PRAYER - STUDY - ACTION
First Week of Advent, Nov. 27-Dec. 3
Sunday, November 27, 2022
Greetings of peace!

As we start this first week of Advent, we want to invite you to join us in finding ways to be intentional about how we pray, study and act for peace with justice in our world during this season. We'll be sending out reflections and resources which we hope will bind us together, offering ways for each of us, our families, our communities and parishes to observe a deep and meaningful Advent and Christmas in solidarity with one another. We'll send a Pray-Study-Act (PSA) e-alert (like this one) each week of Advent and one for the start of the new year, highlighting some resources for you to use for the upcoming week. For additional Advent resources, we hope you'll visit our Advent 2022 resource page on the website. We'll continue to add more to the page each week on through Christmas and Epiphany. And if you or your group have something you think others would be interested in, send it our way and we will try to include as many as we can.
We hope this season draws us closer to one another and to the vision of peace which we await during these days. May the peace of Christ be ours as we walk together, praying, studying and acting for a renewed world aglow with the peace of Christ!
In peace,

Johnny Zokovitch
Executive Director, Pax Christi USA
PRAYER
An Advent Credo
by Dan Berrigan, SJ, Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace
It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss—
This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction—
This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.

It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever—
This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful councilor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world—
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even until the end of the world.

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers—
This is true: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.

It is not true that our hopes for liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history—
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.

So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world.

From Testimony: The Word Made Flesh, by Daniel Berrigan, S.J. Orbis Books, 2004.
>> Join us each Monday evening in Advent over Zoom from 8:30-9pm for an Advent evening prayer service with Pax Christi USA members from around the nation. Click here to register.

>> Click here to find "Advent, Christmas & Epiphany Prayers and Rituals for Families, Small Groups," which includes Advent wreath rituals, Christmas tree blessings, Epiphany blessing and more.
STUDY
The Lord's Advent instigates prayer and protest
by Jonathan Montaldo
The time is coming for our indictment as distracted Christians who serve many masters. We profess Christ as Lord while pursuing money, power, and the pride of possessing a privileged life. As the world’s forests burn and its waters flood, our personal and collective animosities for those not washed in the blood of our separate tribes spread chaos upon the land. The religious myths that warn of an apocalypse and God’s final judgment upon Earth’s evolutionary experiment are impinging upon our minds, keeping us awake and worried in our beds, if not for ourselves, then for the children. Will the centre hold (cf. W.B. Yeats)?

In Raids on the Unspeakable, the American monk and writer Thomas Merton described the 1960s as a “time of no room.” His words back then are no less prophetic for us who teeter on the cusp of Advent 2022: “We live in a time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power, and acceleration.”...
>> Join us for an online Advent Retreat series on gospel nonviolence with Cranaleith Spiritual Center, Tuesdays in December. Click here for more information.

>> Join us for the webinar, “Today’s Refugees, Tomorrow’s Deportees: When Forced Migration and White Supremacy Are Public Policy,” this Tuesday, November 29, 11am-12:15pm ET. Find more info and register by clicking here.

>> >> See reflections here for the first Sunday of Advent from Bishop John Stowe and Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace Jim Douglass.
ACTION
Join the call for a Christmas truce in Ukraine
Pax Christi USA has signed onto a call for a Christmas truce in Ukraine, initiated by our partners at the Fellowship of Reconciliation-USA, CODEPINK, and the National Council of Elders. The call reads, in part:

As people of faith and conscience, believing in the sanctity of all life on this planet, we call for a Christmas Truce in Ukraine. In the spirit of the truce that occurred in 1914 during the First World War, we urge our government to take a leadership role in bringing the war in Ukraine to an end through supporting calls for a ceasefire and negotiated settlement, before the conflict results in a nuclear war that could devastate the world’s ecosystems and annihilate all of God’s creation.  

We encourage individuals, Pax Christi state/regional chapters and local groups, religious communities, and our partners to add their support to this call.

>> On Saturday, December 17th, all young adults are invited to join the Pax Christi Young Adult Caucus for a mini-Advent retreat online. Join PCYAC for prayer and faith-sharing as we ask, how are we being called to claim responsibility for our beloved neighbor this Advent season? Young adult leaders will share reflections on the path of migrants, immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and the global family of dreamers who leave everything they have known to take a walk of faith. To register, complete this brief form by December 5. For questions, please reach out to the PCYAC leadership team at [email protected].

>> Click here for information and to join the World AIDS Day vigil on December 1.
A special Advent message from Martin Sheen
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