Advent & Christmas

The word “epiphany” is a big word that means revelation.

“But [it’s] not any revelation,” Father Caesar Rubiano, pastor of Our Lady of the Angels Parish, Trenton, said Jan. 5 during the Mass he celebrated in St. Joachim Church. Epiphany, he said, is the revelation of God who comes to this world through the Incarnation and in human form. God was born of the flesh, he said, and “this revelation gave us the new beginning, the new life, the new joy.”

In my Christmas Message to the Diocese this year, I wrote, “The whole world becomes different at Christmas.”  Those are my words, yes, but they are not my idea. 

The prophet Isaiah – 800 years before the birth of Christ – expressed the idea this way, as we heard in our First Reading tonight, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”  Light makes the dark world “different.”  It enables people to see.  And what do we see at Christmas?  “A child is born for us,” Isaiah explains, “A son is given us.  Upon his shoulders dominion rests.” 

This is what we see; this is whom we see at Christmas.  A Child.  A Son. 

Epiphany Parish, Brick, is keeping busy this Advent and Christmas season! Frist there was a “Night in Bethlehem” and live Nativity. Then there was the Magi Christmas Lunch as well as the annual junior youth gingerbread house-making contest.

A new light shined bright on a centuries-old tradition Dec. 14 with nearly 600 faithful coming together as St. Robert Bellarmine Co-Cathedral held its first Simbang Gabi observance.

In his opening remarks, Bishop David M. O’Connell, C.M., shared that it was a “great joy to be here beginning this celebration, which is so very important to the Filipino community and to all of us.”

For Msgr. Sam A. Sirianni, rector of St. Robert Bellarmine Co-Cathedral, Freehold, Advent and the Christmas season are fruitful times to help parishioners come to a fuller understanding of the meaning of Christian joy, since joy is inherent in this holy time of the Church.

“Christian joy is rooted in hope, and our hope is in Christ and in a sense that life has meaning,” Msgr. Sirianni stressed.

“Take a look. Listen. Breathe. And expect.”

Such were the words Maria Gimello offered her fifth- through eighth-grade religious education students in hopes of getting them to focus more on the greatest gift of the season – Jesus.

Jessica Donohue, parish catechetical leader in Sacred Heart Parish, Mount Holly, believes that thriving during Advent and Christmas begins with family relationships.

“With the hectic nature of the holiday season, it is unfortunately sometimes too easy to neglect that,” she noted. “But caring for our ‘domestic Church’ is so important and really affects our other relationships as well.”

At the same time, I don’t lose sight of the real “reason for the season,” the birth of the Savior, God the Father’s gift of his Son Jesus to the world.  The four weeks of Advent that precede Christmas Eve and Day keep me focused liturgically, in prayer and worship, on the ancient anticipation of the coming of the Messiah. 

Here are a few traditions that an individual or family can practice to slow down and draw closer to Christ during Advent.