FROM THE PASTOR'S DESK……

December 7, 2003

Dear Fellow Parishioners,

Americans don't like waiting!  Grocery stores have developed the slogan: "Three's A Crowd" and hurry to open another check out stand so as not to keep the customers waiting.  Banks advertize that their tellers don't take lunch until after the lunch-break crowd of depositors have gone back to work so that their customers don't have to wait so long in line.

Why do Americans abhor waiting?  Could it be that many of us see waiting as unproductive and a veritable waste of our precious time?  Waiting doesn't necessarily always have to be like that!  The season of Advent is a time for waiting --- but a kind of waiting that is active and productive.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, models for us how we should spend Advent.  She spent the first Advent more than two thousand years ago waiting for her son to be born.  What did Mary do during that time of waiting?  In his Gospel, St. Luke tells us that when Mary learned from the Angel Gabriel that her cousin Elizabeth was also pregnant, she dropped everything and went to stay with her.  Mary's visit brought great joy to Elizabeth as well as her yet unborn child, John the Baptist (see Luke 1: 39-56).  Do you ever wonder what Mary did while she was with Elizabeth?  She probably helped Elizabeth with the laundry, house cleaning, cooking, and just being present to listen to Elizabeth when she wanted to talk to someone.  Simple things but important, too!  That's why we celebrate Mary twice this coming week on December 8th as we celebrate her Immaculate Conception, and then again on December 12th as the Virgin of Guadalupe who brought a mess age of hope to Aztec people devastated by war in Mexico in 1531.  Mary is our guide for the Advent journey.  Like Mary, we need to spend this Advent in an active and productive way.

This is why we are in the process of renewing our Sunday Liturgy during this Advent season.  Our goal is to attain what Cardinal Roger Mahony in his pastoral letter titled "GATHER FAITHFULLY TOGETHER"  calls "full, conscious, & active participation" by all of us at Sunday Mass.  The past two weeks, I've explained what he means by the words "full" and "conscious."  Today, I'd like to key in on the word "active."  Cardinal Mahony says: "Active is the third quality of the Baptized person's participation.  Please do not see 'active' as the opposite of 'contemplative.'  Some of our activity in liturgy is contemplation.  'Active' participation calls us to attend to others, to a kind of presence." (Page 10, paragraphs 96 & 97.)  We must be present to each other and present to what is happening outside the walls of the church before, during, and after Sunday Mass.  Sounds a lot like what Mary did that first Advent, don't you think?

Sincerely yours in Christ.

Fr. Ray Tintle, OFM
Pastor