THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY [C] (Dec 26, 2021)

(1Sm 1:20-22, 24-28; 1Jn 3:1-2, 21-24; Lk 2:41-52)

 

On this feast of the Holy Family, let us reflect on the privilege we enjoy, of belonging to the most beautiful family the world has ever known: the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. The Church is our sacred family. This family sanctifies its members by the holiness of its head, the Christ. All the holiness that belongs to this family is conferred by Jesus to its members. Since the head is holy, the family is holy. We say in our creed: I believe in the Holy Catholic Church. We may think, is that really true? We know about ourselves how sinful and unworthy we are. We also hear a lot about other members of the Church who do not behave in manner worthy of this adjective “holy” of the Church. Only those who are not in mortal sin are really members of the mystical body of Christ. Mortal sin separates one away from God and therefore one cannot be in the Holy Church where God is sacramentally present. The Church is the sacrament of God, sign and reality combined.

 

That there are sinners, like you and me, in this family hardly needs pointing out. Nor should it surprise us. Jesus saw his mission as bringing healing and hope to sinners. It is the same for the Church. In Jesus’ day, some sinners welcomed his love, let it turn their lives around, and we know them as saints. Others brought about his crucifixion. When disciples of Jesus sin, we do so in spite of who he is, and against his teaching and example. It is the same today with the Church. We sin in spite of the beauty and grace that make the Church what it is.

This beautiful family is the ‘Body of Christ’ in the world, the ‘Temple of the Holy Spirit’. It embraces and consecrates us in the sacrament of baptism. The risen Christ, through the Church, continually pours into our hearts that Spirit of love that binds the heart of Jesus to the heart of God. He promises a bridegroom and a bride to consecrate their mutual self-giving in such a way that they are a sacrament to each other of God’s love. When a disciple dares to take up his challenge and ‘do this in memory of me’, by offering his or her energy to carry on Jesus’ ministry in various parts of the vineyard, he promises to sustain them by his love and to make their ministry fruitful. He is there to embrace the sinner and to sustain us as our earthy journey nears its end. At every step of our journey, at every turn in the road, he is there, present in his Body, assuaging our hunger and quenching our thirst.

Think of all the beautiful people who are part of our Church family – and it is the desire of the heart of Jesus that no one would be left out. All are welcome, and we are to play our part in making that welcome apparent. The synod that is coming up in Rome in April is meant to take improving actions after listening to all the people in the Church family. This listening is not just from church going Catholics but even from other Christians from different traditions and also from non-practicing Christians. The Church takes it seriously and wants to listen to its children of all walks and traditions. Therefore, for the coming two-three months let’s take some time to think and discuss about how we can make the Church really a family that can grow not only in number but in depth of holiness of life.

 

 On this feast of the Holy Family let us renew our commitment to not only to our own family, but also to our Church family. This includes a searching of our souls to see if, with God’s grace, we can move towards resolving any hurts that keep the family divided. Let us commit ourselves also to work for social and especially church structures that welcome men and women to enrich us by sharing their special gifts. Let us reflect more deeply on the feminine as well as the masculine experience of love as we look to God, our Father-Mother. By baptism we are all brothers and sisters and we are all called to be fathers and mothers to each other as well. We need everyone’s gift, everyone’s love, for we need each other to be sacraments of the fatherly and motherly love of God.

May the celebration of this feast of the Holy Family help us to dedicate ourselves to the well being of our both families: the Church family and the biological family. May the Holy Family of Jesus Mary and Joseph become a beacon light for us in this endeavour.

 

CHRISTMAS Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-16; John 1:1-18

On this joyful evening/night/day, we are celebrating the day of the birth of Jesus. We share the Joy of Mother Mary, we share the joy of St Joseph, we share the joy of the Shepherds and we share the joy of the Angels.

For four weeks now we have been preparing to celebrate this blessed day. Through four Advent weeks we have been listening, reflecting, praying about the expectations of a people that walked in darkness. It was a time of hope, hope expressed in those magnificent messianic oracles of Isaiah, visions of universal peace when there would not only be no more war and not even preparations for war. Spears and swords, instruments of death and destruction, would be turned into plowshares and pruning hooks, farm tools that cultivate the fruits of the earth and give us life.

