“If there’s an appropriate word with which to center ourselves in this new church year and season of Advent, it’s this one: watch,” says PreparetheWord scripture commentator Alice Camille in “Exploring the Word” this Sunday. The Central Intelligence Agency’s espionage division . . .

Saint Paul promises the church at Corinth that God “will keep you firm to the end.” Rather than reach a compromise and see their mandate to completion, Republicans and Democrats on the special committee of the U.S. Congress assigned to come up with $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts . . .

This first Sunday of Advent we begin the joyful task of preparing for the Nativity, the birth of the Christ-child into the world. Yet as a nation are we really happy? Researchers are beginning to study the elusive quality of well-being, and they say “gross national happiness” is a more important measure . . .

“Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways?” grieves the prophet in this Sunday’s reading from the Book of Isaiah. Egyptian citizens, deeply suspicious that the military is trying to hold onto the power it has held since mass protests unseated President Hosni Mubarak in February, have taken to the streets this week . . .

“The task of any religion is not to teach us who we are entitled to hate, but who we are required to love.”

About 42.5 million people are expected to travel this Thanksgiving, the highest number since the start of the recession and despite an average 20 percent increase in travel costs.