The Season of Advent 2020

Today is the First Sunday of Advent

Year B, 29th November 2020

Stay awake!

During the four weeks of Advent, we prepare for the celebration of Christ’s birth through prayer and reflection. Amid the Christmas preparations, we look for practical ways to observe the holiness of the season in our everyday lives. (Follow our Advent calendar on our website https://www.spms.org/advent-2020 in preparation for Christmas. It can also be downloaded and printed.)

With Advent we mark the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year. Advent is a season of waiting with hopeful expectation. We look forward towards Christmas and the birth of Christ.

Advent is the time of opening ourselves to the risk of hope, and the power of the whole world in all its times, places, people and circumstances. We are asked to see this world as God sees, knows and loves it, with all its beauty and painful truth. The contemplation invites us to attend also to the response of one, small, unseen young woman in Nazareth. She is our teacher and guide in this Advent time. She is the one who can teach us how to listen deeply, contemplatively, and she is the one who can show us how to be open to the impossible thing that God does.

First Reading: Isaiah 63:16-17,64:1,3-8

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Gospel: Mark 13:33-37