 It was a time of promises yet to be fulfilled, a time of eager longing and expectation, a time of hope, that this could be a better world and that something great and wonderful would happen to let us know that God continues to be faithful, that God has not abandoned his people, and that God would break into our sad and sorrowful world with proof of a love beyond all expectation. Christmas is the fulfillment of those expectations. However, this fulfillment is not totally here. Though, Christ came into this world and fulfilled his mission of bringing peace to this world, only when he and his message are accepted and appropriated in each one’s life that fulfillment of the promise will remain incomplete.

 

Now, Why did God become man? Pope Benedict in one of his Christmas homilies said here is why.  

In the Credo there is a line that on this day we recite on our knees: "For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven." This is the fundamental and perennially valid answer to the question -- "Why did the word become flesh?" -- but it needs to be understood and integrated. The question put another way is in fact: "Why did he become man 'for our salvation?'" Only because, we had sinned and needed to be saved?

Blessed Duns Scotus, a noted Franciscan theologian, regards God's glory as the primary reason for the Incarnation. "God decreed the incarnation of his Son in order to have someone outside of him who loved him in the highest way, in a way worthy of God." This answer, though beautiful, is still not the definitive one. For the Bible, the most important thing is not, as it was for Greek philosophers, that God be loved, but that God "loves" and loved first (cf. 1 John 4:10, 19).

 

Christ did descend from heaven "for our salvation," but what moved him to come down for our salvation was love, nothing else but love. Christmas is the supreme proof of God's "philanthropy". John too responds to the why of the Incarnation in this way: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever should believe in him would not die but have life everlasting" (John 3:16).

So, what should be our response to the message of Christmas? The Christmas carol "Adeste Fideles" says: "How can we not love one who has so loved us?" There is much that we can do to solemnize Christmas, but the truest and most profound thing is suggested to us by these words. A sincere thought of gratitude, a feeling of love for him who came to live among us is the best gift we can give to the child Jesus, the most beautiful ornament in the manger.

 

The first to hear about his birth were shepherds, poor people, looked down upon by others because, despite the importance of their occupation, it was one that violated the intricate regulations of ritual purity, and so they were excluded from the synagogues and from temple worship. A major theme of Luke’s Gospel will be Jesus’ mission to the poor and the outcasts. He was one of them. He would be rejected by his own. There was no room for them in the inn, so he was laid in a manger.

Interestingly in Saint Luke’s short account of the birth of Jesus this manger is mentioned three times. We are told that Mary laid her infant in the manger. The shepherds are told that it is a manger which will be for them the key to identifying new born saviour. And it is when they reach the unlikely scene of a new-born in a manger that they recognize in this the person of the saviour, the Messiah and Lord.

The manger is thus a sign, not just for those mentioned in the Gospel narrative but also for us. When we look at the manger this evening what is it pointing to in today’s world? The manger is first of all a reminder that God tells us that if we want to understand who God is, then we have to look first of all at the humility of Jesus’ birth. The God of power and might appears in our midst without any of the trappings of what power and might mean in our terms. When we recognize that Jesus is born as an outsider, then we realize that God must be different to what we think.

The mystery we celebrate today is not just a historic occurrence that happened once two thousand years ago. The Incarnation, the enfleshment of the Word of God, is a mystery that is still with us. How does this mystery become real in the lives of each and every one of us?

Listen to what St. Theresa of Avila has to say on the subject: Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.

It’s Theresa’s insight into the mystery of the Incarnation and how it continues in our lives today. After all, as St. Paul so strongly insisted, we are the Body of Christ. Since that is so, then, it is in and through us that the Incarnation remains actual, that the presence of Christ is manifested in our world today.

Since God took on our human nature, we now share in God’s own nature. There is in each and every one of us at least a spark of the divine. How do we best celebrate the birth of Jesus? By accepting so great a gift, by letting that spark shine, by using our heads and hands and hearts to show the world the compassion that was born two thousand years ago but is still with us. Jesus is still Emmanuel.

