It's good to be back after a two-month sabbatical. I'm ever grateful to Father Michael Driscoll for "holding down the fort" while I was gone, and for his willingness to do so immediately after having just "retired" from his own previous pastorate. I'm also grateful to you and all of our fine staff, including Father Ridore, who welcomed Father Driscoll and worked along with him and his ever-fluctuating personal schedule. I sure appreciate the fine pastoral care and weekly liturgical information that he expertly provided us. I'm also grateful for your warm welcome upon my return home. You have been in my thoughts and prayers constantly. Since we are entering a new liturgical year with the beginning of another Advent, it's a good time for me to be returning home to our parish.

From our earliest training in the teachings of our Catholic Faith, we know that Advent is a time of waiting and a time of welcoming. First of all, we await the coming of Christmas, and the coming of Christ - both now, and at the moment of our passing from this life. The most recent readings of the Sunday Masses have been focused on this aspect of the life to come. Will it be a life with Christ or without Him? The answer will be indicated by the way we have been living out our life on earth. Some people have been so focused on anything other than Christ that it will almost take a miracle to bring them back to the reality of why they exist in this life in the first place. Maybe that miracle will be brought about by the way we live out our Faith in their presence. Many such miracles have been recorded that have occurred in a similar fashion. Surely, we can make the difference in the lives of others just as Christ has made a difference in our life. Advent should help us to refocus our attention on Christ and His coming into the world, both in past history and in the time yet to come. It challenges us, once again, to place ourselves in loving proximity to His call to return to Him and adhere to His message. That's why this is a season to prepare for Christmas, to prepare for the coming of Christ, and not to follow the secular and commercial messages of celebrating Christ's birth before its proper time. We live in joyful anticipation of His coming, and when He does come, we will be ready to meet Him. But Satan will subtly be pushing us in a contradictory vein, with anything and everything he has, to avoid the true spirit of Advent preparation, and to go "gung-ho" into the Christmas season without contemplating the real reason that Christ has come into our world: to save us --from ourselves, and from the power of the Evil One! This year, we also welcome the new updates in the English translations of the liturgy applicable to the Catholic Church in our country. We hope that, with due patience and an openness to the changes that are taking place this weekend, we will experience an uplifting of our spirits and minds to the Lord in the Eucharistic celebrations that are to come. Change is not always easy nor agreeable to our comfortable system of living out our daily activity. That's why we need patience in implementing any new changes, including those in the Liturgy. The best way to accept needed changes is with an openness to the possibilities for the good it can produce that will be beneficial to our entire person (or at least a good part of it!). Fighting the inevitable will sap us of the energy we need to make needed transitions.

As Father Driscoll wrote in his column, these liturgical changes will affect the priest celebrant far more than the members of the congregation. So, I've been using some of my sabbatical time to study these changes, and hope to bring about as smooth a transition as possible; that's why I mentioned that we need patience and openness. It will also continue to require of all of us greater attention to the roles we now have, and the increased participation we must undertake to bring about the best liturgies possible. That's no small task on your part or that of the priest-celebrant. Hopefully, the musical and textual adaptations will appear on our "drop-down" screens with few, if any, glitches. Again, patience will be required. Likewise, the new missalettes should prove to be an additional aid to our learning process.

Finally, I ask you to keep Father Driscoll in your prayers, for he recently received word that the cancer he had overcome on one side of his face a few years ago has now occurred on the other, and he will be undergoing treatments again with his previous specialists in Boston. With the continued shortage of good priests in this country, we need to beseech the Lord not only to send out more good laborers to His harvest, but also to preserve the good ones He has. So continue to ask the Lord to strengthen the shepherds He has sent to care for His flock, in numbers, health and leadership qualities. God bless you!

Very Rev. Canon Tom