From the Pastor's Desk - December 7, 2025

Dear St. Martin’s Parishioners,

Patience is a key Advent virtue, and one for which our culture is especially ill-suited. Christmas music fills the air waves since before Thanksgiving. You may well attend a Christmas party by this weekend. Relatedly, technology has diminished our ability to be patient. Texts are more efficient than calls, and who in the world sits down to write a letter to a friend or family member anymore? Your favorite sports team hires a coach, and within two seasons he’s fired. We want to win now! It’s so easy for us to become impatient on the road or while in line at the store. We are often impatient with our spouse, children and ourselves! Patience is a bygone virtue, but one which we need in this all-too-busy Advent season.

In a sense, original sin is due to a lack of patience. Eve grasped for the fruit rather than trusting in God’s desire to give her what was good. We can contrast patience with an attitude of grasping, controlling and forcing our will. Our Blessed Mother gives us the perfect response of patience,: “Let it be done to me according to thy word.” Her attitude was one of trusting receptivity, which is impossible without patience. The great theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar sums this up well:

The restoration of order by the Son of God had to be the annulment of that

premature snatching at knowledge, the beating down of the hand outstretched

toward eternity, the repentant return from a false, swift transfer into eternity to a

true, slow confinement in time. Hence the importance of patience in the New

Testament, which becomes the basic constituent of Christianity, more central even

than humility: the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end,

not to transcend one's own limitations, not to force issues by playing the hero or

the titan, but to practice the virtue that lies beyond heroism, the meekness of the

lamb which is lead.

During Advent, practice using time well, not more efficiently or productively by getting more things done. Rather, practice using time more deeply and meaningfully, making ourselves present to God and others. Practice waiting and hoping, rather than prematurely enjoying.

In Christ,

Fr. Dave