How are you doing with the Advent Conspiracy?  I am finding the prayer card helpful. On Sunday after the Masses I drop the collection into the night deposit at the bank and there was a person in front of the drive through that was out of their car and trying to work the ATM with little success.  So, guess what, I had to “wait!”  As I was there I decided, instead of getting anxious at waiting, I took out the prayer card and as soon as I was done praying, the lady got back into her car with her cash and was happily on her way.  I realized the opportunity the card offered me to realize “Emmanuel-God is with us!” 

Last weekend on the Feast of Christ the King of the Universe I introduced the “Advent Conspiracy.”  We are planting the seeds to enter more fully in the days, weeks, months and years ahead the ways Christmas, and we as Christians can change the world.

With hearts filled with Thanksgiving, and bellies filled with turkey we join in celebrating the Feast of Christ the King.  Yet, for many Catholics who commemorate the Feast, it is just one more celebration which we go through every year at this time. It becomes “another thing” happening in our very busy schedules that overwhelms us so that we can’t wait for the holiday season to be over.

Stewardship is certainly in action here at Sacred Heart.  Many of you have commented on how great the trees surrounding the parking lot look.  The branches were getting very low and needed major pruning.  The cost was overwhelming.  However due to the pooling of time and talents the work was all taken care of at no charge.  Ernie Chaplin got the ball rolling and things started happening.  Tony Claro secured access to a bucket truck to get the branches down around the parking lot and Ernie made a call to Dana Wilson who owns “Bump Your Stump.”  Dana, who is not a parishioner, came with his woodchipper for the whole day and chopped up all the branches with the help, and strength of time of Bob Maconochie, Bill Parent, Gerald Maurais, Rob Russell and Ernie.  A job that would have cost $10,000.00 was taken care of through the stewardship of time and talent! 

This Veterans Day is no ordinary celebration in honor of all Veterans.  It is one-hundred years ago on the eleventh day, the eleventh month at the eleventh hour in 1918 that the Armistice was signed between the allies and Germany bringing the end of the World War.  Of course, it wasn’t called World War I because they did not know that twenty years later there would be an ever greater war than the first.  The British called it “The Great War.”  In the United States, before we entered the war we called it “The European War.”  France called it “La Der des Ders” “The last of the Last (Wars).”  Once the U.S. entered the war we began to call it a World War.  Woodrow Wilson in 1919 on the first anniversary referred to World War I as the “The War to end all wars.”  Little did we know human nature.