4th Sunday of Advent
Is there one this year?
There are only 3 weeks of Advent in 2006. Tough luck for the collection basket as the 4th Sunday is folded into Christmas Eve and the 4th week altogether completely dropped from the calendar!
I could have used that 4th week, and some. Pre-Christmas rush is even worth this year, isn’t it? Shopping, cooking, with enough planning I can manage. But those dreadful Xmas cards? No time to send them before Christmas, they do become New Year Greetings, but then the card design and message are all wrong. So in the end nothing goes out and I start the year with guilt.
The tempo of the liturgy for the days preceding the 25th also is accelerating. There is an urgency to make it all happen, now. I love those ‘O’ antiphons which begin on the 17th of December:
Each day’s mass begins with a different one. I got this version from Joan Chittister: Life Is for Living, Advent Reflections
O Wisdom, Come teach us the way of prudence
O Adonai, Come with outstretched arms and teach us
O Root of Jesse, Come do not delay, deliver us
O Key of David, Come lead prisoners caught in darkness
O Dayspring, Come disperse the gloomy clouds of night
O Ruler of Nations, Come and open hearts to one another
O Emmanuel, Come be born in us, God of Life
Yes, the winter, the war, misery for so many people, God, may your reign come, now.