May the peace, the joy, the love, the wonder that this day celebrates be yours today and every day of your lives. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advent-IV-C:  Mic 5:2-5a; Heb. 10:5-10; LK1:39-45

The wait is almost over. Christmas is only 5 days away. The Church gives us this 4th Sunday of Advent as a last reminder that Christ is coming. The first reading, from the book of Micah, reminds us that Christ is coming. “Bethlehem, too small to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.”

And then the gospel gives us the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary. The wait is almost over, and Elizabeth realizes it. She says: “How is it that the Mother of my Lord comes to me?” There’s a sense of anticipation, someone is coming. And he is The Prince of Peace.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of peace in the world. Terrorist attacks abound. We have shootings in our own country. Evil and injustice can appear overwhelming. But in the first reading today, Micah tells us something more. The reading ends with these powerful words: “He shall be peace.”  When Jesus was born the first message the angels announced was “peace on earth”. Ever since man estranged himself from God, he lost his peace - Peace within himself, Peace with the nature and peace with God. And man’s search for peace continues throughout ages.

A story is told of a child who’s afraid of thunderstorms. One night there was a particular violent thunderstorm. The lightening was flashing outside, and each new crash of thunder sent a shiver down the child’s spine. He huddled underneath his covers, terrified and feeling very alone. During a momentary lull in the storm, he gathered the courage to leap out of bed and sprint down the hallway to his parents’ room. He hurtled into his parent’s bed, and hugged his mother for dear life. She hugged him back, and waited till he stopped shaking. Then she asked him a question. “Why didn’t you pray to God when you were so afraid in your room?” And his answer was very telling. “I tried to, but I needed something with skin on it.”

And when it comes to peace, we need something with skin on it to give us the guarantee that peace is possible. That’s why the promise of Micah in the first reading is so wonderful. “He will be our peace.” Peace is not an abstract idea. Peace is not a beautiful theory. Peace is a person, Jesus Christ, something with skin on it.

Why is He peace? Because, peace means wholeness. If we are not OK with God, then we can’t be at peace with ourselves or with others. St.Teresa of Calcutta used to say: “I’m not ok, and you’re not ok, and that’s why Jesus came.”But in Jesus, in the sacraments that make him present here today, we come to be at peace with God. In the sacrament of Reconciliation, our sins are forgiven and we’re at peace with God. In the Eucharist, we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ and we’re united to God.

 

Peace is a state of mind, and there is no point asking for peace in the world if, at the same time, we are constantly in a war mind state with one another: if we give strangers a bad look, if we ignore other human beings around us, if we argue with strangers while driving and if physical fights break out for the most trivial things. 

We have to make peace within ourselves first, then within our family. Peace with our neighbors and peace with the strangers we encounter outside. Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise or trouble. Peace means to be in the midst of all the chaos and still be calm in the heart. The real peace is the state of mind, not the state of the surroundings. It comes from a mindset that is ready to accept others and serve others.

There is a Chinese saying that goes: “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” For centuries, the greatest thinkers have suggested the same thing: Happiness is found in helping others. “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.” said Winston Churchill.

Gospels present Mary as the perfect example of this. "Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country to visit Elizabeth” When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb and she cried out, “blessed are you among women.”

Mary was an instrument to bring the prince of peace into this world. Today the same mission is given to each one of us. To be an instrument of peace.

Making someone else feel good is more rewarding and longer-lasting than anything else. So building up a reserve of happiness through acts of service could increase our inner peace. And that will be our best preparation to welcome the Prince of Peace.

We may call ourselves true Christians only if our lives express Christ by our own peace. We must never allow grudges to be rekindled in us in any way… may we never risk the life of our souls by being resentful or by bearing grudges.

Am I bearing a grudge against someone? Ask God to free me from that. Am I resentful against God, against someone else, or about a particular situation in my life? Let that go.

And do we want to know the best way to do that? By giving thanks to God. Let’s take Paul’s advice today in gaining peace for our life:  “With thanksgiving, present your petitions to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

 

 

Advent III-C (Zep 3:14-18a; Phil 4:4-7; Lk 3:10-18) 

The third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete [gow-DAY-tay] Sunday, the Sunday of rejoicing. That’s why today’s readings mention the word “joy” twelve times.

