2013 Christmas Message
Christmas is a wondrous time of the year. We all get caught up in the excitement and adventure of the season we call Christmas. It can mean so many different things, to us and to different folks. Read more →
Fourth Sunday of Advent (A)
Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalms 24:1-6; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24
Amidst all the activities that swirl around these final days before Christmas, the Church wants to make sure that we don’t forget the real meaning of this great Christian holiday.
Christmas is the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, the day when we celebrate the “Mass” of “Christ’s” birth – Christ-Mass.
The exchange of gifts that we are getting ready for; the time that we will be spending with family and friends – these are good things. They are good ways to celebrate. Exchanging gifts reminds us that on Christmas God gave us his greatest gift, our Saviour.
Spending time with family members reminds us that the result of that gift was our salvation, which consists in our adoption into God’s family through the grace we received at baptism.
This is the heart of what Christmas is all about. But it is not just something that happened in the past.
Through the Church and the sacraments, Christ has wanted to stay with his newly adopted family all throughout history. In a sense, every Mass is a new Bethlehem, a new coming of Christ among us. And every day he renews his invitation to us, the invitation he brought when he arrived on earth that on the first Christmas night.
What is that invitation? St Paul described it well in the Second Reading. He wrote that a Christian is someone who is “called to belong to Jesus Christ” and “called to be holy.” Christ comes at Christmas, but he doesn’t come passively – he comes to save us, to call us out of a self-centered life and into a Christ-centered life.
That’s what it means to “belong to Jesus Christ” and “to be holy.” And that’s exactly what all of us are called to. We are called to be holy through our service to our brothers and sisters. This is exactly what Jesus did: He showed God’s love to us through his service to others and ultimately through his total sacrifice in his death for us. This is true love!
This is the kind of God we believe in.Jesus Christ is a God who comes to save us; who will never abandon us; who was willing to leave the very throne of heaven and come to take our place in this fallen, sinful world; just because he couldn’t bear losing our friendship.
God is our Father – the perfect Father that we can always count on. Christmas reminds us of that. It is the fulfillment of all his promises. At this time of year, then, our hearts should be especially full of gratitude. And what is the best way to express that gratitude? By following in Jesus’ footsteps. God has kept his promise to us, so let’s renew our commitment to keep our promises to him.
At our baptism we first made those promises – or, if we were too young, as most of us were, our parents and godparents made them on our behalf. At our confirmation we freely and consciously renewed them.
We promised to reject evil, sin, and the temptations of the Devil.We promised to imitate Christ in our daily lives, most especially in following the two greatest commandments of loving God with all our hearts and loving our neighbor as ourselves. And we promised to put our God-given talents to work in supporting the mission of the Church – to bring Christ’s gospel to people who have not accepted it. In short, we promised to avoid evil, do good, and build up the Church.
God is hoping we will do our best to fulfill these promises – not just for duty’s sake, but because they are the path to true meaning and happiness, to a deeper friendship with Christ.
At the same time, God knows that we can’t fulfill these promises if we depend just on our own human strength. But if we keep trying, he will make sure our efforts bear fruit. This is his ongoing promise – which he will renew again today in the Eucharist.
And so, when we receive him in Holy Communion, let’s give him an early Christmas present by renewing our ongoing, baptismal promises – trusting not in our own strength, which always fails, but in his, which never fails.
Third Sunday of Advent A
Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6, 10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11;
The word “joy”, in one form another, was used six times in our Gospel today. Do you think God is trying to tell us something? We have put away our dark vestments today; we have traded our purple and midnight blue vestments for rose vestments.
Do you think the Church is trying to tell us something?
The dark night in which the world waited helplessly for its Savior is coming to an end; Christmas is drawing closer; Christ will soon be born. Christ himself is the sun that lights up the dark night sky, and he is drawing near; the horizon is beginning to glow with a pale, rose-colored light. The rose vestments are a visual echo of the words of the First Reading, which called us to rejoice.
Today is the Sunday of Rejoicing. But isn’t this a naive, childish thing to do in today’s world? After all, the world is still flooded with sin. Every day the news reports about death, violence, genocides and natural disasters. Isn’t it selfish and foolish to rejoice in the middle of such a suffering world?
