Advent/Prechristmas times
These Advent has many aspects;
entertainment, gifts, cards toys, trees, home/office parties,
Santa visits, reindeers, decorations, holidays,
special food, buying, selling, Christmas songs
and who knows , maybe even some snow – all in preparation for the big day .
It is an extraordinary blend of cheerfulness and sadness, of hope and fear, of longing and expectations, surprises and disppointments
Liturgical Season of Advent 2014
Here at Catholic Ireland.net, we try to focus on the Liturgical Season of Advent 2014. There is an atmosphere about this season that is unparalleled by any of the other seasons of the church year. Advent is also a very shortl season in peparation for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. We remember the prophecies of the Old Testament and the New. We review again to our present lives, successes and failings. As we sing our Advent carols we pause in faith. And we look to the second coming of the Lord.
Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote
‘Advent insists that we stay for a while in this tension of being ‘on the eve’, if only in order that the new thing we celebrate at Christmas may have a chance of being truly new for us The Advent tension is a way of learning again that God is God; that between even our deepest and holiest longing and the reality of God, is a gap which only grace can cross.’
(Liturgical Season of Advent 2014 Open To Judgement: Sermons and Addresses, Darton,Longman and Todd, London, 1994, pages 10, 11.)
So pause, enter, enjoy, and grow this advent season with our ‘Daily Advent Moments’
We hope they will help you prepare yourself for God’s Advent gifts.
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