cf. Mark 9:8
Alleluia, Alleluia!
The heavens were opened and the Father’s voice was heard:
this is my beloved Son, hear him.
Alleluia!
St Paul tells us that as baptised members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we have been ‘sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy’. Having been graced by this gift of faith, let us bring our prayers to our God of love.
We pray for Pope Leo and all bishops as leaders of our Church. May they continue to be graced by the spirit of Jesus to lead us all in wisdom and humanity.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
We pray for all who have been baptised into Christ’s Body, the Church. May we always accept Jesus’ invitation to follow him.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
We pray that, refreshed by the holiday season, we will return to our regular routine with a renewed commitment to exercising our talents for our own good and the benefit of others.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
We pray with renewed faith for our worshipping community. May we continue to celebrate the Eucharist with reverence and love, proclaiming the death of our Lord for our salvation.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
We pray for …
Lord hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
We pray that Jesus will strengthen all our sick relatives and friends and those suffering alone.
We remember those who have died recently and those whose anniversaries occur at this time. May the God of mercy fulfil the promises of baptism by welcoming them into eternal life.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
Almighty God, let the prayers of your people be heard so that all people will glorify your holy name, which comes to us through Jesus, our Lord.
Amen.
Isaiah 42:1–4, 6–7
Here is my servant, in whom my soul delights.
Psalm 28(29):1–4, 9–10
R. The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Acts 10:34–38
God had anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit.
cf. Mark 9:8
The heavens were opened and the Father’s voice was heard: this is my beloved Son, hear him.
Matthew 3:13–17
‘This is my Son, the Beloved.’
However because the celebration of the Eucharist, like the entire Liturgy, is carried out through perceptible signs that nourish, strengthen, and express faith,31 the utmost care must be taken to choose and to arrange those forms and elements set forth by the Church that, in view of the circumstances of the people and the place, will more effectively foster active and full participation and more properly respond to the spiritual needs of the faithful.
—General Instruction of the Roman Missal, §20
The primary intention of the liturgical reform is that the holy people of God may take their rightful place in the celebration of the Mass as participants and not as spectators. In preparing our Sunday celebration, we need to reflect upon the many choices we make in preparing the liturgy so that we do not take for granted the impact of what we are doing.
‘After the Lord was baptized, the heavens were opened, and the Spirit descended upon him like a dove, and the voice of the Father thundered: This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’ —entrance antiphon
As we move towards the conclusion of the 2025 Jubilee Year, it is with great excitement that the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne offers its Advent resource: Word of God, Word of Hope.
The purpose of the resource is to renew an appreciation for an ancient form of prayer: lectio divina. It is designed to be flexible, so whether you want individual guidance, or to pray with a small group, or with your spouse and family, Word of God, Word of Hope can be adapted to suit those contexts.
For many years, the Church has been encouraging Catholics to rediscover the ancient practice of lectio divina — ‘divine reading’. The origins of this way of praying with the Scriptures are tied closely with the early monastic traditions. The Bible was not simply a fascinating text for our spiritual forebears. It was the Word of God, God’s living Word to his people. To meditate on it, to pray with it, to let those words be always present in one’s mind and heart is to enter into conversation with God. It is to listen to him and let him speak so that we can be formed more deeply as his disciples.
Lectio divina has also been closely tied with the liturgy. In fact, the Church has proposed lectio divina to us as one of the best ways of preparing for the Eucharist.
In his 2010 post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Word of God, Pope Benedict XVI said:
‘Just as the adoration of the Eucharist prepares for, accompanies and follows the liturgy of the Eucharist, so too prayerful reading, personal and communal, prepares for, accompanies and deepens what the Church celebrates when she proclaims the word in a liturgical setting.’
Verbum domini §86
With this desire of the Church in mind, this Advent resource is structured in the manner of a lectio divina, with the intention that those who engage with it — either individually or in groups — will do so in order to prepare for each Sunday of Advent. Everybody leads busy lives, and we all know the challenges of preparing well for the Eucharist. This resource is an encouragement to slow down, to carve out some intentional time before Mass on Sunday to read the relevant Scriptures. By praying with the Word of God, we prepare our hearts to receive more faithfully in the Eucharist, the Word of God made flesh.
With reflections on the jubilee theme of hope, we pray this resource will inspire and build up our communities of faith in the hope that is ‘an anchor of the soul, as sure as it is firm’ (Heb 6:19).
For those unfamiliar with the process and structure of lectio divina, each week has a guide at the beginning to take you through the steps. If you are using this individually or as spouses, you can simply follow the steps as they are laid out, reflecting on the Scripture verse before moving onto the provided meditation.
If you are using as part of a small group, whoever is leading can read out the steps before or as you go so that everybody is comfortable and on the same page. This resource is meant to be a prayerful experience, so it is recommended that the meditation for each week be either read aloud by someone in the group or read quietly together. If you are in a small group, you can also use the actio to enter into conversation, inviting everyone to share their experience and prayers, their thoughts and questions about the subject for each week.
The final two weeks of Advent will be uploaded in due course.
Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12
I see water flowing from the temple and all who were touched by it were saved.
Psalm 45:2–3, 5–6, 8–9
R. The waters of the river gladden the city of God.
1 Corinthians 3:9–11, 16-17
You are the temple of God.
