Sunday Readings

Family Joy (Yeah)

On Christmas day, something wonderful and subtle happened in my room. My 8-month old nephew Jack was over with his parents and the rest of the family. I was sitting on the floor with him and his mother having a wonderful time playing with keys, flashing lights and even my laptop. At one point, he reached over for one of the two teddy-bears resting against a chair. Nothing unusual about that, is there? It’s just that he reached for the teddy-bear I intended for him. You see, I’d spent hours pouring over internet sites looking for them. Jack seems focused on contrast and Liam, his cousin, on texture. I bought bears I thought would ‘work.’ Jack went for the bear with the stronger dark and light of the face and eyes. Well, if you need proof of his choice, there’s a shot of him and the bear on my website at fatherdunn.org. I was really quite happy.

Aw, ain’t that just the cutest! You came here on Holy Family Sunday to listen to stories about babies and teddy-bears, didn’t you? No wonder the family in American society is falling apart!

Well if we presented the model of family life with images of teddy-bears, lollypops and magic dust, that would be an accurate assessment. In fact, in so many ways, that is what we do see. The family is either a mountain to climb or just a Hollywood set. Neither is possible nor real. We begin with the icon of the Holy Family and devolve into the ideal of dysfunction. When the religious and psychological standards fall apart, we console ourselves with our common membership among the imperfect. We put up with what is possible and do the best we can. If it doesn’t work out, re-define it. We can’t aim for the Walton’s but we don’t shoot for Jerry Springer. Somewhere in the middle is just good enough and it’s okay.

But what if, with all the various characters and variable situations, we did something different? What if we approached our idea of ‘family’ the way my nephew approached that teddy-bear?

In other words, what if we worked with what is in front of us? Imagine if we grabbed what is within our reach and simply enjoyed it? Maybe our disaffection and dissatisfaction is not with the people we are stuck with but the theories we just won’t let go?

When families gather, we tell each other to be good and don’t act up. And this goes well beyond the kiddies! Act your age and remember where you are. Don’t annoy this relative and be nice to this one. We come armed with scripts and costumes. On the more intimate level, we act with familiarity and even a bored comfort with each other that throws out these roles and we let each other be a little too natural. Here’s the problem with both: they are about creating something other than what is. Sure, big family events are not the same as pizza night. And no one should take anyone in their family for granted. But we are either at a family event or we are a family at an event. We are either having a family meal or we are a family having a meal. We are either creating or we are being.

With all the talk (and it is good to speak of these things) of ‘family values’ and ‘family-friendly’ activities, we cannot forget the family as persons. Values, content, structures, and all that are important, but never as important as the actual people in your house. The ideals, icons and imagery of the family is virtual but they are not us. The people who make up our families maybe warm and fuzzy or cold and prickly, but what counts is only that they are the people who make up our family. Families are born of two people who vowed to do this whole thing through ‘better or for worse.’ And the same is true for what happens after those words are spoken. If a marriage works only when two people love each other as they really are, doesn’t it make sense that a family can thrive only when that community of persons love each other as they are?

Yes, we always strive for more and for better. The drive to excellence is a key value at the heart of every decent human community. Will we come up short? You bet! People fail at goals and hurt the ones we say we love. We more easily annoy each other than support each other. But we never have to the excuse, or the permission to tolerate it from others, that gives us leave to abandon the whole project. Even the pillars of age and wisdom in our families do not have this right regardless of their assumed imperial proclamations of it. When we are faced with some one convinced that there is no good reason for hope, we have no reason to believe them. Challenging them, regardless of age or position in the family, may be disrespectful but it is also our duty. And no one - child, teen or adult – should respect the idea that what we have and who we are is not worth it.

So how do we, as Catholics, grow as Catholics and families?

Like little Jack, go for it. Grab hold of what you have. You can expect the world of each other and miss the life you’ve been given. So don’t. Are other families better than your? Absolutely. Are relationships stronger in their home than yours? Totally. But they are not your family. What you have, regardless of what you think of it, is yours.

And here’s the big religious finale: they are yours not because you chose them or got stuck with them. They are there and you are there for one profoundly simple reason. God set it up that way from the foundation of the world. Neglect them, and you neglect the handiwork of God. No one else will do for the job but the very ones who make up your family. By their creation and existence, every family is holy because it is the will of God. Fight that, and you fight God. But loving that - and working it as a family - is doing the will of God.

