Before we step into Advent, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for the incredible generosity of our community in donating turkeys to support local families in need. Thanks to Rose Mary Becker and the St. Vincent de Paul team, along with Melissa and Brian Moody who coordinated the Turkey Bingo event, we were able to support St. Martin Parish in Sunnyvale and Christ the King Parish in San Jose, each serving more than 120 families for Thanksgiving. What a beautiful witness of our parish’s generous heart!
Thank you to everyone who joined us for Thanksgiving Day Mass. Thank you for beginning this season of gratitude by offering praise and thanks to God together. And now as we ready our hearts for Advent, I’m deeply grateful to Clare, Ana, and their amazing team of volunteers who coordinated a wonderful Advent Wreath and Ornament Making last Sunday so that we could make Advent wreaths and special ornaments. Thank you for helping us prepare for this sacred season.
This weekend, as we enter the First Sunday of Advent and begin a new liturgical year (Cycle A), I’m excited to share that next Saturday, December 6, we will gather for our Christmas Tree Lighting and Christmas Concert, “Joy Awaits”. We will begin with 5PM Mass, followed by the 6PM tree lighting and dinner and our 7PM Christmas concert with John Angotti and his band! This will be a beautiful way for us to deepen our Advent journey and prepare our hearts with music, light, and joy. This is a free event, please invite your family and friends and if you’d like to stay for dinner, please RSVP so we can plan the food HERE.
As you come to Mass this weekend, you may notice a few changes. The lights in the church will be dim, inviting a quieter, more contemplative spirit, and we ask everyone to remain seated for the Gathering Rite. Our gathering song is a call-and-response prayer, and your voice is an integral part of the liturgy so please join in as we begin each Mass together.
We are now in the sacred season of waiting, and you’ll notice something beautiful and intentional in our worship space: the color blue. While purple has traditionally been used during Advent, we are embracing the ancient practice of using blue—a color that specifically emphasizes joyful expectation and hopeful waiting for Christ’s coming at Christmas. Blue reminds us that Advent is not primarily a penitential season like Lent, but rather a season of anticipation, wonder, and hope.
It’s the color of the pre-dawn sky, when darkness begins to give way to light. It’s the color of Mary’s mantle, under which we seek refuge as we await the birth of her Son. Let this blue remind us throughout these four weeks that we are a people who wait with hope, who watch with expectation, and who trust that Christ is coming.
We enter Advent with Jesus’ urgent words ringing in our ears: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.” It’s a call to vigilance, to active waiting, to attentiveness. Yet how can we possibly stay awake when so many of us are running on empty, exhausted by what I call “hurry sickness”?
We live in a culture of chronic busyness. Our calendars overflow and seem to get even busier in the run up to Christmas. Our minds race from one task to the next. We rush through meals, speed past conversations, and collapse into bed only to wake up and do it all again. And here’s the paradox: many of the things keeping us busy are genuinely good things—work that matters, people we love, causes we care about. I, too, find myself caught up in this busyness. But even good things, when they consume us completely, can leave us spiritually depleted, unable to hear the still, small voice of God.
I understand, it is hard to slow down and when we do, we’re confronted with an even more daunting reality: the to-do list that never ends. The real challenge isn’t completing the list; it’s discerning the priorities. What if one of our key priorities this Advent was simply to maintain awareness of God’s presence—even in the midst of the busyness? What if, instead of waiting for the storm to pass, we learned to find the stillness within it—the eye of the storm, where there is quiet and peace even as chaos swirls around us?
Many years ago, I made a commitment to the Lord that no matter how busy my day becomes, I will always give Him time in prayer. This daily practice has become my anchor, my stillness in the storm. I don’t wait for life to slow down before I pray; I pray in the midst of the fullness. And it is precisely in that mindfulness—that deliberate pause to be present to God—that I find rest, beauty, and even joy.
This is what Jesus means when He tells us to “stay awake.” He’s not asking us to be anxious or hypervigilant. He’s inviting us to be present—to the moment, to one another, to Him. Active waiting means choosing awareness over autopilot, presence over distraction, gratitude over complaint.
To help us live this more fully, I invite you to a new Advent retreat series that I will be giving “Finding Joy.” We’ll gather on Tuesday evenings – December 2, 9, and 16, at 7PM in the Church for 75 minutes of respite, reflection, and renewal. In this first session, Joy As Presence, we’ll explore how joy can be found simply by being present to our current reality. This doesn’t require adding one more thing to our to-do list. In fact, it’s the opposite—it’s about learning to pause in the midst of our busyness and offer ourselves a moment of stillness, a gift of respite in the middle of the storm.
If we can come together and learn just one or two new skills for staying awake and present each day, this Advent will become a true preparation for the joy that awaits us at Christmas. We’ll practice mindfulness, prayer, and presence—not as burdens, but as pathways to peace.
The beauty of Advent is that it begins with thanksgiving and moves us toward joy. Our Thanksgiving celebration naturally flows into this season of waiting. But we are called to wait actively—with thanksgiving in our hearts, with gentle awareness, with a willingness to slow down and notice where God is already at work in our lives.
So this Advent, I invite you: Don’t wait for the storm to pass. Look for the stillness within it. Don’t wait until life slows down to pray. Pray now, in the midst of it all. And above all, stay awake, not anxiously, but attentively, to the God who is coming, who is here, and who waits for us to simply notice.
Come join us on Tuesday evenings. Let’s journey together into the joy that awaits.
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan