I can’t wait for Christmas

Advent is over, and Christmas has come. We’ve lit the fourth candle on our Advent wreathes, and even the fifth one, the large white Christmas Candle. Mary has given birth to her firstborn son, her only son, the Son of Man, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Remember when we were children—we couldn’t wait for Christmas Day. We couldn’t wait to open our presents, which had been sitting quietly under the tree for weeks. But even as children, we knew that Christmas joy was greater than gifts under the tree. I can remember getting a toy ice-cream maker for Christmas when I was ten years old—it had a little sticker shaped like a TV screen with the words “as seen on TV!!!” It was just what I wanted—I imagined unlimited quantities of chocolate ice-cream pouring from this magic machine: after all, I had seen it on TV. But when I tried it out, the little plastic gadget didn’t work. All it produced was a thin gooey mess. My Christmas, and my life, were ruined. But actually I began to realize that Christmas, and all of life, must be more than getting what we think we want. Jesus broke my ice-cream maker so that I would learn the emptiness this world’s satisfactions.

Even as children, we hoped for the greater spiritual gifts, and we still do. But our hopes fade as we leave childhood. Someone sent me a Christmas joke that sums up our situation: there are four stages of life. You believe in Santa Claus; You don’t believe in Santa Claus; You become Santa Claus; You look like Santa Claus. We hope that there is a fifth stage: You believe in Santa Claus again, but you believe in Him in whom Santa Claus believes. Santa kneels at the manger too. “No one,” says the catechism, “whether shepherd or wise man, can approach God here below except by kneeling before the manger and adoring Him hidden in the weakness of a newborn child.”

When we were children, we couldn’t wait for Christmas. We prayed: God, bring Christmas soon; shorten the days until Christmas morning! What has happened to that innocent longing for Christmas Day as we’ve grown older? If as children we prayed for Christmas to come soon, as adults we must pray just as fervently that Christ will come soon. Christmas points not so much to Jesus’ first coming in Bethlehem as to his second coming in glory on the clouds of heaven. How easily we forget that it is toward Christ that all of life is oriented. We settle for tawdry satisfactions and distractions from our essential purpose. A car. A house. A career. A relationship. All of these things, like the presents under the tree, only point to the real gift, the gift of a divine person, who is Christ the Lord. You will see this Jesus in the people around you and in the events of your daily life, if you search for him, if you can’t wait to see him, if you wish for him as longingly as a child wishes for Christmas Day.

Our Lady longs to see Him

Let’s try to be like Our Lady of the Annunciation, whom God blessed because she believed in his promises. She knew he would come, and she prayed day and night for his arrival. And then he came to her, through the Angel Gabriel. Like Our Lady, let us try to orient our entire lives on the expectation of his coming, as we say in the end of the Creed: “expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vita venturi saeculi.” Christianity is essentially forward thinking, straining itself to future glory. Every conversation, every activity, every aspect of our careers, our friendships, and our worship should be focused on this expectation. Our lives must be spent scanning the horizon for a sign of his coming, like the wise men scanned the heavens for the Bethlehem star. May that star guide us all this coming year, so that when he returns, we might receive him with joy.

A blessed and Merry Christmas, to all of you.

Advent looks forward, not backward

We have entered the Season of Advent and most of us are thinking of Christmas; in fact, I began my Christmas cards yesterday. But Advent is not about Christmas, at least in the Extraordinary Form readings; it’s about Christ’s Second Coming. The Epistle today clearly warns us to prepare ourselves, and the Gospel foretells a terrifying end of the world. The next three Sundays of Advent are less apocalyptic but no less focused on the Second Coming. They say nothing about the birth of the baby Jesus, nor do we hear any Messianic prophecies, as in the Ordinary Form readings. Advent, at least in the Extraordinary Form, is meant to focus us on the Second Coming of Christ, not his First Coming. What if Christ were to return to earth during this “Holiday Season.” Would we be ready for him? Would the world, which has removed the very name of Christ from Christmas, be ready for him? Here he comes, and there we are, waiting in line at Macy’s, or fuming with road rage on the way to the mall. If Christ knocked on your door an hour before your big Christmas party, would you let him in? “Honey, tell whoever it is to come back next week—I’ve got so much to do before the guests arrive!” I’m not forbidding Christmas parties, but let’s try to keep Advent in focus. Our priority during Advent, and Christmas, is not social fun, but prayer and Christian love and almsgiving, some measure of penance. Our Christmas parties and shopping and tinsel are fine, if we keep them within the authentic purpose of the liturgical season. The coming Kingdom of Jesus Christ is the guiding purpose of Advent.

People will die of fright

On the First Sunday of Advent, as I said, we hear of confusion and terror: the sea and the waves will roar; the powers of the heavens will be shaken. “Nations will be in dismay; people will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming.” It is for these days that we must prepare, because they will surely come. At His First Coming, God came as a darling baby on the lap of his childlike mother Mary. At His Second Coming, Christ will come on the clouds with power and great glory, his authority fully manifest. “When these things begin to pass, look up, because your redemption is at hand.” We are preparing for our redemption, for we are not yet redeemed—it is “at hand,” it is near, but not yet here. God’s judgment on our lives, His sentence on our time, has yet to come. Everyone in this church today (especially me) could end up in hell, and it would be an unspeakable tragedy if even one of us were eternally damned. Advent calls us to keep this danger in mind during our Christmas parties and shopping adventures, but also to keep in mind the proximity of our redemption. Now is the time to prepare for judgment; now is the time to hope for redemption.

