Merry Christmas to All!!!

"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come around, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."
~Charles Dickens

May the joy of this season fill your hearts with the love of God, and may peace be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through.

From my family to yours: Merry Christmas!!!

Leaping with Joy

How do you express your joy? Do you clap your hands, laugh loudly scream out, or react with a gesture? In our Gospel today, the infant John "leaped for joy." John, in his mother's womb, expressed an emotional and physical reaction.

Elizabeth experienced a jump in her womb and Luke relates it to John's recognition of Jesus. This beautifully captures the emotion and feeling of that meeting between the two pregnant women.

So this begs the question: when we come into the Lord's presence, are moved like John the Baptist to leap with joy? What's keeping us from leaping with joy? Is it something that's bigger than the Lord himself, the One who is to come? It may look that way, but nothing is greater than God! And that in and of itself is reason to leap for joy! So then why are we so glum? It is finances, illness, stress, failures, disappointments, job loss, senseless violence, the fiscal cliff?

Maybe the reason for our lack of joy is because the thing that we're lacking is God's presence in our lives. We know where to find Him. We know where to meet Him. We know how to be in His presence. But do we go there? Are we the wise people who seek Him out? Or are we chasing after other things that seem to promise joy and fulfillment only to find out after that they leave us empty? And in the meantime, they have been distracting us from the one thing that we really need!

Jesus loves us and wants to be in an intimate, loving relationship with us. Are we ready for the relationship? Are we open to that relationship? Is there room for Him in our Inn? Do we think that's too tall of an order? Here are the words that Elizabeth spoke to Mary, "Blessed are you, blessed is the fruit of your womb, blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled." In other words, "Mary, you not only listened to what God told you, you're actually going to spend your life doing it."

For Luke, Mary is not important because Jesus is here son, but because she actually does what Jesus expects all of His followers to do: hear God's word and carry it out. Mary is the perfect Christian not because of her special selection by God, but because she always acts on what she hears.

How well does that apply to us in the midst of this Advent season? Are we believing and trusting in what was spoken to us from the Lord? Are we able to hear His voice through all the noise around us?

During Advent, we have been preparing ourselves to bring light to those dark places within us. If we have waited, if we have prepared ourselves well, if we have let the light in, then something inside us will leap with joy this Christmas, and we can celebrate the coming of our Savior with the same innocence and joy that Luke describes in his gospel.

Christ is coming! We need to be like Elizabeth and Mary and say "yes" to His coming. There is still time. Let us ready ourselves to receive Him.

Holding Hands with the Lord

My wife and I have been holding hands for more than 26 years. And I can still remember being a scared college student, reaching for her hand for the very first time. Would she grab it? How would she react? What  would it feel like?

For so many young people, holding hands is their first experience of intimacy. Before a hug, or even a first kiss, the simple act of holding hands usually happens first. For it is in that grasp, as Isaiah states in his reading today, that we just may find the foundation of the most sacramental of relationships.

God is reaching out and wants to be in relationship with each of us. God is constantly making his presence known in our lives and is waiting for us to respond - to take hold of his hand. And when we do, that is when our faith life begins. That is when we are converted and transformed.

This Advent, let us take the time to experience the God of love in our lives. Let us truly see his presence at work around us and within us. And let us feel the touch of his hand in ours, so that we too can be in relationship with our Lord and Savior.

Are We Living the Gospel?

"It's one thing to talk about the gospel, but it is quite another to live it. It is one thing to preach about Christ, but it is another to follow in His footsteps." Angel Abrea

This quote sums up today's gospel from Matthew. It reminds us that our faith and our efforts to be disciples of Jesus is not simply a matter of words, but also a matter of actions.

But how do we know if a stranger or a friend knows that we are following Jesus? It's through our actions and choices that we make in our daily lives.  Are we living the gospel? Each of us needs to ask these questions:

- Do I live the gospel in the crowded store with the long check-out lines when I am doing my Christmas shopping and running late?
- Do I live the gospel at the office when everyone is putting down another employee and calling them names because they are not like the "rest" of us?
- Do I live the gospel at home when my kids come home from college and they don't clean-up after themselves - EVER!?
- Do I live the gospel when I refuse to make eye contact with the Salvation Army bell ringer that stands in front of the store I'm going into because I don't want him to ask me for money?
- Do I live the gospel when I don't reach out to help my neighbor in need because it is an inconvenience to me?

During Advent, we are challenged to pause our hectic lives and reflect on what the coming of Jesus and living the gospel really means. Let's commit ourselves to doing the will of our heavenly Father and focusing on how we can live the gospel in the hope of making our world a better place for all of God's children!

The Hope and Joy of Advent

As a society, we always seem to be doing something at sometime. And as we are well into the holiday season, there is even more hustling and bustling in our lives. Whether it's Christmas shopping, or planning holiday party menus, or house cleaning for guests, or school concerts, or baking cookies, or home decorating, or writing Christmas cards, or... - well, you get the picture. We are constantly being bombarded with things to do and not having enough time to do them all.

Advent is a time when we need to slow down and listen for the voice of God, telling us what is truly important. Advent is a time of hope - hope for a better world, because that is what God promises each of us. We just need to take the time to stop and see what we can become. We need to take the time to see that God is showing us how to follow Jesus' way of selfless loving.

But we cannot do this if we are filling our days and nights with all kinds of stuff. I encourage all of us to make this Advent a time of rediscovery, regeneration, and renewal of body, mind and spirit. May we find the light through our darkness, and may we celebrate this season with joyful hope of what we shall become in Christ Jesus.