In today’s first reading, the prophet Zephaniah says, “Shout for joy, O Zion! Sing joyfully, O Israel.” Zephaniah made this prophetic proclamation at the height of the Jewish exile when things appeared hopeless and unbearable. In today’s Responsorial Psalm (Is 12:6), the prophet Isaiah gives the same instruction: “Shout with exultation, O city of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” St. Paul echoes the same message of joy in the second reading, taken from his letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again, rejoice… The Lord is in your midst… Fear not… be not discouraged… The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all…” Paul was imprisoned when he made this appeal for rejoicing!

In the Gospel today, John the Baptist explains the secret of Christian joy as a wholehearted commitment to God’s way, lived out by doing His will. A sad Christian is a contradiction in terms. According to the Baptizer, happiness comes from doing our duties faithfully, doing good for others, and sharing our blessings with those in need. John challenges people to develop generosity and a sense of fairness, and to use these to give others reason to rejoice. John’s call to repentance is a call to joy and restoration.

 

Advent is a time for joy, not only because we are anticipating the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, but also because God is already in our midst. Christian joy does not come from the absence of sorrow, pain, or trouble, but from an awareness of the presence of Christ within our souls through it all.

We can only rejoice “always” if our joy is based on something that goes deeper than the passing pleasures of this world. What is that deeper thing? Salvation; friendship with God; something that never ends, and something no one can take away from us. That is the source of a Christian’s joy, and that is the gift Jesus brings us. The joy of Christ the Savior is different from the joys of the world in three ways.

First, it doesn't wear out.

This is because it comes from something that is alive: our relationship with Christ. This is why the Christmas tree is an evergreen tree. In winter, the other trees are leafless and dormant. But the evergreen tree is still green and fragrant. The evergreen symbolizes hope amid winter’s lifeless, cold, and dark days.

Second, Christ’s joy gets more and more intense as we advance in our journey of faith.  This is why the vestments for today's Mass are rose-colored.

Third, the more we give this joy to others, the more we will have for ourselves. And this, of course, is why we have the tradition of exchanging gifts on Christmas.

"It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35).

We have all experienced that when we do something for others, even if it is costly or uncomfortable for us, we experience true fulfillment and satisfaction. But when we give into our selfish, self-centered  tendencies, we shrivel up, like Scrooge.

Like the candle-light service on Christmas Eve, by lighting someone else's candle with ours, we lose nothing, and gain more light and warmth than we had before. This is the joy Jesus wants to bring to us: a lasting, growing, self-multiplying joy that comes from accepting God's gift of our Savior.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote: "If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you... Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life.”

If friendship with Jesus Christ is the source of lasting joy, then the deeper and more mature this friendship is, the more fully we will experience lasting joy.

The Church's best spiritual writers, all agree, that this friendship depends on three things: knowing, loving, and imitating Jesus Christ. The fact that we are here today, shows that all of us, at least to some extent, already know and love Jesus Christ. But what about imitating him?

Advent still has two weeks left.

Let's make this our goal: to strive to be imitating Jesus better at the end of these two weeks than we do today. And I think we all know exactly how to make that happen: First of all, we need to start out each day in prayer, because without God’s help, we can do nothing. Then we simply need to make a decent effort to treat our neighbors as we would like them to treat us – family members first, then friends, colleagues, teammates, and strangers.

If we strive to know, love, and imitate Christ just a little bit better each day, our friendship with him will never grow cold, and, little by little, our lives will become true fountains of Christian joy. May the rest of the advent season keep us in earnest efforts to deepen our friendship with Christ.

DECEMBER 9: FEAST OF the IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (Gn 3:9-15, 20; Eph 1:3-6, 11-12; Lk 1:26-38)

 Some non-Catholic Christians criticize Catholics for our devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. They are afraid that celebrations like today's take away glory from Jesus Christ, the one Lord and Savior.  They are afraid that because we give so much veneration and respect to Jesus' Mother, we will fail to give enough respect to Jesus himself. But those are foolish fears. Have you ever known anyone who resented compliments being given to his mother? 

