Advent

This weekend the Catholic Church begins its year with the season of Advent - a word that tells us that Jesus is coming (from the Latin adventus). That means we are just four weeks from Christmas, the annual celebration of the nativity of Jesus.

Of course that also means presents and overeating and last-minute shopping - but behind all of that we celebrate the hope of the world.

The shopping and overeating may not reinforce that sense of hope - but the gifts certainly do - and so does that other great part of Christmas celebrations: family.

The groups working on the amalgamation of the Stoke and Nelson parishes have reinforced that with their name for the new parish which begins in February next year: Holy Family parish.

It's a great name, and even though we are sure of very little about Jesus' background, childhood, and family life, we guess that someone who turned out so well as an adult MUST have had a solid early life.

It was also something of a modern family. His father seems to have died while Jesus was still quite young so Mary ended up as a solo mother. The Holy Family started under the cloud of an unplanned pregnancy, and ended up as a single parent family. And Jesus and his brothers went on to change the world.

Christmas is the time when we remember the start of that story - but it is also the time to remember the power and importance of family. It is a time for family to gather. It may be the time for forgiveness and new starts. Maybe a time to put Jesus and family back to a more prominent place in in our lives. Maybe a time to support struggling families at a difficult time of the year for poor families.

But the next four weeks and Christmas is always the time for hope.