Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and Christmas is just 30 days away...

Feeling overwhelmed?! 

It can be hard not to feel overwhelmed at this time of year. But the Church gives us the season of Advent, which begins this Sunday, a season full of readings and songs that invite us to slow down, to be quiet, to reflect. Advent is like a retreat that the Church offers us at this time of year--a chance to reflect on the role of faith in our lives. We’re beginning a four-week message series this weekend called Making Room, and it’s all about how we can carve out space in our hearts, in our lives, and in our churches to make room for the things that matter most. Our lives can feel so crowded and cluttered at this time of year that it can be hard to imagine making room for anything else. But Christ is worth making room for, and Advent is the perfect time to think about making room in our hearts and our churches as we approach Christmas. 

Want to do a little more to prepare for Sunday?

• Read the readings ahead of time.
• Pray each day between now and Sunday: “God, help me to make room in my life for the things that matter most.” 
• Is there someone in your life feeling stressed by the holiday season? Tell them about our upcoming message series, and invite them to join you for worship this weekend!

Week 1 of our message series, Making Room, will be offered at the 4pm, 8:30am, 10am, and 5:30pm Masses. It will also be available on our Web site Sunday afternoon.

​In the ancient world, the king was the central figure and most important person in any society; good kings were a source of protection, strength, and guidance for their people. This weekend, the last Sunday of the Church’s year, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, and the readings offer us the image of Christ as the king of our lives, the one who saves, sustains, and guides us. We modern people tend to think of ourselves as strong and independent, so we’re not always aware of our need for help and guidance. And we don’t think about kings much anymore, so the idea of Christ as “king” may be hard to grasp. Join us for worship this weekend as we explore this invitation to put Christ at the center of our lives from a modern perspective. Some questions we’ll think about together:

• How does Christ fit into our lives right now?
• Are we open to the possibility of giving our hearts and our lives to Christ more and more?
• How does the choice to commit to Christ affect our lives in a practical way?

Want to do a little more to prepare for Sunday?

• Listen to the song “Oceans,” which talks about Christ’s “sovereign hand” being our guide.
• Read the readings ahead of time.
• Invite a friend to join you for worship by forwarding this e-mail and telling him or her what Mass you’ll be going to.

At the end of the day, what really matters? Our world is crowded with so many things don’t really matter, and it’s so, so easy for us to get caught up in them. It’s so easy to get caught up in daily crises that seem urgent, but are really not all that important in the end. It’s so easy to get caught up in the comparison trap--to obsess over how we measure up to other people in appearance, money, social status, career, ability, even spiritual growth. It’s so easy to get caught up in negativity--to focus more on what annoys us than on what inspires us, to listen more to the people who criticize us than the people who build us up. It’s so easy to get caught up in our habits--to feel like we have to keep doing things the same way we always have. It’s so easy for us to get caught up in the latest big thing. Not all these things are bad, but they’re all distractions. They all take our attention away from what really matters.

In this time at the end of the Church year, God is trying to give us a sense of what matters, not today or this week or this year, but what matters forever. At the end of the day, what matters is what lasts, and what lasts is what is of God. Love matters. Truth matters. Kindness matters. Love matters most of all. We can spend so much time fretting over our to-do lists, our fears and anxieties, our grievances and complaints. So many of the things that we spend our time and energy on are fleeting, but God sees them all in the context of eternity. God is offering us the gift of perspective, a chance to refocus, to see time and the meaning of our lives a little differently. All these things will pass away, Christ tells us in the Gospel this week. At the end of the day, none of those things matter.

Last week a group of us from New Roads went to a conference called “Matter.” It’s a conference for church leaders, and it’s all about how much God matters in people’s lives, and about making church matter. The conference gave us the gift of clarity and perspective on what matters most for the Church--helping the faithful to grow in their relationship with God, and connecting with the people who Jesus called lost. It’s so easy for church leaders to get caught up in things that don’t really matter--to focus on crises that seem urgent but are not really all that important, to get stuck in old habits that don’t really get us anywhere. Not all these things are bad, but they’re all distractions, and as a Church we have to refocus all of our time, energy, and efforts on what really matters: Helping people to begin to know Jesus. Helping people who already know him to begin to follow him and love him. Helping people eventually get to the point of believing in a deeply personal way that at the end of the day, nothing matters more than Christ.

