Bathurst Diocese Newsletter for Advent 2025

Posted on November 27, 2025 
Filed under Australian dioceses, Encouragement

Bishop of Bathurst Mark Calder has published the Bathurst Newsletter for Advent.

Please be encouraged to use it to inform your prayers: for the churches of the diocese, that they may be strengthened and encouraged – and also for the people of this large region of NSW, that many may hear the words of eternal life this Christmas, and find salvation in Christ.

Bishop Calder writes with much encouragement in the newsletter:

“Dear friends,

As we prepare to observe Advent again, I wanted to share a few thoughts. It is a time in our church calendar which has been misunderstood AND come under increasing secular influence. Advent reminds us that Christians are people who wait. We live with the reality that the world is not as it should be BUT we cling to the promise of Jesus’ return when everything will be put right. Advent doesn’t ask us to be cheerful or sentimental. It asks us to watch, to pray, and to recognise our deep need for the One who will come again.

We look around and see conflict, sorrow, failures, and tragedies. Advent puts to us that we can face these things without despair. It invites us to hold them before God, trusting that he has not forgotten his promises. Jesus will come with justice and mercy. He will heal, restore, judge and renew. That is our hope — not a vague wish, but a sure and certain expectation.

And so, Advent urges us not to be anxious or frantic. But steady. Prayerful. Grateful for every anticipation of all that Jesus’ return will mean.

Only at the end of Advent do we turn to Christmas. And when we do, we are reminded that our Advent hope is not hope against hope but is gloriously grounded in the historical reality that Jesus has already come among us as a real human being. The child of Bethlehem is the Lord of glory who will return. His first coming assures us of his second.

May this Advent renew your hope and steady your heart as you wait for him.

Mark.”

– Read it all here. (Looking for a pre-loved car? The newsletter might contain the answer.)