A Time To Prepare

One of the challenges of being a Christian is to live up to the adage that we are called to be “in the world but not of the world.” Jesus speaks about this to His followers in a few places including John15:19 and again in John 17:14-6. We know that the world around us is not our true home and that heaven is our destiny. Folks should be able to look at how we live our lives and know that we’re different from non-believers. All of us have heard this teaching since childhood, but often it’s difficult to know how to do it. How can I follow Christ in a way that will draw others to Him?

The season of Advent, which begins on Sunday, is a great opportunity to do that. The world around us pushes us directly from Thanksgiving into Christmas, without a moment to prepare or reflect on the coming of Jesus. The world expects us to observe Black Friday as if it is a kind of religious holiday. But that doesn’t mean that we Christians have to do it. In the weeks leading up to His birth, shouldn’t we imitate Jesus in doing what He did when He was preparing for an important event?

When Jesus was getting ready to begin His ministry, He withdrew from the world to fast and to pray. When He felt overwhelmed by the noise and crush of the crowds, He withdrew to fast and pray (Luke 5:15-16). As He faced His arrest, He went to the Garden to pray. Jesus faced the trials and challenges of His life through prayer and reflection. His disciples noticed this. They saw Him treat quiet prayer as a critical part of His life. Do we do that? Do we imitate Jesus or do we imitate the world?

As we prepare to celebrate His birth, we enter into Advent, which is meant to be a time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We should be spending quiet time in prayer, not frantically decorating our house, splurging on sweets, and buying everything in sight. Because if that’s what we’re doing, we’re being an example of worldliness. All that joyous celebration comes with Christmas, but now, we are called to prayer. We’re asked to prepare our hearts for His coming, to withdraw from the crowds and to pray.  

Many times it’s hard to know how we can set ourselves apart from the fallen world around us. We can do that in Advent. We can pray with our families at meals, including when we eat out in a restaurant. We can add additional prayer time for ourselves. There are lots of great Advent series online, but my favorite reading is the Book of Isaiah. The prophet unfolds the story of the coming Messiah in such beautiful images. He makes us feel the longing that the people of Israel felt for their Savior. We learn how they must have felt “walking in darkness” and knowing that a Great Light was coming for them. Isaiah is so beautifully poetic and I encourage you to read it in the weeks leading up to Christmas. And we should fast like Jesus did. Even if it’s only saying “no” to those Christmas treats, it’ a way we can control our appetites for the things of the world, for a greater good. We should also do good for others, and not just for our family and friends. We should give of our time and our treasure to folks who have no way of paying us back.

When you spend your Advent in quiet preparation, you can hear the Lord lead you to Himself. People will notice. They may ask, “Why haven’t you put up your Christmas tree yet?” They may wonder why your twinkling lights are missing. And you can use those questions (especially from your kids) to let them know the importance of preparing our hearts for Jesus’ birth at Christmas. It’s a chance to share your faith with others. It’s a chance to live differently than the unbelievers around us. Advent has been lost by many Christians and it’s time we reclaim its beauty and reverence. Light the first candle of your Advent wreath and let the joy of anticipating His coming fill your heart, as you wait.  

“At this Christmas when Christ comes, will He find a warm heart? Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving others, with God’s own love and concerns.”

—–Saint Teresa of Calcutta

Forgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite secular holiday.  It doesn’t involve much overdone commercialism and it’s free from all the consumer-driven anxiety of Christmas.  Thanksgiving is a day to remember and be thankful to God for all the graces and blessings in our lives.  We gather together with family and friends and share a meal.  Many of us may go to Church as well.  We’ll come together before the altar of God and offer our thanks to Him for the precious gift of our salvation:  His Son, Jesus Christ.  And we’ll ask God to forgive us for our sins.  We do this at the beginning of every Mass because there is such a strong connection between forgiveness and thanksgiving.  We can’t approach the thankfulness of Holy Communion until we’ve approached the Lord for mercy and forgiveness in the sacrament of Confession.  This is God’s plan for us.  And so, during this Thanksgiving week as we prepare the pies and the turkey to share with the people we love, let’s also prepare our hearts by forgiving those in our lives who have wronged us.