The jarring images in the readings this week--“a time unsurpassed in distress,” “everlasting horror and disgrace,” “the stars will be falling from the sky”--are setting us up for the beautiful season of Advent, just two weeks away. Advent is a time of preparation, a time to get our hearts ready for Christ. But it’s hard to be motivated to get ready for Christ if we aren’t aware of how much we need him. These readings give us a sense of how dark the world is without God; they invite us to consider how dark our lives are without Christ, so that we can enter into Advent with a sense of longing for him. The readings this week are helping us get ready to get ready. 

~Rachel

Take your next step: At a time and place when you can be open to God, draw two big overlapping circles. Label one of them “Things that occupy my time and attention” and the other one “Things that really matter.” Fill them in with as many things as you can think of. In the overlapping space, write down the things that occupy your mind that also really matter. What are the things that occupy your mind that are really just distractions? Are there some things that really matter, but right now don’t get any of your time or attention?

After the last several weeks’ gospel stories and this week’s celebrations of All Saints and All Souls, I feel as though I am being really challenged. Jesus has been trying to educate the disciples as to what is coming.  He will be handed over, killed, and three days later will rise. The disciples don’t get it. Instead they argue over who is the greatest. They ask Jesus for a prominent seat in his kingdom. And then there is the rich young man, who, challenged to not only obey the ten commandments, but also, to sell what he had, turns away sad because too much was being asked of him. A lot is asked of all of us, too.

Whether we are rich “in the eyes of the world” or scrimping to make ends meet, all that has been given to us (time, talent, or treasure) is a gift from God for us to share with those in need. That can be difficult to hear. We might want to hold on to what we have in order to be sure we have enough for a rainy day. We might be reluctant to share our talents because they don’t seem as spectacular as the talents of the person next to us. We might want to protect what free time we have because we see no space for ourselves in the near future. Or, maybe we just are afraid we don’t have enough to share. It is precisely then that generosity and trust are called for.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians provides insight into this dilemma we face when he says: “Glory be to God whose power at work in us can do infinitely more than we can ever ask or imagine.” God can do in and through us what we can never do on our own. God is the personification of generosity. God gives God’s own self to us each time his voice rings out in sacred scripture. God gives God’s self each and every time we approach the altar of sacrifice to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. God gave God’s self when dying on the cross Jesus cried out: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” In comparison, what we have to offer is paltry. And yet, the gift of our time, our treasure, and our talents is what God asks of us and what God can work miracles with, if we are willing to turn over what we have for the sake of others.

Moving from the theoretical to the concrete, the feasts celebrating saints and souls this week brought “Nana ‘ran” (Moran) to mind. She was in her forties when her husband died, leaving her a widow with eleven children, one with cerebral palsy. She never complained, often said “God is good,” and always had a grateful heart. The little she had, she shared, and in doing so created a positive force of goodness around her. I also thought of Sister Eustace Caggiano, who died this fall at the age of 102, after having been a Sister of Saint Joseph for over 80 years. In the 1960s Sister Eustace was assigned to provide meals for the sisters in the Cathedral convent. She provided meals as well for children who came to school with no breakfast, for the homeless of the South End, and the new immigrants who came to the back door hungry and in need of assistance. For decades she worked at the Cardinal Cushing Spanish Speaking Center, providing clothing, shoes, and food for those in need. Eustace had little to offer by way of material possessions. What she did have—love in her heart and an appreciation of the dignity of the human person—she shared generously. God did the rest. God multiplied Eustace’s generosity and Bridget Moran’s faith, and with that, much good was generated. Can we trust that God will use what we give and create something good with it? 

~Sr. Kathleen

Take your next step: Think about the people you have known who have given freely of the gifts God has bestowed on them. Consider what gift God is asking you to share.