Dear Friends and Benefactors,

As we begin the new ecclesiastical year let us take to heart the words of Saint Paul to the Romans "It is now the hour to rise from sleep." Indeed in order to prepare for our Lord’s coming at Christmas with the four weeks of Advent, just as God took some 4,000 years to prepare men for the Messiah, we need first of all to wake up. Many souls have fallen asleep because they neglect the things of God. They have fallen from their first fervor and need to be aroused to redoubled piety.

Nor is it enough only to "rise from sleep" but we must also prepare ourselves, taking our Lord’s warning to heart: "Let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands, and ye yourselves be like unto men who wait for their Lord!"

How then do we prepare ourselves during Advent for His coming? Firstly we can go back in thought to those four thousand years and reflect on the darkness and crime that filled the world before Christ’s first coming. This should not be too difficult for us to picture, given the present darkness and crime in today’s world. In the midst of this darkness the Light came from heaven and took to Himself human nature, experiencing all our miseries, excepting sin, to save us from death. From our misery we should cry to Him with confidence, with the same sentiments as the saints of the old Law did, for He still wishes us to beseech Him to save us.

Having done this we can then consider His coming into our own hearts. This coming is both sweet and mysterious. The Good Shepherd extends His solicitude to each one of His sheep, even to the hundredth that is lost. He knocks at the door of our hearts, at times loudly, at others very softly. He wishes to enter in and make us pleasing to our heavenly Father, which is only possible inasmuch as the Father sees Him within us. Our Lord deigns to enter and transform us into Himself, if we will but consent. This, in fact, is the aim and task God has given to His Church; to make man divine through Jesus Christ, as we see in Saint Paul’s words to the Galatians: "My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed within you!"

This coming is similar to His first, where He came as a weak infant before attaining to the fullness of the age of manhood. He is born into our souls and His growth progresses in us as long as we are faithful. A small number do live the life of Christ in all its plenitude, seeking always to increase His life within. Others, more numerous, have the life of Christ within but they do not care to grow in the divine life; their charity has grown cold. The rest have no part of this life in them, and are dead; for Christ has told us: "I am the Life."

Especially during this Advent season, let us prepare the way of the Lord. We must make straight the pathway by which Our Lord Jesus Christ may enter into our souls. We must purge out the old leaven by rooting out bad habits of thought, word or deed. We should examine whether we have been slothful or indifferent in our spiritual duties and duties of state. Are we, in fact, allowing Him to transform us into Himself?

With the beginning of a new Church year we have the opportunity to renew this life despite our past failings. God Himself desires it as we read in the book of Ezechiel "He desireth not the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted." We ourselves are all that stand in our way.