Deacon Sean Smith challenges us to hope for a Brown Christmas instead of a white one. You can listen here.

In yesterday’s homily I spoke about the need for deepening our life of prayer and suggested a few ways we can use the new missal to aid us in that task. You can listen here.

[AC] Promo 2011 – International Justice Mission from Advent Conspiracy on Vimeo.

Here we are once again at the season of Advent. Advent is a time for preparation, and perhaps most of all for conspiracy. The past three years I have attempted to enter the story of Christmas by taking time during the season of Advent to Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More and Love All. Watch the updated video and consider this way of preparing to welcome our savior this year.

After a long break, Jim Wogan and I step back up to the microphones in order to promote St. Thomas’ Advent Conspiracy. You can listen here.

This Sunday our parish entered its second week of the Advent Conspiracy. This particular conspiracy is meant to challenge us to prepare our hearts to welcome Jesus this coming Christmas by Worshiping Fully, Spending Less, Giving More & Loving All. The primary goal during this second week is to spend less. The creators of the Advent Conspiracy continue to remind us that Americans spend 450 billion dollars each year on Christmas, that’s right, 450 billion dollars! The good news is that we can choose to spend less, and by spending less we will be able to give more to some things that we Christians should consider highly valuable. We can give money to promote life around our planet. The estimated cost to provide clean water to every person on earth is 10 billion dollars. The Advent Conspiracy is suggesting we spend less than normal so as to have the resources to give a gift to God through our brothers and sisters around the world that will have an significant meaning for years to come.

There is a wider sense of spending less, however. What better way to prepare for Christmas than to spend less time doing the normal things that distract us from our family & friends, from our worship, from the things that really matter, and more time with those very things that give us life. The weeks leading up to Christmas are often some of the most hectic of the entire year. Why not spend less time engaging in all those things that scatter our energy in a million different directions, and focus our time on the things that matter most to us? It is a radical idea to conspire against the forces of the world in order to make room for Christ, but that is what we profess as Christians after all. I hope you will join us in this conspiracy that calls us not to surrender our faith this Christmas season, but to make it the very heart of our celebration.

This first week of our Advent Conspiracy we are given the challenge to worship fully. Might I suggest the advice of the prophet Isaiah.

Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; Tell my people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins.
They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways, Like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the law of their God; They ask me to declare what is due them, pleased to gain access to God.
“Why do we fast, and you do not see it? afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?” Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers.
Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw. Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!
Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed, and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am! If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land. He will renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails.
The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake, and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up; “Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you, “Restorer of ruined homesteads.”
If you hold back your foot on the sabbath from following your own pursuits on my holy day; If you call the sabbath a delight, and the LORD’S holy day honorable; If you honor it by not following your ways, seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice–
Then you shall delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will nourish you with the heritage of Jacob, your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 58:1-14)

Christmas, Christ & Cholera. Which one of these doesn’t belong? That is the theme for this year’s Advent Conspiracy at St. Thomas the Apostle. Here is my invitation to the readers of this blog to embrace the four themes of the Advent Conspiracy and enter the story of Christmas by helping to provide clean water to the people of Haiti. If you are interested in joining our efforts please contact me for more information.