Jesus himself, in fact, started devotion to Mary, by choosing her to bring him into the world. After all, he could have become incarnate just by forming himself from the clay of the earth, as he had done with Adam. But instead, he chose to give himself a human mother, to whom he was devoted, following his own commandment to "honor your father and mother." And he passed that devotion onto his Church, by entrusting his disciples to her care while he hung on the cross. [To undermine Mary’s importance in Jesus’ life and the Church her opponents say Mary had other sons besides Jesus. And to support their position they quote Mk. 6:3: “Isn’t this Carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him.” If these were Jesus’ siblings, where were they, when Jesus was dying on the cross. Of these siblings of Jesus who are mentioned in the above verse two  are mentioned as another person’s children in the same gospel. Mk. 15:40: Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdelene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph. So it is highly likely that they were cousins of Jesus. And if they were real blood brothers of Jesus, he did not do right when he gave his mother over to John hanging from the cross. How could Jesus give their mother over to someone to be cared by. And the tradition says Mary stayed with John in Ephesus rest of her life.]

True devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary does not distance us from Christ; it brings us closer to him. Today's celebration is a perfect example of how that happens.

Today we commemorate and celebrate two things: first, the conception of Mary in her mother's womb; and second, the dogma (officially defined in 1854 by Pope Pius IX, after being believed and celebrated by the whole Church for centuries) explaining that, that conception was "immaculate", that Mary was protected from the stain and effects of original sin from the very first moment of her existence. Why did God give Mary such a unique privilege?  Because of Christ, and because of us. And I explain only the first one today.

First, because of Christ.

In the Old Testament, God commanded Moses to take great pains in the proper construction of the Ark of Covenant, the sacred container in which the people of Israel preserved three things: the stone slabs with the Ten Commandments chiseled on them; some of the manna that God had miraculously sent from heaven to feed the Israelites during their forty-year sojourn in the desert; and the staff of Aaron, Moses' brother, the high priest of Israel.

The Old Covenant was a preparation for the New Covenant. And so, these items, Israel's most precious possessions, all symbolized Christ.

Jesus himself is God's Word, more truly and fully than the cold stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.

His real presence in the Eucharist makes him the real bread from heaven. [than the manna in the desert. Manna came in the form of dew and that is why in the second Eucharistic prayer when the Epiclesis or the prayer of inviting the Holy Spirit says, like the dew from on high] His perfect sacrifice on the cross made him the definitive high priest of human history.

Now if the items inside the Ark of the Covenant foreshadowed Christ, what was foreshadowed by the Ark itself, the container of those items? It foreshadowed Mary, whose womb became the Ark, the container, of the New Covenant.

And God had commanded the Israelites to give special construction to the Ark of the Old Covenant. They had to make it out of acacia [uh-KAY-shuh] wood, which, like cedar wood, doesn't corrupt with age. And they also had to cover the entire Ark, inside and out, with gold - the most valuable and stainless metal known to the ancient world. These special requirements for the Ark reflected the unique importance of what the Ark contained: the Ark was the sign of God's presence among his people.

When the Old Covenant symbols gave way to the New Covenant reality, God himself prepared the Ark of the New Covenant, Mary, Jesus' Mother, just as carefully has he had commanded the old one to be prepared.

He allowed her to be conceived in the normal way, but without inheriting the stain or the effects of original sin - pure and sinless, immaculate, like acacia wood and gold.

This privilege stemmed not from her greatness, but because of the incomparable greatness of what she would contain: Jesus Christ, God himself, our Savior.

That's the first reason for the Immaculate Conception - because of Christ, to give him a fitting mother. 

The Immaculate Conception was God's way of giving Jesus a worthy mother on earth, and of giving us a worthy mother in heaven.

We should thank him for this great gift, and the best way to do that is to follow in our mother's footsteps, answering every call that God sends to our hearts and consciences in the same way that Mary answered her call, by saying: "May it be done to me according to your word."