Not at all. We do not rejoice because we believe Jesus came to bring heaven down to earth. Rather, we rejoice because we know that Jesus came to open a path from earth into heaven. The joy of the Christian is the joy of a hope guaranteed by God himself. This is true joy, the joy of hope, and Christ is its source.
His revelation is the pinprick of light that is the source of true, lasting joy, not the anaemic joy that is inspired by the passing flicker of a fragile candle. It is not hard to let this spirit of true joy brighten up our lives these days, as Christmas comes closer.
Even though consumerism has learned to take advantage of this season in many places, it has done so by surrounding us with decorations, images, and music that can serve as excellent reminders of the truth that Christ has come to live among us – the truth that is the source of Christian joy.
The evergreen wreaths and Christmas trees are a symbol of God’s undying love, always green and fresh, even in the middle of darkest. The lights and glittering bulbs remind us that Christ’s light came to conquer the darkness of sin and ignorance, and that it will always continue to shine, leading us to true happiness.
But above all, the manger scenes that abound this time of year vividly portray the most amazing fact in human history: God actually became a human being. He was actually born once as Mary’s little baby, so that by our faith in him we could be born again as children of God. The manger in Bethlehem, in fact, is the reality that all the other symbols point to.
Today, as Christ renews his presence among us in the Eucharist, let’s promise that as we approach the celebration of Christmas, we will let that presence bring joy to our hearts – true joy, the kind that only Christ can give.
Second Sunday of Advent (A)
Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalms 72:1-2,7-8,12-13,17; Romans 15:4-9; Matthew 3:1-12
In St. Luke’s Gospel, when John the Baptist calls his followers to repentance, they ask him, “What must we do? ” In reply, he says, ” If anyone has two tunics he must share with the man who has none, and the one who has something to eat must do the same” (Lk. 3:10-11).
If you think that you have nothing to repent, no need to change, then think again about the opportunities you have lost to be of genuine service to other people — people in need, people who are hurting. As we move deeper into the season of preparation for Christmas, hopefully we become more and more aware of the need to put the newness of the Christmas Event into our life experience. Mere words about it will never live up to the genuine experience of doing it.
In today’s Gospel Lesson, John the Baptist is preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “and this was his message: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand'” (Mt. 3:1,2). John is baptizing penitents in the River Jordan, but when he sees many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he says to them, “Brood of vipers, who warned you to fly from the retribution that is coming? But if you are repentant, produce the appropriate fruit…” (Mt. 3:8).
John is lashing out at the Pharisees and Sadducees because their desire for baptism is not heartfelt, but conformist. His preaching and his ascetic way of life is bringing great crowds of penitents to be baptized. He is warning his followers of the “wrath to come,” unless they repent and are baptized. And the Pharisees and Sadducees, seeing what is going on, decide that they’d better get baptized too in order to shelter themselves from the potential catastrophe that John is predicting.
We are being called to turn our lives around so radically that our deepest longing, our heartfelt desire, our number one priority will be to follow the Lord Jesus Christ on the journey to fulfillment. We are being called to turn our lives around so radically that instead of conforming to the popular view of what will make us happy, we put our trust in the Lord’s promise to give us life and give it to us abundantly. “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is close at hand” (Matthew 3:2).
The Advent Message is directing us to turn off the TV, tune out the trivia, and program some serious self-reflection time. The Advent Message is directing us to think about what is really important and take time to focus on the changes we must make.
As a faith community we already know that we don’t need to change in order to be loved by God. Rather, the change occurs as we open ourselves up to receive His Divine Love. Jesus dedicated His entire ministry — Jesus gave His life — in order to convince us that God loves us infinitely, and unconditionally!
In the desert of Judea more than two thousand years ago, John the Baptizer cried out the news of the coming of the Lord. When the crowds flocked to him for baptism the people asked, “What ought we to do?” John replied in specifics. They must help feed and clothe the needy and stop cheating and exploiting the vulnerable. In other words, it was not enough to come and confess sins. To properly prepare for the coming of the Lord, they needed to be ready and willing to change in a way that would enrich their person-to-person relationships.
And now we are being called to repentance. We are being called to prepare for the coming of the Lord Jesus by radically reforming our lives.
As we move deeper into the Advent season, we are called to the newness of the Christmas Event which remind us that God’s love and power are discovered in the ordinary parts of our lives.
As we move deeper into the Advent season, may we faithfully answer the clarion call to be ready, and willing to change.
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