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Friday of the Third Week of Advent
Today’s readings [Today’s homily was for the school children on their last day of school before Christmas break. UPDATE: Unfortunately, I didn’t get to celebrate Mass with them because they had a snow day. Rats.] I can’t believe it but Christmas is only just six days away now! I know everyone is so busy writing…
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Thursday of the Third Week of Advent: O Adonai
Today’s readings “Come, let us worship the Lord, for he is already close at hand.” Each day from the seventeenth through the twenty-third of December, a verse is assigned to each day that we call the “O Antiphons.” We hear the “O Antiphons” is the hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” Today’s verse is “O…
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Advent Penance Service
Readings: Isaiah 61:1-3, Matthew 9:1-8 This afternoon I was thinking about the fact that people don’t experience things in the same way. I was in downtown Naperville with my sister, my two nieces and my nephew. We were out having lunch and doing some Christmas shopping just as the weather was getting pretty nasty. My…
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Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent
Today’s readings The chief priests and the elders of the people were always trying to decide who got into heaven. The criteria was strict adherence to the law, and any flaw in one’s obedience left them out of the picture. The problem was, they weren’t so concerned about the spirit of the law, and that…
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Fourth Sunday of Advent: O Oriens
Today’s readings I was with some friends the other night and we watched the Patrick Stewart version of “A Christmas Carol.” When I watched it this time, I was really struck by the themes of light and darkness that Charles Dickens wrote into the story. At the beginning, the setting is a very dark London,…
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Thursday of the Second Week of Advent
Today’s readings I was with some of the fourth grade classes from our Religious Education Program yesterday afternoon. I reflected with them that God could have become incarnate in any way he chose. But what he chose is almost incomprehensible: the Lord of all came into the world as a tiny baby, born to a…
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The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Today’s readings Today, we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Mary, mother of Jesus, which celebrates the dogmatic belief that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to be our Savior, and gave to him a human mother who was chosen before the world began to be holy and blameless in…
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Second Sunday of Advent
Today’s readings “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.” So the prophet Isaiah begins our Liturgy of the Word today. Those words made me think back to a time many years ago when I sang in a “Do It Yourself Messiah.” Such “Do It Yourself Messiahs” are Christmas traditions in many places. This…
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Advent Conspiracy
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St. Nicholas, Bishop
Today’s readings | Today’s saint [more] The general rule of thumb is that the saints are always supposed to point us to God. The stories of the saints aren’t always real factual, and we cannot rely on them for actual historical records. That’s not their purpose. The stories of the saints are designed to illuminate…
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