The Immaculate Conception
Dear Fellow Parishioners of Our Lady of Divine Providence Family of Parishes,
Happy Advent! This week we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Holy Day ofObligation. After the feast day, I will be on retreat this week, praying for the parishes and for our future. Every priest is required by Canon Law to take a retreat every year. Originally my retreat was scheduled for earlier in the year, but it had to be moved for a variety of reasons. It works out, because Advent is a beautiful time to spend in silent reflection. Please keep me in your prayers and be sure of my prayers for you! This week the committee for discerning the Mass schedule will be making their final schedule selections, and we will communicate the new schedule as soon as possible so stay tuned for that! Please also keep them in your prayers!
Advent is a season for preparing for Jesus’ coming, and as busy as this time of year usually is, it is always possible to remain peaceful and recollected if we give our full attention to the present moment and try to respond to each moment in a way that brings out the best in us. That is a good way to open our hearts to the presence of God and imitate Mary in her daily life. For your Advent reflection today, I suggest that you meditate upon these words of Pope Benedict XVI:
This is something we should indeed learn on the day of the Immaculate Conception: the person who abandons himself totally in God's hands does not become God's puppet, a boring "yes man"; he does not lose his freedom. Only the person who entrusts himself totally to God finds true freedom, the great, creative immensity of the freedom of good.
The person who turns to God does not become smaller but greater, for through God and with God he becomes great, he becomes divine, he becomes truly himself.…
The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people. We see this in Mary. The fact that she is totally with God is the reason why she is so close to human beings.
For this reason she can be the Mother of every consolation and every help, a Mother whom anyone can dare to address in any kind of need in weakness and in sin, for she has understanding for everything and is for everyone the open power of creative goodness...
Mary thus stands before us as a sign of comfort, encouragement and hope. She turns to us, saying: "Have the courage to dare with God! Try it! Do not be afraid of him! Have the courage to risk with faith! Have the courage to risk with goodness! Have the courage to risk with a pure heart! Commit yourselves to God, then you will see that it is precisely by doing so that your life will become broad and light, not boring but filled with infinite surprises, for God's infinite goodness is never depleted!"…
[L]et us thank the Lord for the great sign of his goodness which he has given us in Mary, his Mother and the Mother of the Church. Let us pray to him to put Mary on our path like a light that also helps us to become a light and to carry this light into the nights of history. Amen. [Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI, Thursday, December 8, 2005]
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Henry Hoffmann
