A homily for the First Sunday of Advent, by the Rev. Terrance Klein

The Solemnity of Christ the King is not an old feast. It was created by Pius XI in 1925. What does it mean in our lives today?

Can a song save your life? Can a canticle change your life, fundamentally alter its course?

Will Christ manifest himself and end history? Assuredly yes, if you believe in him and what he said. When will this happen and how? Even in this atomic age, we still do not know.

The people we loved and who we became because we loved, these shall not pass.

On this Feast of All Souls, let us remember "our people," living for God and for each other. We can live for both, and die for both.

The Solemnity of All the Saints reveals the relationship between who we are and who we should become, between time and eternity, between ourselves and the saints.

We neither chose nor fashioned the wounded and scary worlds in which we live. And this is the meaning of the sin which the Catholic Church calls “original.” We ourselves are wounded before we ever set out to reject or to wound.

The cross of Christ appears as his abandonment by the Father. Our crosses do as well, but it is only in the cross that we discover that God is abandonment and outpouring love.

Our prayers would be immeasurably improved if we truly believed that we were indeed talking to someone.