Don’t stop praying and striving to be a better family. But also, just be a family who is, by the will of God, chosen to be the will of God. And that, like a well-chosen teddy-bear, is worth holding on to.

Sunday Readings

The Cross and the Cradle

I don’t follow hockey. To me, it’s football on ice and just as complicated. But there was an interesting image the other day as two players reached a celebrated milestone. While posing for the picture, one player got into a tug of war as he attempted to keep his son in the picture. He prevailed and the other player reached out for his little one as well. It was endearing as this one player seemed to be making a statement that he was not complete without his son.

Well, at least that’s how I saw it through the cold and flu medications I was taking that night! The ‘struggle’ can easily parallel the annual ‘holiday display wars’ currently raging both near and far. And, yes, keeping ‘Christ in Christmas’ is very important as we engage a world that does not always seem to want this. But here, on this holy day, that is precisely what we are doing. And like that player on the ice, keeping the Child close seems to defy the decorum of the moment. To put it bluntly, this Holy Child is inconvenient.

That’s right – Jesus Christ is not convenient. His Nativity is the flashpoint for more family fights than we care to mention. A holiday of ‘comfort and joy’ is too often neither. I’d like to propose the following: We may work to keep Christ in Christmas but that Child should be seen and not heard. This Child was born, like us, to die. It’s just that what the end result has created is quite different. The poverty of His birth reflects the deprivation of His death. The rage of rulers at His appearance foreshadowed their rage at His apparent end. He was welcomed by strangers and rejected by His neighbors. The angels sang ‘Gloria’ and the crowds screamed ‘crucify Him.’

Hey, what are you doing? Isn’t this Christmas? Sure, a fond image of a snowy night and the twinkling of far-off lights would be nicer. But like the player holding onto his son for that picture, the Church is trying to keep the focus where it belongs. Without the Child, the real Child, the icon is not complete. This is the celebration of the birth of hope and joy and all that. But above all, this is the Nativity of the Savior of the World. This is the feast of the Incarnation when God became one of us so we could become like God. That ‘divine spark’ we all say dwells within has erupted into a five-alarm blaze as the reality of Divinity meets humanity. His birth put despair to death. His death will be our life.

No one likes to shatter an image of innocence such as we have constructed in our mind when we see Christmas. And since there are too many iconoclasts out there already, I will not join them. But the challenge of each Christmas is how well we are able to see the Christ of Christmas as the Christ of Calvary. Neither does injury to the other even if it provides no opportunity for a sale. This is the most complete of pictures and the most endearing image of a God of love.

I remember, as many of you will, that scene from the Passion of the Christ when Mary runs to Jesus carrying the cross. As she does, there is a flashback to years before as she ran to comfort the little boy who fell back in Nazareth. And, yes, this is where I fell apart. There is something so real and so powerful here. All the love and tenderness we associate with Christmas is not lost in the demanding difficulties of life. In fact, the ‘wonder of Christmas’ takes on a transforming significance when seen in this context. People give up on Christmas when they do not make the connection. They reject the Incarnation when they refuse to allow it again. They choose to rely on the packaged Christmas spirit and find it as empty as a cheap glass ornament.

But faith whispers on the wind of a dark night that this need not be so. Sometimes hidden and even obscure, another Christmas miracle can happen and the picture can be complete. The Incarnate Redeemer is here again, born into a world of people who suffer the loss and outrages of life. The way of the Cross can lead again to the soft light of the manger. The sin redeemed on that hill is redeemed again before the stable. If Christmas was hope born into a world so long ago, it is born again into ours. If the glory of God was seen in the drudgery of shepherds on the night shift, that glory can be ours as well.

My pastor growing up used to do something I found annoying. After consecrating the chalice, he used to sing before the memorial acclamation, O Come, let us adore Him. I remember him doing this once in August and thinking how silly. But he was right and in this minor liturgical infraction, he was making a very strong statement. He was bringing us to Bethlehem. In the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in this sacrament, he saw the crib and the cross of our savior. The passionate love of God is shown in the light of the stable and the darkness of Good Friday. And the overwhelming effect of both is a profound peace as we begin to rest in the favor of God.

