Today’s Mass all together, for those of us who are Catholic, is a very good set of readings for this Advent Season. You can find them here:

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/121515.cfm

It was really long, so I did not want to fill up my blog with the wonderful stories, and figured, you guys are big boys and girls, you can click on the link. Or paste it into your browser, whatever….

The focus is on a topic that is hard for all of us… the dreaded C word, and not the one that Tina Fey was called. Change. Everyone looks at it, says they can handle it, but when in the trenches, or when the stress levels get high, we fall right back into old habits and processes. Everyone is prone to it, which is why there are millions of books on how to manage through it, how to stay sane while changing, etc. It is a major thing that impacts all aspects of human nature.

The Bible uses the word Repent. That is a classier form of the word Change. Go ahead, look it up, I will wait here. Repent, it is a major Christian theme. So major that we have a whole Catholic rite called Reconciliation to help with the repentantce process. Most people know this as confession. Yes change, it is something that we are called to do, yet as humans we tend to fall backwards on this. We also get to a point where we feel we don’t need to change.

For me, change is something that is hard when I feel passionately about the thing that needs changing. Exercise is a good example. I don’t like it, I need to do it, but I just don’t want to. I know it would be good to do for me, for my kids for my health, but my stubborn laziness gets in the way. We do it with lots of things, and I see it in our moral fabric in society sometimes as well. We shouldn’t be projecting violence as a normalcy, but in the name of “art” or “entertainment” we allow it. It is not right, but we justify it by means of doing the easier thing. We see businesses fail because it is easier for them to stay with the old way of doing business. Ask Blockbuster Video how that worked out for them?

If Changing our hearts, which we are called to do as Christians (not just Catholics), was an easy thing, I do not think that Jesus would have asked us to do it. It is easier for us to stay in our old ways, rather than acknowledge the room for growth, change our minds and our hearts, and grow further into God’s Grace. We are all called to repentance.