A sincere effort to prepare ourselves in Advent

With the Advent Season so very near, I would like to take a few lines here to review just what this great Liturgical Season is and what its purpose is in the life of our Catholic Church.
 
First of all, the Season of Advent is our own New Year’s celebration. The last Sunday of our Church’s year is the great Solemnity of Christ the King. This glorious day is such a clear reminder to each of us of what our good God’s will is for us, if we but know and do His holy will through the course of our earthly lives. It is heaven! It begins the last week of our Church year and leads directly to our New Year of grace and favor from the Lord with the First Sunday of Advent.
 
According to the annual calendar, the Season of Advent is usually four weeks in length give or take a few days. This calendar year, the Advent Season is shorter since the Fourth Sunday of Advent is also Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, the Season of Advent, the first liturgical season of our new Church year, is a great season of sincere preparation to celebrate worthily and properly the Incarnation of the Son of the Most High God and His saving birth into human history. 
 
The kind of preparation the Church asks of us for the Solemnity of Christmas, the Lord Jesus Christ’s birth as One like us in all things but sin, is one of joyful and penitential prayer, repentance for our sins, acts of real charity for all who are in any corporal and/or spiritual need. And, a meditating on the hope which is ours because of Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, and what He has already accomplished for us and what He is yet to do for us.  This sounds like a tall order, as we would say, given all that goes on in the weeks leading up to Christmas. We might ask ourselves how we are going to do what the Church asks of us and still get everything else accomplished.
 
Let’s look at this way. If we make a real and sincere effort to prepare ourselves in Advent for Christmas as our Church asks, all the other nice and good things we do in Advent for Christmas will be accomplished, but in such a way that we find and have that peace of mind and heart only Jesus gives us. Then, the gifts we give to others along with our good wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year will come from our hearts which love Him first, last and always, and will be sincere expressions of our true love for those whom He loves eternally.
 
This Advent, let us take on the mind and heart of our Church in a more intentional, direct and intense way. Let us meditate and pray daily on the “already and not yet” of Jesus, Our Lord and Savior. He has redeemed us already from the death of sin which we have inherited from our first parents, and, as He promised, He will return to us at a time known to the Father to hand over to Him the entire universe perfected at the end of time. The Season of Advent is that time every year for us to put our own lives into the perspective which is God’s, that is, to realize that every day of our lives is Advent. Every day of our lives is another gift of time to us from God to make certain we are doing His will in all things and thus, growing in the virtues which are the outward sign of holiness.
 
Have a good Advent, Merry and Holy Christmas and Blessed New Year!