So this Christmas, come to the cross of Bethlehem. Take all the difficulties and sins and pains and bring them before “the Babe, lying in a manger.” Proffer your best and offer your worst as you kneel before Him. Moved by thanksgiving for the good and sorrow for the bad, hear the song of salvation sung in a silent night. Rebuke your demons and behold His angels. Reject your darkness and see His light shining in the star of the East.

Christmas really is about hope and not merely wishful thinking. This Child is more than a new way of living because He is new life for all of us. Keep this Christ in Christmas. And as we bring the heaviness of life before Him, and as we remember all those whose burdens seem so great, we trust in the strength of a Baby. And receiving this sacrament, we each become a stable holding the precious redeemer of the world.

Have a wonderful Christmas of hope. And as you know the comfort and joy of God, may you bring those same glad tidings to all around you. The picture is complete and the victory is final. The Cross and the Cradle are both instruments of triumph. And as they were His, so also are they ours.

Merry Christmas.

Sunday Readings

Show Me

How often do we hear the words, “if you believe it, it will happen?” Visualize something and you can have everything. And, yes, there is power in using our imagination and desire but it is limited. I may visualize a huge trust fund but that does not mean I should immediately quit my job. I simply do not have that type of power or control. And sadly, the universe is not ordered to my will. But there is something unique to us human beings. We have an amazing capacity for things beyond us. In our simplicity, or even our arrogance, the fact that we can even imagine such omnipotence is astounding. And yet, we are told that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could move mountains.

Today, immediately before Christmas, we have a brief pause to reflect on a woman who crossed her own mountains because of something greater than herself. She felt the call to family charity and went to Elizabeth. She said ‘yes’ to God and we have reaped the benefits of her obedience.

Before the crowds and the craziness, we stop for this opening act. And since we do this in faith, we naturally consider what this means to us – this Sunday Mass – as a religious devotion. And as we prepare to celebrate the Incarnation, we naturally look to Mary’s role. It seems, right before Christmas, that our faith calls us to something very tangible.

So many Christmas stories are about the poor family who are miraculously able to find the resources to celebrate Christmas. There is a seemingly divine intervention that allows a sizable haul under the tree. Eternal life may be good but lots of toys for the kids is far better! Grace is wonderful and even amazing, but can it compare with the delightful screams accompanying the ripping of wrapping paper?

Emotionally, it doesn’t. We have divergent understandings of ‘gifts’ – divine, human, and otherwise. It seems as if we need things we can experience with our senses and leave the intangibles to religion. The ‘apparent me’ may be a gift hog who can never receive too many presents but the ‘real me’ is just fine with whatever God offers. We are so comfortable with this spiritual multiple personality thing that we do not pay much attention to it. We can attempt to spiritualize greed and materialize grace, but no one really buys it. A gift can symbolize the generosity of God but a new Playstation is a sacrament of the good life.

So on this busy day, the Scriptures offer us a question as we prepare to see how merry our Christmas will be. Through the things we eat and receive and do over the next two days, can we have a holy Christmas?

Let’s go back again to that point that says we can wish for all things and can expect them. We are not satisfied with the desire for them alone. We need to touch and to experience them. Faith also calls us to hope and dream and, likewise, we need that same tangible experience. As much as we cannot live through some one else, neither can we have a vicarious faith. God has children, not grandchildren. God is not looking for gestures; He’s looking for us. The Second Reading speaks of this: Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. In Mary, we see faith and we see the tangible. Her devotion was ‘spiritual’ and physical. It was as real as her prayer. Her ‘yes’ to God became flesh and was far more than a nod of agreement. The charity toward her family moved from feeling to crossing the hillsides.

What a wonderful note to open the events of Christmas 2006! In the middle of the gift giving and receiving, we have no reason to denigrate or elevate it to another meaning. We are touching the physical expression of “I love you’ and ‘I care about you.’ The generosity we receive and offer is just that – generosity. And we are better for both the receiving and the giving. We should revel in the physical because it is as real as the intention behind them. No, they are not perfect nor complete. But that does not make them any less real. Mary’s simple ‘yes’ to God changed everything. She heard of Elizabeth’s happy need and simply gave the gift of her presence by being there. Love needs to be proven. In Mary we can see that it was. We have the privilege and the right to do them same.

I heard a story of a priest who would open his Christmas cards and shake them as he did. Depending on what (if anything) fell out of them, he would say either ‘friend’ or ‘acquaintance.’ Funny, perhaps, but it touches the human need to give and to receive. It speaks of our understanding that love is not some spiritual cloud hovering like an over-soul. We need to sense it and experience it.

