Advent 2025

We begin a new church season this weekend as Advent launches our preparation for Christmas, our preparation for discipleship, a new manifestation of Jesus Christ, and the new and eternal Kingdom.  Those are the primary themes of the Gospel of Matthew that we will hear proclaimed during almost all of the coming year.

Discipleship could possibly be the most important theme of Matthew’s Gospel.  This means being a committed learner, follower, and imitator of Jesus who embodies his teachings and actively participates in his mission.  The stories in this Gospel challenge people to be students or apprentices dedicated to understanding and obeying all of Jesus’ commands.

This call to discipleship peaks in the great commission forty days after Jesus rises from the dead, the very end of the Gospel and the final words that Jesus speaks to the disciples.  Here,Jesus commissions the eleven disciples to commission others, all over the world and into eternity.  The disciples are clearly mandated to make other disciples all over the world.  Jesus says:

     “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father

      and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded

      you, and know that I am with you always until the end of the age.”

That is a tall order and quite frankly one that the disciples do not have the skill to do.  The story takes on an empowering nature ten days later, when on Pentecost they receive the gift of language from the Holy Spirit, enabling them to baptize ALL nations.

The second theme of the manifestation of Jesus Christ is clarified in the very first line of the Gospel:

     “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David and the Son of Abraham”

The primary audience of the gospel is the Jewish people, who will respect Jesus’ lineage in the great King David.

The third theme is Jesus’ proclamation of the new and eternal Kingdom. In the Gospel according to Matthew, the word Kingdom is used 53 times compared with 41 in Luke, 17 in Mark, and 5 in John.

For Matthew, the new and eternal city of Jerusalem and the new and eternal Kingdom of God are basically the same and ultimately come together in the manifestation of the earthly kingdom, the church, and the eternal kingdom of heaven.

May this Advent prepare us for discipleship, the manifestation of Jesus and embracing the Kingdom at hand and the Kingdom to come.

Thank You

I want to re-emphasize the all-parish effort in responding to the need for food donations that we here at Holy Family responded to last weekend.  We fed five times the number of people we normally do each month because so many of you stepped up.  Our Family Faith students, Academy students and so many others worked together to serve.

This weekend, so many of you also donated clothing to Neighbors in Need, another one of our Social Justice Partners, a relationship brokered by our Director of Human Concerns, Sue Geegan.

Here is a picture of some of our Holy Family Catholic Academy middle school students who worked hard to collect much-needed winter clothing.

For I was naked and you clothed me (Matthew 26:36)