ABVM PARISH COMMUNITY

  IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING CONFESSIONS AT ASSUMPTION BVM PARISH ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2   Our pastor is under Covit-19 quarantine until Sunday, December 3 and will not be able to hear confessions on Saturday.  We have not been able to find a replacement.  However, there are other local options for confession on Saturday.  They are listed here for your convenience:   St. Patrick Parish in Kennett Square confessions from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.   Sacred Heart Parish in Oxford confessions from 3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.   Saint Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother Parish in Avondale confessions from 3:15 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.     Please note that we will celebrate all the regularly scheduled weekend Masses of the First Sunday of Advent: 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and 8:00 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Sunday.  May you all have a blessed Advent and my God give you good health!    

  PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD We begin the 2024 liturgical year with the First Sunday of Advent.  The Collect, or Opening Prayer of the Mass, is meant to set the tone of the season for all the faithful:  Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that gathered at his right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.   You may remember that there are two liturgical themes of Advent; a preparation for the Second Coming of Christ in glory at the end of time, and a preparation to celebrate in a holy way the Nativity of Our Lord on Christmas.  The first two weeks of Advent emphasize the first theme while the last two weeks focus more on the second theme.    At the beginning of Mass today we ask the Father to help us “ resolve to run forth to meet your Christ .”  In the Christian life we are running a race to heaven.  In the first reading we hear Isaiah pray, “Would that you

  GRATITUDE + GENEROSITY = HAPPINESS What kind of world would we live in if gratitude was absent from it?  Just think, if we never said thank you to the store clerk, if we never said thank you to the waiter, if we never said thank you to someone who went out of their way to give us a lift.  What if we never expressed gratitude to war veterans, firefighters, teachers, and doctors?  A world without thanks would be bleak indeed.  I imagine we would become like Ebenezer Scrooge, the famous protagonist in A Christmas Carol .  Never smiling, always frowning, he is described by Charles Dickens in his 1843 novella “as hard as flint…secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”    After the forced visit with the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, Scrooge changed his attitude and became a generous and warm person.  He forgot the things that he had allowed to make him mean; as a boy, the neglect of his father, the absence of his mother (probably by death), and his r

  THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE During his second missionary journey Saint Paul found himself in Athens after fleeing persecution from a city in the north.  In the town square he took the opportunity to share the gospel with any who would listen.  Some became curious and invited him to join them in the Areopagus, a famous gathering site of philosophers of different persuasions on a northern hillside of Athens.  According to Luke, “Now all the Athenians as well as the foreigners residing there used their time for nothing else but telling or hearing something new” (Acts 17:21).  They wanted to hear the new thing about a certain Jesus, and the resurrection of the dead, of which Paul spoke. Paul was exasperated from seeing so many altars erected to idols.  But he was intrigued by one altar which was dedicated “To an Unknown God.”  He intended to make Him known.  “What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.  The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heav

  NOSTRA AETATE FOR TODAY Pope St. Paul VI promulgated a “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to non-Christian Religions” on October 28, 1965, the shortest of the sixteen documents of the Second Vatican Council.  He explains the reason for its promulgation: “In our time [ nostra aetate ] when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.”  Nostra aetate first briefly speaks of the relation of the Church to Hinduism and Buddhism, highlighting what she considers to be positive elements in their beliefs and practices.  It affirms that “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of co