Second Sunday in Advent: Have you ever noticed that the color purple in Advent and Lent are different shades of purple? In Lent it is a deep and dark purple, in Advent it has more of a red hue to it, a lighter purple. The reason, liturgi-cally speaking, is that in Lent we are focused on sins and repentance as we approach the Great Easter celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection. It is a time of piety. In Advent, the focus is more on our relationship with the Lord, and a desire to repair and strengthen that relationship vis -à-vis our fam-ily, friends and neighbors.

It is all about rearranging things. As we approach Christmas we will literally be rearranging the furniture in our homes in order to place the Christmas tree in just the right spot in the house. Well, Advent is also a time to rearrange our relationship with the Lord who has come to earth to be in relationship with you. The theme of the readings this Sunday is all about the Lord making things right: the mountains will be lowered, the valleys will be raised, the winding roads made straight, and the rough ways made smooth. To enter into a good and solid relationship with the Lord, one that will guide us into eternal life, let us pray for the grace to lower our mountains of pride, to fill in the depths of our low self esteem, and to smooth out the rough and difficult relationships in our communities, and straighten the winding and broken rela-tionships in our families. In tidying up these relationships we create a right relationship with the Lord.