Forgiveness is at the heart of our salvation.  Through Christ, our sins are forgiven and we are reconciled to the Father.  Nothing we have ever done is so heinous that God’s mercy is denied us.  What a wonderful thing to know!  This alone is more than enough to fill our “things I am thankful for” list a thousand times over.  Our salvation journey starts when we acknowledge our sinfulness before God and beg His forgiveness.  But we grow in our faith when we extend that forgiveness to the people in our lives.  This is so important that Jesus included it in the perfect prayer He shared with His friends:  “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”(Luke 11:4).  As we receive God’s mercy we’re called to extend it to other people.  We must be conduits of forgiveness.  But we also know how difficult it can be to forgive someone, don’t we?  Everyone reading this has been hurt by someone and found forgiving them hard, or even impossible to do.  We’ve held onto the pain they caused us and maybe we’ve let it simmer like a poison inside us for months, or even years.  In fact, the root meaning of the word “grudge” is “to murmur”—isn’t that what unforgiven hurts do in our hearts?  They murmur and echo in the small dark closet in our soul where we harbor our secret pains.  And it saps the joy out of what God means for us to have.  We need to forgive to fully live our redeemed lives.

So, suck it up and forgive somebody.  Especially this week.  How can we gather in thankfulness if we have those murmuring hurts and angers?  Christ says, “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins”(Mark 11:26).  That’s how important it is for us to let go–we have to forgive so that God can forgive us.  In fact, God has only one solution to the problem of our sin and that is forgiveness.  “To forgive” means “to be gracious.”  We are called to give grace to one another as God has given His grace to us.  But what if that other person has been so mean, so hurtful, so awful that you just don’t believe they deserve to be forgiven?  Newsflash:  none us should hope to get what we really deserve.  Mercy is NOT getting what you and I deserve for our sins (i.e. punishment) and grace is getting what we DON”T deserve (i.e. mercy).  As Christians we live in the sweet grace of knowing that we NEVER get what we deserve, thanks be to God!  None of us deserves forgiveness so it’s mercy when we extend that to someone who has hurt us.  Forgiveness isn’t about fairness, it’s about grace.  And here’s something else to consider:  forgiveness isn’t a feeling, it’s a decision.  If you wait until you feel like doing it, you never will.  God doesn’t tell us to forgive them if we feel like it.  We read in Hebrews how God forgives:  “Their sins and their lawless acts I will remember no more”(10:17).  God chooses not to remember our sins.  We should imitate Him.  We make the choice to forgive and then we pray for God to help us live out that decision.

As you gather to share the holiday, remember to give thanks for God’s great love and mercy in your life.  In the end, what we have in this life is each other.  The Lord has forgiven your sins and offered you eternal life in Jesus Christ.  At the center of that love and grace is the Cross.  This Thanksgiving, lay the burden of your un-forgiveness at the foot of that Cross.  And be thankful.

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace.”—Ephesians 1:7-10

Advent—-before Christmas

“Well,” said Pooh,”what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think. Because although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.” –A.A. Milne

I would have told Pooh that these weeks before Christmas were like that moment before you taste the honey. When I was a child, this was a magic time. There was a flurry of preparation that seemed to transform everyday chores into something special. Everyone was busy with shopping and decorating and school activities. There was an energy that felt electric underlying everything we did. It was happy and fun and full of the anticipation of Christmas. Not being a Catholic family, we didn’t call these weeks “Advent,” but that’s what we were feeling—as if we were holding our breath for the great gift of Christmas. Like Winnie the Pooh, those moments before the big day were as sweet as honey.

These days, in my advancing middle years, Advent is so much more than my childish anticipation of Christmas day. I treasure more dearly the reality and the mystery of the Holy Child born to save us. The sense of sweet anticipation is stronger than ever for me. There’s still so much to be done, but now my “doing” involves more prayer and service and less shopping and decorating. The time spent with loved ones is so much more precious, since many are no longer here with us. And, it seems this Advent is calling us beyond the limits of our community and into the world beyond our borders.  

It seems the world itself is anticipating something, too. We’re waiting for the next news report, mostly with dread. Will more innocent blood be spilled? We’re holding our collective breath, hoping and praying for peace, while we’re still in mourning for the latest victims. And into our broken and hurting world, our Savior will once again be born to bring us hope. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great Light”(Isaiah 9:2). Are there any more beautiful words in all of Sacred Scripture?  

You see sometimes I think we forget that the Light has always come into a world darkened by sin. It’s our faith that allows us to bear that Light to others. We step out beyond our fears and see the needs of our neighbors, illuminated for us by the light of Christ. That light allows us to love the unloveable and to forgive the unforgivable. Whenever it seems the darkness is winning, the Star reminds us that there is more to this life than struggle and heartache, than war and loss and fear. Christ comes to bring us a way out of all that binds us to sin. In Him, we find our purpose and the answer to all our questions. In a world torn by terror and war, His Light shows us the way.

