Luke becomes our guide in this blossoming new church year. Advent always brings an embarrassment of riches: hopeful expectation with Isaiah’s prophecies leading the way, nearly three weeks’ worth of saints and feasts, and the marvelous culmination of the Incarnation that presents the bold immanence of our God. God chooses to be with us: This is reason to rejoice!

In his final public address, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin said, “A dying person does not have time for the peripheral or the accidental. He or she is drawn to the essential, the important.”

Ask anyone what he or she would do if told that death is near, and chances are that person will have an answer for you. “Call my mother!” “Forgive my son.” “Spend all my money.” “Make peace with God.”

“It will seem like all hell has broken loose—sun, moon, stars, earth, sea, in an uproar and everyone all over the world in a panic, the wind knocked out of them by the threat of doom, the powers-that-be quaking.

No newspaper ads or fancy fliers, just big hand-painted paper signs in the windows printed by a friend down the street my dad paid to highlight the weekly “loss leader” items whose low prices would entice customers to come in, grab a cart (something new back then), and be tempted by the array of food set up to cause impulse shopping.

It had been a very difficult day at work, a day filled with anxieties and conflicts and much uncertainty. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. All I wanted to do was go home, lie on the couch, and watch TV. Maybe I’d pull a blanket up over my head and go to sleep.

It hadn’t been a good day—the computers shut down at work, and after hours on the phone with technical support, the problem still wasn’t solved. He closed the door of the office knowing that he would come back to the same problems Monday morning. He sat in rush hour traffic and considered the unrelenting stress in his life.

Look around. The so-called “signs of the season” are all around us. We cannot seem to escape them. It used to be the Saturday after Thanksgiving when Santa would appear in the department stores and the decorations would be put up and the lights turned on.

As we begin our preparation for the birth of the Lord, we ask God to forgive us for the times we have turned away from God.

See, days are coming . . . when I will raise up a righteous branch for David; as king he shall reign and govern wisely, he shall do what is just and right in the land.