Not Christmas Time, What????

So I see everyone is in gear for Christmas, Shopping, decorations, trees, flowers…and so on.  Something is off thought, cause it is not Christmas as of yet.  This week the Church celebrates the New Year, and ours starts on Advent.  If you are wondering that is why all the violet/purple colors.  What is Advent you ask?

The Advent season is a time of preparation that directs our hearts and minds to Christ’s second coming at the end of time and also to the anniversary of the Lord’s birth on Christmas. The final days of Advent, from December 17 to December 24, focus particularly on our preparation for the celebrations of the Nativity of our Lord (Christmas). From USCCB.org check it out.

So instead of busing ourselves with things that wont last, lets focus on the coming of Jesus.  lets open our hearts and be ready, for we do not know when Christ will come, so stay alert, awake and ready, “….So too, you also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Sunday 27th Gospel Reading Mt 24:37-44.

Every week of Advent will have a theme, this weeks theme is Hope.  Lets Hope for all that is good and holy.  Lets Hope for our readiness for Christ  Lets Hope for all our family and friends to come to the fullness of the knowledge of God and his blessing upon them.  Hope is not a passive thing it has to be active in our lives, we need to unite ourselves with Christ, our will with His.  Pray more, give more, and love more than you every have before.

Have a Joyful Advent season in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah, Jesus.

Advocating (Voting) for Evil?

There are many evils that people want you to agree with them about, and will try to brush it off as not important but point to other issues that you should think are more important.  Abortion is EVIL in that it advocates the killing of children(innocent children) in the womb of their mother, which should be the safest place for a any child.  If you do not know what Abortion is then go find out, but in a nutshell it is the removal of a living child from inside the womb in order to end the pregnancy, by either tearing the infant piece by piece or chemically destroying the child forcing the delivery of the dead child.  Killing of an innocent person is EVIL.  Now we come to advocating for a greater evil, which is Partial Birth Abortion!  Many will not understand or want to know what that term means.  If you claim ignorance of the subject then go find out what it is, but do not stay in your ignorance just to satisfy you decisions.  Partial Birth Abortion happens at the late stages of pregnancy, also referred to as late term Continue reading “Advocating (Voting) for Evil?”

A Spring of Water Welling up to Eternal Life

A reflection on John 4:5-45 by Eli Maroun Arnaout

This last week I was thinking about this passage and also was reading it with our (My Wife and I) Catechism class, which I then proceeded to give some insight on this passage.   In the process of doing that the Holy Spirit inspired me with a few thoughts, and now I am going to try to articulate these thoughts on to paper.  It was six days later (March 28, 2011) while I was laying in bed thinking about Jesus and was just about ready to fall asleep that this passage came back to my mind.  I could not stop thinking about it, and all the thoughts started flooding in and the Holy Spirit urged me to get out of bed and start typing, and it is about 11:30pm.

I will list the part of the Gospel and then put my reflection down after it, some (or most) of the reflection may not be entirely mine, I have been reading a lot of scripture and about scripture for the last 7 years, and the Gospels have been around for almost two thousand years, and there have been greater men and women then I, who have commented on this passage of scripture, but alas I must write this down or I will not be able to go back to bed, in the hopes of finally falling asleep.

“Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.”   In our Journey back to God we always have the assumption that we are growing or moving close to Him, but in fact He comes to us.  As we look at the Gospels as a whole we see that over and over again, and not only does He just come a little way to meet with us, but comes from heaven to dwell among us.  So in coming to us, He comes to a place that we are familiar with, not a strange or out of place setting, but a place that we might be secure in, a place we can touch and feel, as was the stable in Bethlehem. Continue reading “A Spring of Water Welling up to Eternal Life”