And, thankfully, we do. We know mercy because we hear it in the words of absolution. We see hope as a child is baptized into eternal life. We literally taste grace as we receive the Eucharist. God and His love are real. And, yes, we share in it as we generously offer and receive the gifts and greetings of Christmas.

So enjoy it. Be grateful and be engaged. Decorate and delight in the goodness you can touch and feel. God has chosen to make His love tangible. Ours should be no different.

Sunday Readings
Rightful Joy

Year after year, the Church shines the light on this Third Sunday of Advent to reveal something both missing and misunderstood in modern life. This is a day to celebrate joy. The word itself triggers images and emotions in everyone. Let me share one I have mentioned before.

While in the Seminary, we walked into a restaurant and had to wait at the bar for the table to be opened. A gentleman, well into his cups, noticed who we were. And to our relieved delight, he approved of us as he turned his slumping corpulence toward us. He told us one thing I cannot forget. He said that we should never preach or even mention the word joy. He told us that it did not exist and that it was a lie. Our table now opened, we thanked him for the advice and left him to ruminate the great truth he found prior to ordering another round. How sad; how joyless!

From a deep well of pain, this soul fed his misery. And for him, there truly was no joy. And who could blame him? Life had dealt him a hand that brought him to that conclusion. All of us have days when we are like that. This time of year makes these lesser moments sharper. We have a right to be melancholy. But when joy seems to desert us, we grow restless. It’s absence sends us on a tailspin and we do what our friend here was doing. We grow evangelical in our misery and demand that same absence of joy in those around us.

Sure, we say that misery loves company but joyless sorrow demands it. If we can’t have it, no one else can. Whole political systems and cultural trends are based on this policy. Envy, hatred, and the meanest forms of ‘justice’ are fueled by the lack of joy. The socialism of sorrow makes its fascist demands with the weapons of arrogance and guilt.

A terrible situation, clearly, and it causes us to ask what we can do about it. Don’t we send cards and ornaments urging each other to be joyful? Do we assign a solution or plot a system of ‘re-joying’ the world? We ask, as the purveyors of misery asked in the Gospel, “what should we do?” And could John the Baptist’s answers speak to us to today?

His answers are about doing things rightly. They are moral responses. And they do not bring joy. Moral rectitude is about bringing us closer to our better selves, not God. If we are not correctly aligned with what God has created us for, we are not exactly open to grace. We cannot actively participate in the life God has offered us if we think we are fine with the way things are. And joy does not sit well with a lie. It runs away from that darkness. It does not respect the values at odds with the truth.

Joy, like grace, mercy and peace, is not passive. It doesn’t ‘just happen.’ It is active and alive. It gets its energy from truth. Joy is the contented conversation with the goodness of God. It sees the good not as something over there or some one’s possession. It notices and celebrates the grace of God and our cooperation with it. It rises from within and is something we cannot live without.

Pause: Aw, ain’t that lovely? I obviously took my warm-fuzzy pills when I wrote this, didn’t I? You may think that I overdosed on Christmas cards this past week.

Not really.

Joy is something we aim for more than something we receive. We wish each other joy like we wish each other good luck. And often we are as confident in the former as we are in the latter. John the Baptist is yelling his caution to us that joy is our right and our blessing. Life, and all that makes it up, has a competing message. And since joy is bold and powerful, this means we have a fight on our hand. Like our friend at the bar, like the ‘Christmas Blues’ and all our dour moments, we bristle at such sorrow and know that we deserve better.

So do we deserve joy? Do we have a right to be happy? Darn tootin’ we do! The Declaration of Independence says so – well at least the pursuit of it. John the Baptist warns us to be on the look out for it. Jesus tells us to grab it. We have a right to find contentment in the goodness of God. We have an obligation to be happy. We have an urgent need to clear away any sin, any lie, that tells us we do not. That is a joy no card can wish and not tinsel can bestow.

God is good. Life is good. We are ‘wonderfully made.’ We accept nothing less and aspire to so much more. We stubble and defeat ourselves at every turn but still find that higher calling to happiness within. It’s a journey of our lifetime. As Brooks and Dunn sing of this road, they discover, “The road to heaven is filled with sinners and believers. Happiness on earth ain’t just for high achievers.”

