During Advent, Celebrating Service and Preparing Our Hearts for Christ

Dic

2025

Recognizing the Faithful Service of the Marian Medal Recipients

As we gathered for this year’s Marian Medal celebration last Sunday, I shared a tremendous and deep sense of gratitude in the days following Thanksgiving. During the ceremony, we recognized parishioners whose faithful and generous service strengthens our Church and Diocese in so many unique and important ways. I thanked the honorees for the quiet and consistent ways they bless their parishes, and for their kindness that reflects exactly what St. Paul speaks of in the Scriptures: prayer, gratitude, gentleness, and love made visible. I wanted them to know that their service has not gone unnoticed and that it inspires others to serve with the same spirit of generosity and love.

Please click here to read the complete list of the 2025 Marian Award recipients.

I also invited everyone to view this celebration through the lens of the First Sunday of Advent, a season that calls us to awaken to hope. We live in a world that has succumbed to division, violence, and uncertainty. Many wonder where hope can be found amid such darkness. As St. Paul reminds us, “hope does not disappoint, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Advent urges us to stay awake, to recognize the signs of God’s presence, and to welcome the light of Christ already breaking into the world.

As we honored this year’s Marian Medal recipients, who were nominated by their pastors for their outstanding service, I encouraged them, and all of us, to persevere in kindness, charity, and faith. Advent is a reminder that despair never endures. While we wait for the birth of the Christ-child, let us bring joy, to lift up others, and to let Christ’s light shine through our actions. We must never lose hope, never lose faith, and never allow the darkness to smother the light God has placed in our heart.

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

“No sin would touch her, so that she would be a fitting and worthy vessel of the Son of God. The Immaculate Conception does not refer to the virginal conception and the birth of Christ, but rather to Mary’s being conceived without inheriting Original Sin.” (United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, 142-143)

On Monday, December 8, we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation when we pause to honor Mary, who was chosen by God to become the mother of our Savior. This feast day reminds us of God’s great love for us, who prepared the way for His Son. Mary’s “yes” to God is a reminder of our faith, humility, and trust in God. As we look to the Blessed Mother during this Advent season, may we open our lives more fully to God and to what we are being called, just as Mary did.

The Second Week of Advent is Upon Us

This week, we continue the reflections offered by the Deans of the Diocese, which began with Christ the King and will conclude on the last Sunday of Advent. Fr. Riley Williams provided a reflection to begin the series, and last week, Fr. Thomas Washburn offered a reflection on the first Sunday of Advent and the start of a new Liturgical year for the Church. Below, Fr. Christopher Peschel reflects on the second Sunday of Advent. I am grateful to our Deans who work tirelessly to support their brother priests and also the pastoral support they offer to their parishioners.

Walking with John the Baptist on Our Advent Journey

Every year, on the second Sunday of Advent, one of the famous characters of this season makes his annual appearance. John the Baptist, the obscure distant cousin of our Lord Jesus appears in the Gospel story to point out to us and remind us that our Savior, and more importantly, Salvation itself, is coming.

Earlier this year, I was prompted to move a historic stained glass window of John the Baptist from the former church of St. John the Baptist in New Bedford into the Baptistry area of my parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. What struck me so much in the window, which has so much beautiful imagery, is that the central figure is not John, but Christ. John the Baptist exists to point us to Christ.

The popular Advent hymn, likely sung in many parishes across the diocese this Sunday, “On Jordan’s Bank,” tells us that John the Baptist announces that “The Lord is near, be awake, hearken!” These repeated calls to prepare ourselves for an encounter with the coming Messiah urge us to renew in our own hearts and Souls the very nature of repentance, renewal, and change of life, that John the Baptist was known for preaching and bringing about through baptism.

For us Christians, Sacramental Baptism radically changed our lives. It infused to our soul a Sanctifying grace that not only rid us of sin, but immediately joined us to the family of God as beloved sons and daughters. Our Baptism serves as a foundation for the entirety of our life of faith, which ultimately seeks day after day to rid our lives of sin and turn us toward repentance, drawing us more and more to Christ in that common sonship through Baptism. For many of us, Baptized as infants, that Sacramental moment was decades ago, yet Baptism, and the repentance of life that it calls us to, is something we are charged with living out for the rest of our lives. Why do you think John the Baptist gave such a hard time to the Pharisees and Sadducees in today’s Gospel? It wasn’t just about having one more communitarian symbolic activity to check off in the course of life, but rather about a moment of encounter with the Divine that changes us forever.

For us, repentance to prepare the way for the Messiah and the encounter with him in our hearts and souls might look more like cleansing the soul from sin in the confessional, or taking upon ourselves a devotional practice or work that brings us closer to the Lord. Remember, repentance might begin with a penance of some sort, but the goal is to strengthen our bonds with our Lord and God, and to prepare for what is to come. If John the Baptist exists to point us to Christ, then Baptism (and by extension all the Sacraments of the Church) exist to point us to Heaven!

May this Advent be a time for us to look within, as so many other things are prepared externally with decorations, gifts, food, and the like. Let us look within! Let us not forget the preparation of our own hearts and souls for the beautiful encounter with the Lord that has already happened and that is still to come!