Episode 109 - Advent: The Church’s New Year - How to Prepare for Christ with Purpose

Advent marks the beginning of the Church’s year—a fresh spiritual start and a call to prepare our hearts with intention. In this episode, Paul explores what it means to slow down, pray, and live generously in a season that often pulls us toward noise and busyness. Discover practical and spiritual ways to make Christ the King of every part of your life—your home, your relationships, and even your finances.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Paul, Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance, and we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host. Paul Scarfone, thank you for being here today. Welcome back to Catholic money talk and happy new year. So today's episode The church is New Year and how to prepare for Christ with purpose. And this is what I want to talk about today, because I feel like and I see and I experience it myself, the draw, the pull into that hustle and bustle time of, you know, holiday season. I'm using air quotes because I don't like the terms holiday season, but I want to talk about that today. So Happy New Year. It's the church's New Year. So how do we prepare for Christ with purpose? But before we talk about this, let's say a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father. We thank you for this day. We thank you for all the ways that you love and bless us. Lord, we ask you to draw us deeper to you this Advent so that we can meet you in a new way, Lord, Lord. We're always preparing to meet you. That's what our life is about. It's so that one day we can be in heaven with you forever. So give us the strength, give us the grace, in particular this Advent season, to be drawn closer to you, to desire to serve you more and to allow you to reign more and more in our hearts Come Holy Spirit. We ask this all in Jesus name, amen, in name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So. So I said, Happy New Year. And before you think I'm jumping ahead on the calendar, I'm talking about, if you didn't get it, the liturgical New Year, right? Advent marks the beginning of something new. Yes, it's the start of the final countdown to Christmas and the end of the year, the calendar year. But more importantly, it's the beginning of our spiritual year, which means a fresh start, a reset, a renewed invitation to draw closer to the Lord for most of my life. Like growing up as a kid, I instinctively thought Advent was a, you know, I thought of it with as a penitential time, right? And while it's not the same kind of penitential season as Lent, it is a season of preparation, of expectation, of quiet spiritual discipline, and traditionally, that includes what we see in Lent, prayer, fasting, acts of charity and a real intentionality of the heart. But let's be honest, amid this holiday season, again, I'm doing air quotes. I don't love the holiday season, but I'm using it here. I'm not a big fan of the phrase, but because that's what the world is shouting and screaming. And so as we're amidst this holiday season, it's very easy to lose sight of Advent, right? And Advent is deeper meaning. It's real purpose, right? The world around us is loud, it's busy, it's bright, and it's pulling us in 1000 directions, and that that pull is particularly strong in December, maybe even more now, than any other time of the year. And if we aren't intentional, that noise, it will just consume us. It'll swallow us whole. So we need a plan. We need a deliberate choice, an intentional turn where we move away from the hustle and bustle and instead enter Advent, the way the Church invites us to, quietly, prayerfully and full of hope. So not only are we preparing for the celebration of Jesus birth at Christmas, but we're ultimately preparing, like I said in the prayer, for His coming at the end of time, right? That's why we were created to meet the Lord in the clouds and be in Heaven with Him forever. And so, you know, just the end of the liturgical year, we wrapped up with the feast of Christ, the King of the universe, right? The whole liturgical year, it's a March, a procession, it's a journey towards the king, right? And at the end, we're there in front of him. So then what better time than now, this Advent, this new beginning, to renew our resolve to draw closer to Him. So how do we do that? Well, let's deepen our our daily prayer. Let's strengthen our relationships, whether they be with our spouse, our children, our community, those that are close to us or. To invite the Lord into our work, our decisions, into our homes, to make him king in every room of the house. I heard this. This was a bishop, Baron, exhortation on the feast of Christ the King. How do we make Jesus Lord the king of every room in our house? Is he the king of our marriages? Is he the king of our personal lives? See, the king of my work, of my relationships. Is he the king of my time, my talent, my treasure? Right? Is Jesus the Lord of my finances? Something I talk a lot about here, and if the answer is not fully right, and none of us are perfect, so for sure, it's not fully on all of those this Advent is the perfect time to reset, to surrender, to begin again. One of the traditions our family, mine and Taryn and our kids, that we love to do during Advent is the Jesse tree. And if you're not familiar with it, the Jesse tree walks through salvation history, and it has one symbol. Each day, they're just an ornament that you put on a tree. Right our tree, it looks like a small artificial Christmas tree, and each day there's a different ornament and a story, a Bible story, that is all the story of salvation history and different points of Jesus, not just his life, but his whole life, like all the prophets leading up to him, right? And how all of these scriptures point to the coming of Jesus. And so day one begins with creation, and we read the story of that. The ornament for that day, it's a globe, right, representing the earth, and it's a reminder that God brought order out of chaos, and he called it good. What a perfect place for us to start this Advent, because if we look around, December, can easily slide into chaos. Maybe the world around us looks like chaos, shopping, buying, wrapping, decorating, eating, drinking, parties, events, performances, deadlines, and none of these things in themselves are bad, but without order, without intentionality, without them pointing us towards Christ, they can pull us away from that deeper purpose of this Advent season. So how do we bring order back into Advent. This is very simple. Let's begin by praying, by setting each day before the Lord, by waking up and asking, right what we talked to Deacon art about a few episodes ago, Lord, what are we going to do