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Third Sunday of Advent, December 12, 2004
"A" Readings:
Isa. 35:1-6, 10 • James 5:7-10 • Matt. 11:2-11
• Advent Homily:
John the Baptist as Our Advent Guide by Rev. Jeffrey Lawrence
| Today, we meet St. John the Baptist in his prison cell. The ancient Jewish historian,
Josephus, writes that the Baptist was locked up in a place called Machaerus, King Herod's
fortress on the dreary and isolated hills east of the Dead Sea. ...
• Advent Reflection:
"The Perfect Faith of the Blessed Virgin" by Carl E. Olson |
God has a mother and she was chosen before the beginning of time. This is an amazing belief,
one that is sometimes mocked and often misunderstood, and misrepresented, sometimes even by
Catholics. Yet this truth is at the heart of Advent and Christmas - as well as at the heart of
the entire Christian Faith. ...
•
"Advent with Jean Daniélou" by Carl E. Olson | Fr. Jean Daniélou's
The Advent of Salvation, originally published simply as Advent in 1950, may be the
best $3.00 purchase I've ever made. The out-of-print book is a classic work on the meaning of Advent.
Here are a few of Daniélou's thoughts about this wonderful but often overlooked season. ...
•
"Food for St. Lucy’s Feast", an excerpt from A Continual Feast by Evelyn Birge Vitz
| St. Lucy’s Day marks a moment of festivity in Advent. In Sweden in particular, her feast is
celebrated with customs hundreds of years old. The eldest daughter of a household, wearing a white
dress with a crimson sash, and a whortleberry or lingonberry crown, set with lighted candles, wakes
the members of the family, and serves them special buns or a cake and coffee. ...
• "The Advent Wreath",
an excerpt from Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany in the Domestic Church by by Peter & Catherine Fournier
| Every season of Advent is a new
reminder of the promise of eternity. (CCC 1020 - 1029) Thus, Advent wreaths are made of evergreens
to symbolize God's "everlastingness" and our immortality. (Purple is the liturgical color for Advent,
green in the wreath symbolizes hope and new life.) Four candles--three purple or violet that represent
penance, sorrow, and longing expectation and one rose or pink that represents the hope and coming joy--are
used to represent the four weeks of Advent. ...
• Selected
Ignatius Press books and music for Advent and Christmas. Books
for the entire family, including Fiona French's beautifully illustrated
Bethlehem, books by theologian John Saward, and classic Catholic Christmas
carols. ...
The page for the first week of Advent is
here. The second week can be
found here.
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Dogma And Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to
Daily Life (2nd Ed)
by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
This volume is an unabridged edition of Dogma and Preaching, a work that appeared in a much-reduced form in English, in 1985. The new book contains twice as much material as first
English edition. "Dogma", for many people, is a bad word. For the well-informed believer, it shouldn't be. Dogmas are truths revealed by God, which should enlighten the minds,
guide the choices, and gladden the hearts of Jesus' disciples, including pastors, deacons, and lay teachers. But, as Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), notes in the foreword
to this book, "The path from dogma to proclamation or preaching has become very troublesome." Finding ways to relate the content of the Church's dogmas to everyday life can be
challenging for today's preachers and teachers. Some people find the task so daunting that they leave dogma out. As a result, they wind up presenting something other than the
Church's faith and speak in their own name, offering perhaps unwittingly merely their own, subjective ideas, rather than the Word of God. In Dogma and Preaching, the theologian
and priest Joseph Ratzinger provides (1) a theory of preaching for today; (2) application of this theory to some themes for preaching drawn from the Church's dogmas; (3) meditations
and sermons based on the liturgical year and the communion of saints; and (4) some thoughts regarding the decade after the Second Vatican and Christianity's seeming irrelevance.
Ratzinger insists that sound preaching should rest on three pillars... Read more!
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