This Advent presents an opportunity to increase our desire to emulate this great saint so loved by Our Lady and Our Savior.

Food can serve as a powerful force for forging deeper connections. Through the rituals of cooking and eating, we feed our friendships, creating lasting memories one bite at a time.

Thanksgiving is one of those few national holidays when a semi-religious sentiment is allowed.

That sense of joyful preparation combined with anticipation is the attitude we bring to Advent as we await the arrival of Christ the Lord.

As we look ahead to Advent, it almost feels as if nature is paving the way to that time, calling us to let the fading vibrancy of autumn go, and be open to the journey ahead. Change can be wonderful, but it can also be hard.

The shrug also helps us to remember that good people may disagree and still be good people, and that most of us are doing the best we can, by such light as we are given.

The Eucharist, as the source and summit of Christian life, has much to teach us about waiting.

The solution for competing solemnities is to transfer the liturgical celebration of the non-Sunday holy day to the first subsequent available date. Thus, in the year 2024, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated in our liturgy on Monday, Dec. 9.

For those of us who have been united through baptism to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the last day of each of our lives does not fade away into eternal night but opens onto a new day, at the height of which we will rest in the glorious splendor of the perpetual light of God, every moment of our lives on this earth held in his eternal memory.

As one of the perpetual pilgrims who traveled with him for the entire two months, I got to experience the adventure of a lifetime.