At the first miracle at Cana, Mary said to waiters, “Do whatever he tells you”. This is what she continues to tell everyday to us. And let’s pay attention to what Jesus tells us today. 

 

ADVENT II [C]: Bar.5:1-9; Phil. 1:3-6, 8-11; Lk. 3:1-6

Let me begin with a quiz. Who was the tetrarch of Abilene? You will have to look back the reading again if you want to answer that. Why did St Luke put out a list of names and places that seem pretty irrelevant to us? Twenty centuries after the fact, we are interested in Jesus, not in tetrarchs and obsolete geography. But these details reveal something crucial about Jesus: he is not an abstract God. He weaves his action and presence into the fabric of ours. He is not a myth. Some people today try to attack Christianity by saying Jesus was not a historical person. To them these historical facts which Luke mentions in this gospel cannot be disproved. Or the Historical records of Jewish historian Josephus or Greek Historian Tacitus mentions Jesus as someone who lived and was crucified during the time of Pontius Pilate. Bart Ehrman, an agnostic, but a noted N.T Scholar and used to be professor at Chapell Hill, North Carolina, though he rejects the virgin birth of Christ, he strongly defends the historicity of Christ.

Jesus takes up his stance on the crossroads of everyone’s personal history and addresses us there. Jesus Christ is a God who wants to be involved in our lives; he wants our friendship. Pope Benedict XVI made this same point during an Advent speech in 2006: “In these days the liturgy constantly reminds us that ‘God comes’ to visit his people, to dwell in the midst of men and women and to form with them a communion of love and life: a family”

In today’s Second Reading, St Paul makes the same point in one of the most memorable, beautiful, and powerful phrases of the entire New Testament:

“"I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus."

God doesn't create us and then forget about us, like some kind of divine architect or watchmaker. He gives us the gift of life, and then he accompanies us, gently trying to guide us into a deeper and deeper friendship with him, never giving up on us. Nothing about our lives is indifferent to him, because we aren’t indifferent to him.

Maybe the most glaring evidence of God's desire to be involved in our lives is the sacrament of the Eucharist. Every Mass, when Jesus becomes truly present in the Eucharist, is like another Bethlehem, another Christmas.

Through the Eucharist, Jesus continues to accompany and nourish his people, staying involved in their lives, even in the most unlikely of places.

We all believe that God wants to be involved in our lives. And yet, sometimes it feels as if he is pretty far away. Sometimes, in the face of economic difficulties, sickness, and so many other kinds of suffering, it seems hard to find him. But we can actually get better at finding God's hand in all things, even our crosses, if we do three things. First, we need to have an honest, regular prayer life. Too often we only pray to God when we are in trouble.

We need to recommit ourselves to daily, personal prayer, even if it's only for 10 or 15 minutes. If we learn to converse with God every day, we will be much more likely to hear his voice on the terrible days.

Second, we need to take the crucifix seriously. It is no coincidence that the crucifix is the central image of our religion. God chose to save us by sharing in human suffering. We need to look often at the crucifix, and contemplate it, and teach ourselves to remember that suffering is not outside of God's plan of salvation, but an essential part of it.

And third, we need to help others carry their crosses. The devil's favorite tactic is to make us think so much about ourselves that we lose sight of the bigger picture. When we go out of our comfort zone to support, console, and encourage those who are suffering even more than we are, we break the devil's spell.

This week, if each of us chooses just one of those three tactics, I can guarantee that we will all gather again for Mass next week having had a deeper experience of God's involvement in our lives. And along with that experience will come a bigger share of Advent joy. He wants to come again spiritually this Christmas, to let us experience more fully the grace of his salvation.

And he will come again at the end of history to bring his plan of salvation to its final fulfillment. This is our God, a God who is lovingly and powerfully involved in our world and our lives.

Today’s First Reading also reminds us that we should rejoice because we are “remembered by a caring God.”

As we continue with this Advent Mass, we should thank God for reminding us of his action in our lives, of his goodness and power.

Maybe, part of our preparation for Christmas can be spreading the good news, being living signs of God's involvement in the world, reminding others that God wants to be involved in their lives, no matter what they may have done, just as God has reminded us.