Sunday Next Before Advent – 2016

Sunday Next Before Advent

The Collect

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded.

            As you’ll notice in the bulletin, today is called the Sunday Next Before Advent. In the coming weeks, we will prepare ourselves for the birth of Our Lord at Christmas. It is a penitential season; a time for us to search our minds and hearts and to admit our faults and cleanse our souls before Christ’s arrival.

          Today, as implied by the collect, is also known as “stir up” Sunday. Particularly in England, this Sunday is the day where people are reminded that it is time to prepare, to “stir up” all the ingredients for the annual Christmas pudding.

Now a Christmas pudding is a concoction of various fruits, spices, grains and suet guaranteed to clog arteries and forever cement England’s reputation for bad food. Be that as it may, a Christmas pudding benefits only from the loving care and attention of the cook, and from the maturation, or fermentation, of all the ingredients.

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded.

But “Stir-up” Sunday is a call for us to do more than just getting together the ingredients for a Christmas pudding. It is a call to do more than finish our Christmas shopping, or to make our holiday travel arrangements, or to get cards and letters written to friends and loved ones. This Sunday is a call for us to get prepared.

Now it might seem odd to talk about getting prepared when I just referred to Advent as a season of preparation. Prepare to get prepared? Sounds confusing, I know. But in this case, the season of Advent is, as I just said, a time for us to prepare for the coming of Our Lord. To do that properly, we must likewise prepare ourselves for that cleansing, that purification that comes with penitence.

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded Today is the time for us to assemble the ingredients of our faith. We bring together all those things that together make us Catholic Christians. Individually, these ingredients are all beneficial, but together, they result in a mixture that is rich in its fullness, and provides the ultimately satisfactory result.

We start, of course, with prayer. As faithful people of God, we know that it is through prayer that we open our hearts and minds to God. We know that it is through prayer that all our hopes are realized. We know that through the proper focus of our prayer, God will provide for us all that we need.

Next, we have the Sacraments. The most obvious is, of course, the Most Blessed Sacrament that we receive at the Mass. Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ is the most basic, the most essential ingredient of our Faith. When we “do this”, as Christ commanded, when we avail ourselves of His Grace, we are given the spiritual nourishment we need to remain constant in our Faith.

Next, we have the Sacrament of Penance. Receiving this Sacrament cleanses our hearts and souls. It purifies us, through the absolution that we are given, and wipes clean the stain of sin that messes up the recipe. It provides us with the opportunity to truly “come clean” with God and to proclaim anew our Faith.

Having brought together these two Sacraments, these ingredients, along with prayer, what then? Well, as any good cook will tell you, it is now time to combine them, to mix them together. To merge them in a way so as to make a new creation. That new creation is a new man. A new “us”.

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded You see, a Christmas pudding wasn’t completed on “stir-up Sunday”. This assembly and intermixing of ingredients is just the beginning. Remember, over the course of the month before Christmas, the concoction is allowed to mature and ferment. It “grows”, if you will, in flavor. What may look like a hastily assembled mess on this Sunday will, by Christmas Day, be a savory and fulfilling desert; The culmination of the efforts of the cook, and the final part of the celebrations of the day.

And so it is with our preparation as well. Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded Prayer, The Body and Blood of Christ, the Sacrament of Penance. When we combine them in our lives, we will have, of course, a fair mixture of some of the elements that make up our Faith. But when we allow them to grow within our hearts, when we allow them to ferment within our souls, when we carefully and consistently maintain them, they will produce within us that new creation; that ultimately fulfilled creation.

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded Remember too, that all these ingredients have been provided to us by God Himself. He gives us a way to speak to Him through our prayers. He gives us the strength we need to maintain our Faith through the Grace of the Blessed Sacrament. He gives us the means by which we can make ourselves clean through His Sacrament of Penance.

Now, as we approach the Advent season, it is up to us to assemble all these ingredients. It is time to combine them, to grow them by praying every day, to ferment them by taking every opportunity to receive the Blessed Sacrament whenever it is offered, and to earnestly confess our sins; to care lovingly for this whole mixture throughout this next month. It is time to stir-up all those elements of our Faith. And at the end of that month, having so done our part in following the recipe, we will be prepared to receive with joy that ultimate and most glorious reward; the coming of Christ Our Savior on Christmas Day.

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