by Msgr. Joseph Calise
As we celebrate the fourth Sunday of Advent on the liturgical calendar, the more worldly calendar is telling me that it is also the day before the day before Christmas.
Gratefully, my Christmas chores are done – gifts are bought and wrapped, schedules are set and cards are in the mail. Each year as I get older, I want to simplify things. As the grandnieces and grandnephews are getting older, gift cards are replacing toys. Decorations become simpler and the social calendar no longer has me running among two states and four counties in an evening.
One of the customs, however, that I am just not comfortable streamlining is sending out Christmas cards. Year after year, I promise to start cutting down on the list and removing the names of people I no longer hear from, but I hope I never convince myself to actually go through with it.
Isaiah’s prophecy in the first reading is that the children of Israel will be reclaimed when “she who is to give birth has borne.” A time that, we know, has already come.
Throughout Advent, we have been celebrating liturgically a time that has already taken place historically. The Child has been born. However, we also know that the Child grew and taught, forgave, called, died, rose, ascended, loved and sent the Spirit. We know that the Child changed the world forever.
As the poem, One Solitary Life, puts it:
“Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. … Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone, and today Jesus is the centerpiece of the human race, and the leader of all human progress. I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever were built, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that have ever reigned put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that One Solitary Life.”
Today’s Gospel inspires us to see how the presence of Jesus changed Mary’s life and through her John the Baptist’s while he was still in his mother’s womb and through him Elizabeth’s so that she could shout out her greeting to Mary and acknowledge her as the Mother of her Lord.
These last days before Christmas give us the invitation to reflect on how the presence of God in the world, tangible everyday in the Eucharist, in the community of faith and in the Word, has changed our lives. In this Presence, we find a guide in prayer, hope in suffering, fellowship in a community, comfort in reconciliation and the meaning of life and death in the promise of resurrection.
Reflection and Action
That one life changed history forever and we are called to reflect, but reflection demands action to be complete. Just as Mary and John the Baptist, if I am convinced that Jesus is present, I have to pass that Good News on.
So, if my once-a-year contact by Christmas card is a way of acknowledging all the good the presence of God has brought into my life and a way of wishing people who touched my life in some way the same experience of God’s love – I’ll keep sending them.
After all, what does Merry Christmas mean if not, “May the power of the presence of God be in your life a source of great joy!”[hr]
Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Micah 5: 1-4a
Psalm 80: 2-3, 15-16, 18-19
Hebrews 10: 5-10
Luke 1: 39-45
Msgr. Joseph Calise is the pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish, Williamsburg.
