"Come back to me, with all your heart.
Don’t let fear keep us apart.... "

So begins one of my favourite hymns. It well expresses the sentiments with which this weekend we begin Advent. Now is indeed the time to return to God, not letting fear keep us apart. This particular Advent is also marked by something extra. We are invited by Pope John-Paul to begin our preparations for the year 2000. Now, he writes, is the time to advent the millennium.

We have already been bombarded with media coverage of millennium projects. From this Advent onwards we must challenge ourselves with a project of a different sort, The Pope has invited the Church to use the time between now and ‘that’ year to "rediscover God." He suggests the pursuit of a theme for each of these years:

96/97: The Year of Jesus Christ
97/98: The Year of the Holy Spirit
98/99: The Year of God the Father
2000: A celebration of the Holy Trinity.

Accordingly, we are invited to spend the next twelve months considering Jesus Christ. Now is the time to return to the incarnation, the cross and the resurrection. We all like to think we know about Jesus; who he was and what he did. There remains for us all still much to discover and wonder at. Perhaps the best tool to help us is the gospel with which we appropriately pick up today: that of Mark. It has one aim: to lead the reader into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It hopes to make us disciples not admirers. We will have many opportunities in the next twelve months to appreciate that distinction and turn it into a welcome reality.

We could dismiss the papal suggestion as meaningless and irrelevant. To do so would not incur divine wrath but it would represent another missed opportunity. The occasion of Jesus’ birth 2000yrs ago represents for today’s disciples a moment in time to both celebrate and wonder anew the mystery of God, who so loved the world..... (DG)