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Since moving to Connecticut, I’ve grown to appreciate the seasons even more than when I lived in Virginia. Sure, northern Virginia has four distinct seasons, but they somehow seem more distinct here, the transitions between them sharper, clearer. And just as the natural seasons are more defined here, so are the liturgical seasons more clearly defined this year — the year of the everything unprecedented. It’s not the same old Advent come again. It’s new.
Long months of the vicious COVID-19 pandemic preceded the arrival of this year’s Advent season leading to Christmas. Neither Advent nor Christmas in 2020 will escape the pandemic’s shadow.
SAO PAULO — A Brazilian nun who has moved into the finals of a TV cooking show said she received “divine help” and prayed the entire time she was cooking.
Israeli police arrested a Jewish man after he allegedly threw a firebomb inside the Basilica of All Nations at Gethsemane Church on the Mount of Olives Dec. 4.
It was early on Saturday morning, and daylight was still a long way off. The moon was a melancholy half-circle in the night sky overhead, and chill gusts of wind carried shreds of cloud over the silhouettes of gently tossing trees. Fifty yards away, the trailhead was marked by a rickety gate and a sign. Looking around the gravel lot, I saw only dark and empty cars outlined against the shadow of the alpine forest. We were all alone.
We could be forgiven this Advent for slipping into a mindset of “waiting” for Christmas — for counting down to the Big Day. After all, this year has felt like one long wait: for shelves to be restocked, for schools and offices to reopen, for a vaccine ... and a return to “normal.”
Here is a short primer on the prayer to pray during the second week of Advent, and how to light the candles on an Advent wreath.
VATICAN CITY -- Remembering the three U.S. religious women and a laywoman brutally murdered during El Salvador's civil war, Pope Francis hailed them as examples of faith and missionary discipleship.
MEXICO CITY — José Rico normally participates in an annual pilgrimage, walking from a suburb northeast of Mexico City to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, arriving late on the eve of the Dec. 12 feast, when millions gather to serenade the national patroness.
Single-minded devotion
This second week of Advent draws up before our eyes the vision of John the Baptist, mighty in word and deed, the great Forerunner of the Messiah. Mark’s Gospel paints for us an evocative picture of this desert-dwelling man, dressed in camel hair, living on locusts and honey, and proclaiming repentance. What do these details tell us about John the Baptist, and why is he so important for us, even today?