today? That question alone makes Jesus the Lord of your day. So we ask him, we pray, and then we listen and we look, we watch with his eyes, and we plan, prayerfully, plan, right? So it could be our time, but it could also be our spending. Do we create a spending plan, a budget for the people that we feel called to give to? Do we make intentional space to serve others, visiting the sick, the elderly, the homebound. Could we serve at a food bank or a soup kitchen? In our parish, we have a giving tree, so in the back of our church, it's a Christmas tree covered with ornaments that are requests from children and adults who might be struggling financially, people less fortunate than us. When I was a child, my family, we were broke, we were poor, our names were on that tree. I remember one year, actually, my mom said, Hey, what do you guys want? We're our you know, our names are going on the tree. Just tell me what you guys want. We'll put them on there. And I remember one of my friends was this family was going to take me skiing, and I really wanted a good winter coat, a good ski jacket. And so I said that, and I got a really nice one. It was real nice, like three in one, Columbia, quality, quality ski jacket. And I remember my brothers all asked for bikes, and Christmas morning, I've got this really cool ski jacket, and they all have these awesome bikes. And I remember thinking in that moment, oh, man, I should ask for a bike like I might go skiing once or twice. I got this great jacket, but, you know, I might only go skiing once or twice. My brother still be riding bikes every day for years, you know. But so for me as a kid, we were the benefit of those so in our family, we make it a priority to go get those tags, because it's a joy to give and because it also teaches generosity to my family, to my children, in a very powerful way. So look around you, look beyond the things you have to do and the things you want to do, and ask the Lord what he wants from you this Advent. How is he inviting you to prepare your heart for Christ, the King of the universe. So Advent is a spiritual New Year's Day. It's a perfect time to make a resolution. Not not just a self improvement resolution, but a surrender resolution, a commitment to identify those rooms of your heart, those areas in your life that you haven't fully given over to him, and to take practical steps to enthrone him there. And yes, this applies to your finances as well. This is a beautiful time to be generous, but generosity requires a plan. You can't be generous if you don't know where your money is going, and if you don't plan, you'll you'll end up in debt, and in January, you'll have guilt, and it'll be a mess. So start now. You know, the amount we spend on someone does not equal how much we love them, right? It's not like a direct correlation you and you can't buy love with a bigger gift, but what you can give, what means the most is actually giving yourself. This is what I've been praying about this year in particular, like let your being present be your present, right. Let your gift to others be your presence. Let your present be your presence right, your full undivided attention. And in a world of distraction, screens, you know, and screens, it's it's constant, our presence, our full undivided attention, has become one of the most valuable gifts we can give each other. Now, earlier, a couple years ago, I I wrote a blog post for my coaching website. It's a great post. I think it's called, it's the most generous time of the year, the most generous time of the year. And I think a couple years ago, I might have done an episode on this as well, but this season, it always comes back to me right the time of year, draws generosity to the surface people. We want to give. We want to bring joy to others, and studies even show that giving produces lasting joy far more than receiving like they've been able to measure this, giving produces more lasting joy than receiving generosity. It shifts our focus outward, and it opens our hearts to God's opportunities. It's not just about money, right? That's one way we give, but it's about time. It's about our service. It's about our presence. And when we make generosity a priority, when we give first, it changes us. You know, just like Scrooge right in the Christmas carol Dickens Christmas Carol, his life didn't change because he received something. It changed because he started giving. Generosity transforms the heart, and that's why it has to be first. I just we, I teach the high schoolers at my kid's school, and we just had a test a couple weeks ago on our budgeting class and all the different categories that you could have in budgeting. And there's, you know, you can earn money, and there's only three things you can do. You can give, save and spend. And I asked the kids, what's the top thing in your in your what should be the top priority in your budget, and I always say it's giving. I always say it's giving, but then I also talk about four walls, food, shelter, clothing, transportation and utilities. Those are those are your top needs, right? And so this reminds me, because a lot of the kids got that question wrong. Many of them put giving which is the correct answer, but some put your four walls or food is the top priority. But the reason giving is number one is because generosity transforms the heart. And so ask yourself, what will I give this Advent. What action will I take to become generous? What steps will I take to be more like Christ? Right? He was the most generous giver of all. Because this isn't just about December. This is about forming the habits that will carry us into right in this new year that we just started, but even into the calendar new year without guilt, without debt, without anxiety, because we're living with a purpose. Let this Advent be a time to enthrone Christ as King in every room of our house and every corner of our life. Life, may this season draw you closer to God, may you experience His great love more deeply, and may you become a conduit of that love to everyone you meet. Come Holy Spirit give us the grace and strength to live for God. Well, there you have it. How to grow closer to the Lord amidst the Christmas hustle and bustle, this is the church's New Year. So how we prepare for Christ with purpose? We start with prayer. We have a plan, and we're generous to others. That's what we have to do. And then every morning, like Deacon, art tells us, we ask the Lord, Lord, what are we going to do today? So thank you for joining me today. You have a blessed Advent season drawing closer to the Lord God bless you. Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time, please click Subscribe on your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day. Foreign.