He first came into a land of occupation and repression, filled with poverty, torn by war. And He’ll come again into our own world, so much the same as that first time. He didn’t wait until everything was perfect and everyone got along before He was born. He came into our mess, into our sin and anguish. And just like Him, we can’t wait until someone else fixes everything before we love and comfort and heal the wounded among us. We have to be like Jesus and love now, today, this person, this family, this brother and sister right in front of us. The real anticipation we feel in the weeks leading up to Christmas isn’t about the presents we’ll receive but in the joy of giving ourselves away. Advent calls us to love as Jesus loves, and catch the world unawares.

“We cannot wait til the world is sane,

To raise our songs with joyful voice,

For to share our grief, to touch our pain,

He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

—-Madeline L’Engle

Miracles

As a psychology major in college, my understanding of biology and chemistry was (and is) tenuous at best. I remember the day we were reviewing the research that had led to our model of DNA, the so-called “building blocks of life.” We stood around the double-helix model as our professor detailed the way that DNA works. To me, it was a pure miracle. I wanted to shout, “Here is the proof for our Creator God!” Surely, only God could have made the world work in this delicate, precise way. After all these years, I might understand DNA just a tiny bit better, but it will always be a miracle to me.  

There are countless profound miracles all around us every single day. They exist whether we realize them or acknowledge them as miracles. Sometimes we mistakenly believe that the world revolves around us. But it’s we who revolve around the miracles. A sunrise. A butterfly’s wing. The curve of a baby’s cheek. In all our human endeavors, we can’t duplicate any of these miracles. Because at the heart of creation is something even more unknowable. The mystery of God Himself. The Creator of the universe, Who lived and died as one of us, His creatures. But why?

Why would an omnipotent, all-knowing God leave heaven to live as a man? And not as a rich and powerful man, born into the privilege of an easy, modern life of wealth and power, but born in an animal’s feed trough, in a poor, occupied outpost of the Roman Empire. He was a Jew in a land where Jews were the problem. And He was even a problem for His fellow Jews, especially for the king who viewed this baby as a threat to his kingship. So, to escape being killed, St. Joseph was forced to take Jesus and the Blessed Mother out of the country until things quietened down. Why would God choose such a humble and fearful childhood for His Son?

The only answer is love. You see, our God is not like any other god. No other religion describes a god who loves his children so much that he suffers for them, in their place. In fact, most gods are known for their fickle cruelty, quick tempers and easily-offended sensibilities. They spend a lot of their time watching their subjects from afar so they can be ready to punish or strike them dead when they mess up. But the God of Abraham is not like those gods. To begin with, our God created the minds that imagined those lesser gods. He made the universe and all that is in it, but He didn’t create us and then walk away to watch us from some far-flung Olympus. In fact, His very thoughts are what keep the universe in existence. That’s love. When you realize that the God of creation is thinking of you at every moment (and yes, even at your very worst moments) you begin to know the immense love that flows from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That relationship of the three Persons is Love itself. It creates and affirms, sacrifices and upholds. It is Love that made us and Love that sustains our existence–and the birds and the flowers and the DNA that unfolds into every living thing. The Love of God holds the universe in place and the stars in their courses.

And because of Love, the deepest mystery of all was presented to a little Jewish girl one day two thousand years ago. Not by force, but by invitation, almighty God looked to the Virgin Mary to bear His Son. She could have declined that invitation. But she was “full of grace”(Luke 1:28) and her heart embraced the mystery of bringing our salvation into the world. Her “yes” is our great model of how to follow the Lord. When God invites you, say “yes.” It won’t be easy, and there will be pain, even pain unto death on a Cross, but with God, death is only the beginning and never the final word.  

So now, as we journey towards another Advent and Christmas, we find our hearts drawn once again to that little family in Bethlehem. We pray to be like them, to gather in the hope of the Lord’s invitation to love and to be loved, to allow the mystery of His will to unfold in our lives. We light candles against the dark night and sing old familiar hymns about angels and wise men and babes in a manger. We are grateful to be held in the palm of His hand, loved beyond our knowing, treasured and adopted children of the King of Kings.  

“God has stepped into our world to dig us out of every prison we disguised as snug burrows and cozy hobbit holes.” —Unknown