That is the road of joy. It is the honest contentment with the goodness God shows us the midst of our own rebellion against it. And while the mistakes we make try to banish it, joy tenaciously refuses to accept defeat. It is our time and our right to be joyful simply because God told us to.

So, “shout for joy, O daughter Zion. Be glad and exult with all your heart. The Lord, your God, is in your midst.”

In other words, “Smile, God loves you.”

Sunday Readings
For Goodness' Sake

If some one told you not drink laundry detergent, it would be a good warning. If some one told you not eat deep-fried potatoes chips, we’d note that pearl of wisdom and move on. If yet another person told us to put that baseball card in a drawer for 30 years, we’d regret it if we didn’t. We live in a world of advice, wisdom and warning. It is freely offered and just as freely rejected. Some is better than others and a few are truly important. Given our lives of warning labels, threat assessments, and voices calling for everything, it would make sense that when we walk into church, we would hear the same thing.

And you’d be correct. Yes, you’ll hear warnings about sin – especially when you see the purple of these vestments. Sure, you are encouraged to choose what is better because that is what we do here. But there is a difference from what you hear outside. And our Advent friend John the Baptist is our clearest sign that we mean business – but not as usual.

John was to prepare the way of the Lord. To do that, he called the people to repentance. He did this through a warning or two and salted his message with the evidence of sin’s consequences. To hear him today, we can take his message as a prophetic word to live our lives by choosing good and avoiding bad. And while that is correct, there is more. And that is the difference that matters.

At this time of year, we are urged to be ‘good for goodness sake.’ And while I personally don’t get that, I can also see the value of avoiding being bad for no good reason. We can all agree that ‘being good’ is a fine thing and ‘being bad’ is not. It’s a reasonable idea to avoid evil simply because it is evil. And there is a virtue in being good only because it is good. We take this and slap on a bit of religion and - voila – we have virtue and vice. Religion buts on its badge and John the Baptist becomes the icon of preaching to make people live well. But how does this moral preaching and right living prepare the way of the Lord? How can our efforts at living the Gospel prepare us for the grace of Christmas?

In a very important way, they – of themselves – cannot. No encouragement to moral rectitude can bring us closer to Christmas. No renunciation of sin can make God’s grace shine brighter. The warning of John, the admonition of Advent, is that we must prepare a way and not just by moving things out of the way.

Let me give an example since I know this can sound like splitting hairs. Let’s pretend that I have a neighbor who is nasty and I have trouble even seeing them. I hear the message of loving the neighbor so I determine to do just that. Am I closer to God that way? That person is as nasty as ever and I am spending a lot of energy trying not to despise them. But has this brought me closer to the Person of Christ? What I have done is a good thing, personally rewarding, and a religious act in imitation of Christ Himself. But why I did it is another matter. And that is what concerned John.

You see, repentance is not about merely avoiding what is wrong. Repentance is about conversion. Literally, it means a turning ‘from’ as much as it means a turning ‘toward.’ It is about the goal, not the game. When we repent, we aim for an openness to grace and not just the removal of sin blocking us to mercy. Yes, sin is bad and harmful. There’s nothing untrue about that warning.

But God is more interested in us than our sins. He wants our hearts more than our behavior. In this brief Advent, we don’t have the time or energy to work on our religious practices like we do in Lent. We are in Christmas before we know it and can’t focus on the small and practical things of penance. And this can be a blessing. Instead of putting so much into giving up, we are given the opportunity of preparing for the greatest Reason to do anything. We can ask ourselves if why we live the way we do is right rather than merely focusing on living rightly.

I think that is why Advent is so rich in the poetry of Christmas. There is an internal beauty to the conversion of preparation that sees a greater grace and a higher reason in each person’s faith and life. The advice and warning of the season is a call from a loving God to see that in the face of a new-born babe. We can all try and some can actually be good. But God knows that only in wonder can we be holy. And while our lives should reflect that awe and wonder, only grace can lead us there.

Listen to the call of John the Baptist. Heed his call to wonder and to live free of sin that blinds us to glory. In the quiet of wordless prayer, see the God who became like us so we could be like Him.
As we come closer to the Feast of the Incarnation, we begin to touch the mystery we can only begin to grasp. In the Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, we pray for this grace as we sing:

How silently, how silently,
the wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
the blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive Him still,
the dear Christ enters in.

Amen. Come Lord Jesus!

