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Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany: Stories and Reflections on the Sunday Readings, Volume I (v. 1)

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These reflections from author and retreat leader Megan McKenna are designed to help transform our lives through the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. "This is the time of God coming to us, and it is the time for us to come home to one another and to God together," she writes. She begins by enumerating the many "comings" represented in the seasons, including God among us as a human being in the mystery of the incarnation, Christ in glory at the end of time, and God as King of glory and Judge of the universe.

She points out that we live between two Advents that are "our meaning and source, our horizon and shadow." The first Advent, the incarnation, Christmas and Epiphany, focused on the mystery of God's presence among us in "the vale of tears where people dwell in joy and tears, in mildness and violence, in justice and injustice." In the second Advent Christ will come in glory to fulfill the kingdom that began with the coming of Jesus. Through the Word we will see the mystery of God's plan for the world, "its freedom and liberation, its transformation, and its holiness, as it was meant to be in the beginning."

The book is organized into the four Sundays of Advent for Cycle A, B, and C; feast days from the Immaculate Conception through January 1; and Epiphany and the second Sunday after Christmas for all three cycles. Roughly 10 pages are devoted to each Sunday, with reflections that include stories, quotations from scholars and poets, and links to our current culture.