come! I, too, wish to run to You with love, but alas! my love is so limited, weak, and imperfect! Make it strong and generous; enable me to overcome myself, so that I can give myself entirely to You. St. Teresa of Avila Divine Intimacy – First Sunday of Advent Seek the things above…
Saint Paul – Colossians 3:1-3 Am I so heavenly minded that I am no earthly good?
Is there something wrong with constantly keeping our eyes on heaven; with heaven being the most important thing to us on this earth? I understand that we can become too heavenly minded to be any earthly good; we must always be the hands, feet, mouth and heart of Jesus to others here on earth. But we are strangers here; heaven is our true and only home. So, yes, I am definitely obsessed with not just getting there, but with going to extreme measures to keep heaven in my heart! In a culture where it’s considered “impolite” to so much as talk about our deep love of Christ in the workplace or with casual acquaintances, I think it would do the Church and society good for more of us to be obsessed with the afterlife! A: I guess it all depends on what we mean by “obsessed.” Here is what I had in mind when I wrote the sentence that you quote in your question: “To turn now, brothers, to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ… Please do not get excited too soon or alarmed by any prediction or rumor or any letter claiming to come from us, implying that the Day of the Lord has already arrived…” (1 Thessalonians 2:3) I also had this in mind: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone… Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour” (Matthew 24:36; 25:13). Throughout the history of the Church, there have been movements in which Christians became so concerned about the Lord’s Second Coming that they became blind to God’s will in the day-to-day battle of their lives. Instead of dedicating themselves to seeking holiness and building up Christ’s Kingdom in their circle of influence, they retreated into self-absorption. They reduced the entire Christian message to the End of the World and the imminent sufferings that would cause. This is what I meant by “obsessed.” I think you mean something different by “obsessed.” You mean keeping the goal in mind, not being distracted from life’s mission by self-indulgence and trivialities, staying focused on loving God and loving neighbor, never seeking the heart’s satisfaction in the passing pleasures and achievements of our earthly, temporal existence. As a result of that kind of “obsession,” you see yourself better positioned to share with those around you the light of Christ. Well, in that case, I agree with you one-hundred percent: we should all be “obsessed” with the afterlife! Frank Sheed, the great twentieth-century Catholic apologist, would have a different word for this kind of obsession. He would simply call it “sanity.” I would like to finish this short post by sharing a quotation from his classic work, Theology and Sanity (reprinted in 1993 by Ignatius Press, well worth reading and available here), where he explains that having a Christian world view is the path to intellectual health:
Yours in Christ, Fr. John Bartunek, LC, ThD |
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