Catechesis
Sunday: The First Sunday of Advent Date: November 27. 2011
Readings: Is 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7; Ps 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19; 1 Cor 1:3-9; Mk 13:33-37
Theme: Prayer and Expectation
Today, we use for the first time the new translation of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal. The timing of this change coincides with the First Day of our new Liturgical Year. This is the time of Advent. Our culture around us has begun their celebration of Christmas but we as a Church know that for such a momentous event we must set apart time to prepare. The Church prepares us “to celebrate at Christmas the birth of Him who came to snatch our souls from sin and transform them into the likeness of His own.” We focus for the next two weeks by living the “Expectation of Israel”, praying with the saints of the Old Testament that God will send the Messiah.
Catechism:
Prayer is the life of the new heart. It ought to animate us at every moment. But we tend to forget him who is our life and our all. This is why the Fathers of the spiritual life in the Deuteronomic and prophetic traditions insist that prayer is a remembrance of God often awakened by the memory of the heart "We must remember God more often than we draw breath." But we cannot pray "at all times" if we do not pray at specific times, consciously willing it. These are the special times of Christian prayer, both in intensity and duration.
The Tradition of the Church proposes to the faithful certain rhythms of praying intended to nourish continual prayer. Some are daily, such as morning and evening prayer, grace before and after meals, the Liturgy of the Hours. Sundays, centered on the Eucharist, are kept holy primarily by prayer. The cycle of the liturgical year and its great feasts are also basic rhythms of the Christian's life of prayer. (CCC2697,8)
In the gospel Our Lord warns us “Watch, therefore; you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: 'Watch!'” How are we to watch? We are to pray.
Catechism:
In the Old Testament, the revelation of prayer comes between the fall and the restoration of man, that is, between God's sorrowful call to his first children: "Where are you? . . . What is this that you have done?"3 and the response of God's only Son on coming into the world: "Lo, I have come to do your will, O God."4 Prayer is bound up with human history, for it is the relationship with God in historical events. (CCC 2568)