2 Chronicles 7:16
I have chosen and sanctified this house, says the Lord, that my name may remain in it for all time.
John 2:13–22
He spoke about the temple of his own body.
Wisdom 3:1–9
The souls of the just are in the hand of God.
Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Romans 5:5–11
Hope does not disappoint.
Come, you who are blessed by my Father;
inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
John 6:37–40
The Son of God came to do the will of the one who sent him.
These psalms and readings are selected from the many options for this day.
Here, the Gospel of John records one of Jesus’ most outrageous statements. To understand the significance of it, however, we would have to understand the significance the Temple held for ancient Jews. It has been said that the architecture of a city reveals its underlying philosophy: a modern cityscape of metal and glass, for example, where the tallest buildings are banks and datacentres, reveals something important about the concerns we prioritise — function, efficiency, economy. For ancient Jews, the absolute centre of their social, religious, and political existence was the Temple. Everything revolved around it. The Temple was a microcosm of the whole cosmos: not only the place of sacrifice and atonement, but it was meant to be the place where God’s presence dwelt among his people. It was the place where heaven and earth met. The presence of God had not dwelt there for some time, however; around 591 BC, the prophet Ezekiel saw the glory of the Lord depart from them, an event that sent Israel into turmoil. To have Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made flesh, walk into the Temple was astounding enough, since it represented the return of God’s presence, though they didn’t recognise it. The fact that he also scattered the money changers and drove the animals away added something else to the equation: the old system of temple sacrifice was coming to an end. A new age was coming, where worship would revolve around a new temple: the crucified and risen Christ, the one in whom humanity and divinity, heaven and earth, fully embraced.
Jesus’ actions here have been described as the ‘cleansing of the temple’. Not only are they packed with symbolic significance, they retain hugely spiritual significance for us, too. Throughout the New Testament, the Church is also referred to as a temple (of which Christ is the ‘cornerstone’), as are our bodies. Jesus’ presence within us and within our communities is a cleansing presence: he drives out everything that defiles the sacred purpose for which we were made.
The Gospel text contrasts ‘the Father’s house’ with ‘the market place’. Throughout his ministry, Jesus often challenged people’s devotion to mammon — or wealth — and how it took the central place which should be afforded to God alone. He forces us to confront what it is our lives revolve around, and what the consequences might be if it is anything less than God.
This text is characteristic of the Gospel of John. Jesus reiterates on multiple occasions the unity between he and the Father. Here, he stresses their absolute unity of will: he desires what his Father desires, that all who come to him be raised to eternal life. He opens our eyes to a much bigger reality to do with salvation: it is not a matter of dumb chance, but always the work of the Father. It is the Father who draws us towards his Son, and the Son, extravagant with his grace, turns nobody away. Immediately before these verses, however, Jesus tells the crowd following him that even though they have seen and heard him, they still do not believe (Jn 6:36). Although the Father draws people, he never forces them; his work is never at the expense of our freedom. Our task is to always open ourselves to God’s will. In a mysterious way, by purifying our hearts to completely embrace God’s will, we lose nothing of our freedom, nothing of our individuality, of who we truly are. We find only life in its fullness—life eternal.
The practice of not only burying but praying for the dead has been a universal mainstay of human culture and religion throughout history. Many tombs of the early Christians bear inscriptions explicitly asking for prayers for their passage to eternal life. For this reason, it is an old practice that whenever passing a cemetery we pray these simple words: ‘May the Divine Assistance remain always with us and may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.’ We do not approach death with despair or dread, however; a healthy reverence, perhaps, but never despair. We approach trusting in the extravagant hope Jesus himself held out to us: ‘whoever comes to me, I shall not turn him away’ (Jn 6:37).
The word ‘will’ can seem cold to many, almost utilitarian. To modern people, somebody who merely does the will of another has no real freedom, no independence in how they think or act. Or, because of its association with death and divisions of wealth, the term ‘will’ might simply feel calculating and economical. However, the Greek word for ‘will’ (thélēma) is not cold or utilitarian. It includes the meaning of desire or pleasure: God’s will is God’s pleasure, his real desire. To live in God’s will, then, is to desire what he desires, to take pleasure in what he does.
Psalm 46 (Gk 45): The waters of the river gladden the city of God. — CWB 471
Alleluia, allelulia!
I have chosen and sanctified this house, says the Lord, that my name may remain in it for all time.
Alleluia!
Christ is our cornerstone. Confident in his presence, we turn to him with the prayers of our heart.
We pray for Pope Leo and all the bishops and priests of our Church. May they be filled with zeal for the house of the Lord.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
We pray for world leaders, and those in our country, that they may be given the gift of wisdom as they exercise their responsibilities for the common good.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
We pray for our own faith community. May we have renewed zeal to build our lives on the rock of Jesus Christ.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
We pray for the sick of our parish and for all who have asked for our prayers.
We pray for those who have died recently and for those whose anniversaries occur at this time. May they be welcomed into the house of the Lord forever.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
Lord our God, we offer these prayers to you this day and ask for a fresh outpouring of grace and zeal. May our lives overflow with faith, reverence and prayer as we serve in your house.
Through Christ our Lord.