Advent is now here, and with the Season of Advent Christians are invited to ponder new beginnings. With Advent a new liturgical year begins in our Church. We are on a three year cycle of Sunday readings, and we refer to these as Year A, Year B, and Year C. We have just completed Year C, and with this Advent Season we begin Year A. Beginnings are always bitter-sweet. There is often a sense of sadness that some things come to an end, but there is also a kind of excitement for the possibilities that lay ahead. Perhaps this is how life must be, filled with a sense of tension in which we are invited to exist. I have been pondering these tensions that come with new beginnings as we finally made the move into the new rectory this past Friday. After many years of hard work, planning, working, and praying, we have come to a kind of end of this building project. I realize that there is still some work that will need to be done to correct deficiencies that are inevitable on a build of this scale, but the feeling that something has come to an end and something new has begun is definitely here. Every move is hard and in need of adjustments, patience, and flexibility. Also, every move is exciting, life-giving, and filled with new possibilities. Now that Fr. Luc, Fr. Francis, and I are living next to our Church once again, I am experiencing all of the above tensions. What will happen next only the good Lord knows, but I hope to remain both grateful for what has been accomplished and excited for what is still to come. The Season of Advent is an opportunity precisely because it is a new beginning. Our life of faith is not meant to be stagnant and overly-comfortable, but rather ever evolving and full of excitement for what the future can still teach us. May the Season of Advent be for all of us a sacred time of both endings and beginnings. Happy Advent my dear friends.
Fr. Wojtek Kuzma