Sunday Readings
What a rush!

Strangely, this has been a really hard homily to write. I found it difficult to drum up the old ‘get ready for Christmas’ thing since we only have three weeks till the big day. It hasn’t been cold yet and the calendar is already filled. And the readings really don’t help, do they? They are not exactly inspiring us to look on the face of the Redeemer in a new-born baby. But the greatest challenge was to preach the ‘be prepared’ message of Advent.

We don’t take those messages too well. Our computers show hurricanes on our doorstep and we wonder if we should bring an umbrella. We know a better shortcut so forget the traffic report. We can be so silly, so not-there. And then we act surprised. We wonder what happened and how did it get here so soon. The ‘Christmas Rush’ implies that the 25th was a ‘rascally rabbit’ that snuck up on us.

But it doesn’t. In fact we need a dose of reality in this ‘magical’ season. Advent – short as it is – gives us the reality and better prepares us for the Nativity than a continuous loop of ‘’seasonal selections’ playing over the mall loudspeakers.

We are not waiting for the birth of the Christ Child since that already happened. Nor do we think that this day will automatically bring peace on earth to a well-armed group of people who are not looking for it. The day will not bring unwarranted hope for those oppressed by the evils they and others bring upon them. Christmas does not work unless we work it. Without Christ, Christmas is just a holiday of humanity’s better angels.

But Christmas is about the yom Adonai – the day of the Lord. It is the moment when the awesome power of God shakes the heavens and the earth as His Divine presence is shown to all. It is the revelation of Emanuel – the Gospel that God is with us. It is so profound, it shakes the depths of the sea. It is so transcendent, the angels softy sing their Gloria. It is so wrapped in mystery, only a shining star can point it out. And the tremendous majesty of the Creator is seen in the splendor of new-bon Baby.

This is the ancient promise in a surprising revelation. We fondly celebrate Christmas as we do because it is in the dearest of human terms alone that we can begin to consider its meaning. Sure we get lost sometimes along the way. The Incarnation can be confused as we sing of hit and runs involving grandparents and reindeer. The birth of the Light of the World can be obscured by unusual red nasal illuminations.

But we can have it both ways. We have permission to welcome the corpulent omniscience of Mr. Claus so long as we understand the reason for his generosity. Frosty defied the natural order and we aim for the super-natural. We revel in the ‘Christmas Spirit’ because we have been graced with the Holy Spirit. We wake up on Christmas Day filled with anticipation because we anticipate the Day of the Lord.

So with such a short season of preparation, and so much to do, how do we get ready to celebrate the Nativity of Christ?

First of all, enjoy it. Attend the plays and decorate the house. Buy the gifts and send the cards. Too many spend their time fretting that it is all too much or too off focus. They fight the annual battle of public displays and privately worry that Christ is lost. Do what we do and have no problem saying why.

Secondly, keep Christ in the center. This is a holiday about peace? Or magic? Or childhood wonder? We say that it is a feast about Christ. We celebrate His birth and why He was born. Can some one celebrate the solstice and the best of human good wishes? Knock yourself out, but we celebrate Christ. Are you offended that we do? Deal with it. “I won’t judge you if you don’t. Don’t judge me if I do.” No one but you can take Christ out of Christmas. No one but you can keep the focus on Him.

Thirdly, prepare for the Day of the Lord by speaking with the Lord each day. Pray together as you light the Advent wreath before dinner. Spend a quiet moment by yourself before the empty crèche. Use the Sacrament of Confession or a few minutes in this open Church during the day.

There is not a lot of time but there is no rush either. The presence of God-made-flesh is not found only on Christmas morning but every time we turn to Him who has never left us. That blazing reality, translated into the flickering lights of trees and fences and houses festooned in electric outlines, is our truest joy. It is about the radical and transforming truth that God is with us even if we are not always with Him.

Throughout the year, I great people at the end of Mass and usually say – even in the summer – ‘Merry Christmas.” The little ones object and say “but it is not Christmas.” Well every time we witness the Eucharist, we are in Bethlehem again. The world may keep Christmas to one day – as they do Thanksgiving. We do something very different. We celebrate that grace of the God’s presence every moment He gives us in this life. We don’t look forward to the Day of the Lord as much as we live each day in the mercy of the Lord.

So get ready and prepare for what already is. Look forward to what shall come and live what we’ve been given.