Reset

We have arrived at the third week of Advent, our season of preparation for the coming of Christ a humble child. Again, I wanted to remind everyone to not get tired of Christmas before Christmas actually gets here. The Christmas season runs from Christmas Eve until the feast of the Epiphany and it is a wonderful time to remember Christ coming into our lives.

With that, as we continue the Advent season it is a time to prepare. I am sure that many of you are preparing for the coming of Christmas, children tend to try and act a little bit better hoping for a better gift, we are running around getting gifts, or ordering them online (please remember local businesses as well,) we are cleaning the house preparing for the friends and family coming, and so many other things. I wanted to remind all of us that while it is great to prepare for all of these material things of Christmas, it is also important to prepare our hearts for the celebration of the coming of our savior. This is why we offer more confession times in the seasons of Advent and Lent. Confession is a wonderful way to, as John the Baptist says, make straight the way of the Lord in our hearts.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind us all what confession is for and what it is not for. First of all, it is not the time to vent or tell the sins that our spouse, kids, in-laws, or anyone else have done, but those things that WE have done. Also, leave the buts out of it, we are good at making excuses about why we do things, or justifying our actions, but this is not the time, just say those things that we are sorry for. The sacrament of Reconciliation is a great one in which we get to push that reset button in our spiritual lives. We get to reset our lives back to that of Baptism. During this time, we are also continuing to celebrate this sacrament with our second graders for the first time. The sacrament of confession is a great way to unload that sin and guilt that we are carrying around. I sometimes hear that people do not want to confess because it is embarrassing, but it is better to let out that sin rather than to hold it in. I sometimes tell people who talk about Confession being embarrassing, that it should be more embarrassing to do the sin, than to confess it. Our sin is an extra burden that we do not need to carry around, we simply need to let them go and to continue to work on our lives so that we can continually draw ourselves closer to God. Remember, the Father sent his Son, our Lord and Savior for the forgiveness of sins. So, just as we are preparing our homes for Christmas, remember to prepare our hearts as well.

God bless,
Fr. Ken