Prepare

How do we keep a good Advent? Many Americans begin the “Christmas Season” with the new civic holiday we call “Black Friday.” The very name indicates a culture that was once Christian but has become the negative image of what it once was. Children of the light, St. Paul says, “throw off works of darkness.” If we’ve thrown Christ out of Christmas, then indeed it is a “Black Friday.” Do we prepare for Christ by eating and drinking? Again, St. Paul: “not in orgies and drunkenness, rather, make no provision for the desires of the flesh.” Folks, we are supposed to lose weight in this season, at least before December 25. But we do live in a time that ignores and despises the Word of God. Yet everything but the Word of God will burn in the universal fires at the end of human history.

There is a true Advent, and there is a false Advent. The false is the negative image of the true. The true Advent has gradually been turned upside down, and we don’t often stop to think about it. Christians are to practice deeper prayer, charity, and mortification in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Funny thing is, we mostly do just the opposite. We pray less and we eat more. We waste more money at Christmas on more banalities, precisely at the time the Church urges us to simplify, to spend less time and money on distractions. Let’s try to refocus, to direct that time and money this time of year on the things that last: on deeper prayer, on sacrificial and heartfelt charity. Advent is a time to remember the neediest, to give gifts without expecting a return.

Our Lady

In the end, Advent prepares us for our own death, and the death of our world as we know it. Deep down, we long for the death of all that is imperfect and sinful, so that we can enter into a new and perfect life. Death is hard, and more than anyone, we need our Blessed Mother at the hour of our death. Our mother brings us to birth, and God has ordained that she be with us at the hour of our death. If Advent points us to the end of all things and the beginning of a new Kingdom, then Our Lady must be a large part of Advent and Christmas. And indeed she is, on almost every Christmas card and still (Deo Gratias) on US Postal stamps. Even as we shop and have parties and write cards, let us bring Jesus and Mary to every Advent activity—a decade of the rosary or the Angelus and some real Christmas carols at every Christmas party—so that we will be prepared to meet Christ when he returns to earth.

Why Midnight?

First, I wish all of you a Blessed and Merry Christmas, and I thank you for attending the Midnight Mass, especially those brave enough to do so with little children in tow. During my boyhood in Pennsylvania, Mom and Dad would pile all six of us into the station wagon for Midnight Mass. We could see bright stars shining sharply in the cold black sky. We would crunch through ice and crusted snow to the church for a long Mass. Why, I complained, must we have Mass in the middle of the night? It’s too dark and cold! And my mother would explain that we go to Mass at Midnight because Jesus was born in the darkness, in the middle of the night. The Church celebrates Christmas Mass in the dark to underscore our liberation from darkness: we are no longer afraid of the dark. There is no darkness for men of faith because a child is given us, and we name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.

Earthly Darkness

True enough, the world is dark. The world without Christ is very dark. America celebrates Christmas this year with her flags at half-mast, watching the funerals of twenty schoolchildren, and wondering who will be next. Lurking in the backs of our minds is the fact that America kills thousands of children every day, with the support of the government and the approval of many Christian churches. The world is dark. Its movies are dark—I saw The Hobbit the other day and found it so much more dark and barbaric than Tolkien’s graceful tale of “there and back again.” So much of contemporary music, art, internet sites, news stories, clothing styles, and the rest of secular culture communicates gloom and desperation. We are a people addicted to anti-depressants, but it doesn’t permit us to evade the pervading fear and darkness.

No Longer Darkness

The world is dark, but God’s Kingdom is bright and beautiful. In the words of Isaiah, “To a people who walked in darkness, who dwelt in a land of gloom, a light has shown…. for a child is born to us.” The powers of this world fear and hate the child. They try to kill it, and they succeed in killing many children. But they cannot kill this Child.

St. Luke begins the Christmas story by acknowledging the powers of this world. “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled….” Caesar had the power to command the “whole world,” even the Mother of God and God himself in her womb. They went obediently to Bethlehem to register with the government. No woman about to give birth should bounce on a donkey for three days, sleeping in strange places, exposed to cold and danger. And in the cold and dark she had her child, a child who would banish cold and dark forever. Cold is not cold for us, and dark is not dark, because God Is With Us.

Caesar will fail us. Governments that ignore the Law of God bring only darkness and suffering to their people. Our government used to acknowledge a power higher than itself, and we pray that it will again someday. We pray that the leaders of our Church will also submit to the will of God in everything, refusing to make bargains with the powers of this world. But no matter how dark it gets out there, our blessed hope shines brightly in here, close to Jesus in the Blessed Eucharist. No worldly power, no abuse of worldly power, and no cultural decline, can extinguish this light. No Caesar and no Herod can kill this baby. We must stay close to Him, our only hope. We must stay as close to Him as did his Holy Mother, and St. Joseph, and the Holy Shepherds and Kings from the East. We must be saints like them, because outside of Jesus, it is cold, and dark, and hopeless.

We join the Blessed Mother at the manger tonight, not at all mindful of the dark and the cold. We pledge ourselves this night to stay beside them, and to never let go. We can be merry this Christmas, and of good cheer every day, because today is born our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord.