AS ADVENT BEGINS ARCHBISHOP GOMEZ REMINDS FAITHFUL TO BE ‘AMAZED AT GOD’S LOVE FOR US’
November 27, 2024  |  By:   |  Press Releases  |  

Archbishop José H. Gomez shared his 2024 advent message this week in his column to the faithful of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles published biweekly in Angelus News. The column dedicated to commencing the Advent Season — which begins on Sunday, December 1, and encompasses the four Sundays leading up to the celebration of Christmas — is available in English (https://angelusnews.com/voices/gomez-love-advent-2024/) and Spanish (https://angelusenespanol.com/archbishops-esp/adviento-y-el-advenimiento-del-amor/).  

 

“In Advent, we are awaiting the coming of Love, the coming of God who ‘is love’ in human form,” wrote Archbishop Gomez. “The mystery of our lives is that we are made to become like Jesus. Through the sacred mysteries we celebrate, we are more and more being fashioned in his likeness; day by day Christ is being formed in us. As we begin the new liturgical year with the season of Advent, it is a good time for us to deepen our awareness of the beautiful mystery of Christ and how this mystery is made present in our lives.”

 

Materials to enhance the faithful’s personal advent journey are available at lacatholics.org/advent and include video reflections from Archdiocesan priests, Advent digital downloads such as an Advent calendar coloring sheet, giveaways from local Catholic artists, and a guide to pray the 25-day St. Andrew Christmas Novena. The Archdiocese’s Back to Mass campaign will also provide resources for LA Catholics to invite family and friends to join them at Christmas Mass.

 

In the column, Archbishop Gomez reflects on Pope Francis’s new encyclical on the Sacred Heart writing: “We can never forget what a truly world-changing idea this was, this idea that there is a God who loves us, and that this God wants us to love him in return. Divine love was a new idea when Jesus Christ came into the world. We need to make this idea new again in our lives and in our personal witness and our evangelization as his Church!”

 

The Advent season is a time of preparation that directs our hearts and minds to Christ’s second coming at the end of time and to the anniversary of Our Lord’s birth on Christmas. Archbishop Gomez reminds us that Jesus loved with a “heart that was human and divine” and calls us during this Advent season to relive the expectations of our ancestors who waited for the Messiah to come.

 

“During these few weeks of Advent, I hope we can all try to recover the astonishment that those first followers of Jesus felt,” wrote Archbishop Gomez. “He loved us! And he loves us still. And he calls us to love one another as he has loved us, and to proclaim his love to the ends of the earth.”

 

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