This is Christian hope!

December 8

“The exhortation to be watchful resounds many times in the liturgy, especially in Advent, a season of preparation not only for Christmas, but also for Christ’s definitive and glorious coming at the end of time. It therefore has a distinctly eschatological meaning and invites the believer to spend every day and every moment in the presence of the One ‘who is and who was and who is come’ (Revelation 1:4), to whom the future of the world and of man belongs. This is Christian hope!”

-Pope St. John Paul II

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Mother of God

December 31

Eve of the Feast of Mary, Mother of God

Mother benign of our redeeming Lord,

Star of the sea and portal of the skies,

Unto thy fallen people help afford –

Fallen, but striving still anew to rise.

Thou who dids’t once, while wond’ring

worlds adored,

Bear thy Creator, Virgin then as now,

O by thy holy joy at Gabriel’s word,

Pity the sinners who before thee bow.

-Roman Breviary, Antiphon of the Blessed Virgin

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