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Embrace the gifts offered to us – Bishop’s Advent message

GUYANA

Bishop Francis Alleyne OSB of Georgetown hopes that Advent affords faithful the space and spirit with excitement and anticipation, first to embrace the gifts offered, preparing faithful for immersion in the mystery of the Incarnation, and firm footing of hope and Jubilee to further God’s Kingdom.

In his Advent message to faithful, published via Catholic Standard, Bishop Alleyne observed this year’s Advent Season comes just after the completion of the Synod on Synodality and just before the Jubilee Year.

The Synod on Synodality, Bishop Alleyne said, has opened a conversation about exploring new and authentic ways of being Church.

“In the preparation phase of the Synod process, the faithful throughout the world paused to look at the current state of the Church. Here in our own Diocese, there was feedback from a number of parishes identifying concerns that are deserving of attention and some blessings to build on,” Bishop Alleyne said.

He shared that during their novena last year, they looked at some of these and kept before themselves the watch words of the Synod: ‘Communion, Participation and Mission’.

While the formal phase of the Synod is complete, the implementation phase “is now before us,” said Bishop Alleyne.

He added, “Now the Church offers us the gift of our Advent Season, we offer ourselves the gift of the Christmas novena and Pope Francis invites us into the gift of a Jubilee year. To lift a few words of Pope Francis from the Jubilee document: ‘For everyone, may the Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the ‘door’ (cf Jn 10:7.9) of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as ‘our hope’ (1 Tim 1:1).” Everyone, Bishop Alleyne underscored, knows what it is to hope. He said in the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring.

“Even so, uncertainty about the future may at times give rise to conflicting feelings, ranging from confident trust to apprehensiveness, from serenity to anxiety, from firm conviction to hesitation and doubt,” he said.

Bishop Alleyne also acknowledged we come across people who are discouraged, pessimistic and cynical about the future, as if nothing could possibly bring them happiness.

He hoped the Jubilee will be an opportunity to be renewed in hope and all will be drawn into the excitement and anticipation and into the other Advent themes of hope, conversion and readiness articulated in the many hymns, readings, prayers, and liturgy of the season.