As usual, the great Season of Advent begins, not by talking about Christmas, but about the Second Coming. We have had this theme already for the past two weeks, but there is a slight change of emphasis in the Scripture readings offered for this Sunday: here the tone is positive: it is the “promise” of what is to come that we contemplate. Even in the Gospel, though it talks of the dreadful signs that mark the end times, we hear of a promise - “liberation”. For this we should stand erect and hold our heads high. The central theme is that we welcome the coming of a person - Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, and this is what links this Sunday to the coming feast of his birth: we are now preparing to celebrate how he once came: may these preparations also help us to prepare for him when he comes again.
Let us pray for the people of the parishes of the Holy Family and Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Blackburn, and for Fr. Gerard Barry, their parish priest. We pray for the Teaching Sisters of St. Dorothy, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts, and for the Diocesan Chaplaincy to Travelling People, as well as for the parish primary schools, Our Lady and St. John’s College, the East Lancashire Hospice and the Royal Blackburn Hospital.