I have begun to read the local paper on line, but last Sunday someone left the Tribune behind after the 9:00 am Mass.  It was nice to see the paper’s fresh face … but what surprised me most was the sheer wait of the stuffed advertising supplements.  I guess I had forgotten.  Now everyone has a right to make a living, but as a preacher I’ve noticed that if I’m looking for a lot of positive comments, the one theme I need to address is “inner emptiness and exhaustion.”  Speaking of how overwhelmed and wrung-out people feel gets a congregation very quiet, because everyone is feeling that they are being addressed.  There was time (before the invention of electric lights) when the coming of winter in this part of the world meant cutting back, working less, and hanging out more.  It was the colder weather and the growing darkness that made that necessary.  Now we just bull our way through.  I don’t think we are healthier for it.

The Church’s season of Advent that begins this next Saturday night, of course, is far from being the only game in town for the next four weeks (well, three weeks and four days).  It’s also time for the economic juggernaut those who keep their eye on the GNP call “the Holidays.”  Now these two—Advent and the Holidays—need not be in conflict … but they don’t automatically live peaceably under one roof either.  Now is the time to consider how things fared for you last December.  Were Advent and the Holidays good partners in 2007, or did one end up smothering the other?  Was there just too much running around, too many sleepless nights, and too many crabby hostesses and hosts?  If so, it sounds like you need to make some decisions now … or you may end up, once again, missing The Guest whom we believers say is the purpose of the season (and, our lives).

Again this year we will offer some seasonal encouragements—a couple devotional take homes, Sunday worship aimed to make us open and thoughtful, and about one special “Advent-Christmas” event a week: a holy day on December 8^th, an Advent Service of Lessons and Carols on the 15^th, and opportunities for Advent sacramental reconciliation on the 17^th and 22^nd).  All the same, perhaps our best gift to you for the season will be to cut back our calendar of regular parish meetings and studies (as helpful and necessary as they otherwise are).  Our point is not to get out of your way so you can get to the Mall more quickly, but to do a little “time-management” modeling for you.  Make room, make room, make room.  Only the best things will feed your hungers.