In today’s Gospel Our Lord invites us to use the season of Advent to go beyond the routine tinsel, glitter, and blinking lights and welcome him into our hearts as the foundation on which we can build a holier\u00a0life. It’s easy to fall into a routine of “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings,” but all the decorations and celebrations are to welcome someone special into our life, or acknowledge what a special role he has already had; even “Merry Christmas” can focus more on the merriment and not on whose birth we’re welcoming and celebrating.<\/p>\n
When Our Lord invites us today to\u00a0go beyond lip service and seek to do the Father’s will, his incarnation and birth are an example of precisely that. He chose to become flesh and dwell among us, because he loved us and he loved Our Father. His life is built on that from here to eternity.<\/p>\n
Advent is a time of conversion, and conversion can also mean living a more solid life. Let’s continue to live Advent as a preparation for founding or re-founding our life on Our Lord on Christmas Day and beyond.<\/p>\n
Readings:\u00a0Isaiah 26:1\u20136;\u00a0Psalm 118:1, 8\u20139, 19\u201321, 25\u201327a;\u00a0Matthew 7:21, 24\u201327.<\/em> See also\u00a012th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In today’s Gospel Our Lord invites us to use the season of Advent to go beyond the routine tinsel, glitter, and blinking lights and welcome him into our hearts as the foundation on which we can build a holier\u00a0life. It’s easy to fall into a routine of “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings,” but all the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[119,120,10],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advent","tag-first-week","tag-thursday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-eZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":930,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions\/930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}