Christmas December 24/5, 2018
Fr. Albert St. Peter’s, New Iberia
I’ve got good news and bad news. It’s the same news, actually. Christmas is here! Good news if it’s your favorite holiday. Good news if you really got into advent and were waiting for today. Bad news for most people who’ve lost a loved one recently. Bad news if you’re a grinch or a scrooge. Bad news if you’ve been celebrating for months now and this means the party is over.
The Christmas season has a lot of power in it. Power to bring someone joy or remind them of pain. Power to bring family together or tear them apart. Power to lift up the economy or leave it lacking. What is it that gives it such power?
Many ways we could answer that, but here’s one you might not expect. Christmas is like a hurricane. Yes, a hurricane. And I don’t mean because it’s 70 or even 80 degrees some years. Walker Percy, American author and Louisiana native, once pondered the effect of hurricanes on morale. It seemed to him that people felt better as the storm loomed.
His theory was that it cut through the apparent meaninglessness of daily life – what he called the “malaise.” It blew away the mundane and charged the atmosphere with some value. In other words, an approaching storm imparted a sense of purpose on those in its path. The humdrum gives way to preparation, the expectation of change. The more tragic storms are different, but when the storms do little more than knock out power and disrupt work and school, they provide a chance to touch a deeper reality – to see things in a different light.
It’s not the exact same thing, but I wonder if the Christmas season brings that same force to bear on us. As the fall months start to come, this day looms in the distance casting a shadow, or perhaps a bright light, over the time that lay between it and us. As the days count down, people start to plan and prepare, or perhaps look away with dread. But most people have to respond to it in some way. Gifts to buy, decorations to put up, plans to make.
Yes, daily work and school carry on, but spare moments start gravitating to the weight of today. The questions, “What are you doing for Christmas?” and “Have you started/finished your shopping?” become more frequent. The weeks right before today are always filled with deadlines: papers, exams, end of the year reports. This day stands just beyond them as a kind of peak, a moment of arrival.
And I’m sure it was the same way for Mary and Joseph. An arduous journey to Bethlehem. The months of being pregnant. The abiding wonder at how this baby came to be. The first Christmas, like the ones after, filled lives with purpose and gave a definite goal.
So, yeah, part of the power of Christmas is like a hurricane in that it delivers a sense of purpose: something more than daily routine. And that gives joy to most, dread to some.
But now it’s here and all of that will go away just as quickly as the many hurricanes whose names we don’t remember. Perhaps as early as tomorrow, decorations will start to come down, gifts will be forgotten, and schedules will return to normal. We may look back fondly, or with relief that it’s over, and that atmosphere of purpose will fade. But does it have to be that way?
No! It does not! First of all, Christmas is not over! For us, it has only just begun. We still have the feasts of the Holy Family, Mary Mother of God, Epiphany, and the Baptism of the Lord. Almost 3 whole weeks of festivity and celebration and, if we take it seriously, purpose!
Even better, I think you can live that way all year round. I’ll be blunt: there is no magic formula for living on a high all the time. But, this dramatic swing from the malaise to purpose and meaning then back to the malaise is not right. So, here’s how you can live out the good side of Christmas all year round. Even if you don’t like this particular holiday, it still applies.
Two of the more prominent forces of Christmas are the exchange of gifts and the connections with loved ones. Each of these forces are not the sole property of this season. You see, Christmas is not even the most important day of the year or in the history of the world. It is powerful and absolutely necessary, but it exists primarily for the sake of another more important festivity: Easter. Christmas borrows most of its power from Easter – Jesus Christ is born so that he can die and rise again. Even better, unlike Christmas, Easter comes more than once a year. In fact, it is every Sunday!
And that’s my secret for maintaining the joy-filled purpose that makes Christmas so powerful. As we look forward to Christmas for its gifts and community, so we can look forward each week to Sunday for the same reason. Every Sunday, we enter into the power of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. It’s one thing to become a baby for love of us. It’s something even greater to literally conquer death for love of us. We should celebrate! Yes, even if you think Mass is boring!
Here’s what I mean. Regardless of the music, the size of the crowd, or the quality of the preaching, Jesus Christ is made present in the Eucharist at every Mass. By that same power, we are united to every Christian that has ever lived – a spiritual family reunion that’s even better than Christmas because it transcends space, time, and even death!
Not only that, we exchange gifts at every Mass. I don’t mean just the collection. That middle part of Mass is called the offertory: we offer our gifts to God. What gifts? Your time, your attention, your very life. And that’s my secret to taking that sense of purpose Christmas brings and extending it to every day: Treat every Sunday like a little Christmas.
Instead of saying “I have to go to Mass Sunday,” try thinking of it as “I’ve got to get gifts ready for Sunday.” And who are we giving gifts to? To God! Yes, really, you have the power to give God what he has always wanted: You. Your prayers, your worries, your hopes, even all your not-so-great emotions like anger and despair. You can gather them up and mentally place them upon the altar as I prepare. Imagine them in the chalice, or in the bowl with the hosts as I lift it in offering to God. That moment is like giving a wrapped present to an eager child. Try to see it that way and then use that image to motivate the rest of the week.
Each morning, you can rise and think “got to get my gifts ready for Sunday.” The best part: no shopping required! You just “gather up” the day as it comes. Wrap it up in prayer at Mass and deliver it during the offertory. And I tell you what – God is even more excited at that than your kids on Christmas morning. He unwraps that gift with glee, and unlike fickle human beings, God is always grateful for good gifts, even if it’s really regifting the same thing a million times.
Even better, he’s got a gift waiting for you. We really must see Sunday as a chance to give to God, but it is also a chance to receive from Him. The gift of God’s Word in Scripture and, hopefully, the homily. The Eucharist is God himself – an amazing gift for those who are in the right place to receive it. Even if you do not receive communion, you receive grace and love and the power to grow a little more in holiness, to face life’s challenges with more than your own abilities.
I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Christmas is here and will soon be over. The Good News is that the power which makes Christmas so great goes well beyond Christmas. Every week – even every day – God invites you to exchange gifts with him and to connect with the whole family of faith. The Good News is that you’ve already got what God wants – yourself – you just have to keep giving it to him. The Good News is that the gift he has for you is infinitely more valuable – you always come out ahead! Because, with more power than a thousand hurricanes, God yearns to charge every moment with value. He longs to give you love, and holiness, and joy, and his very self not just every year on Christmas, but every week, every day, and for eternity.