Dear Friends,
We begin our Advent season today. This year, we get four full weeks of Advent since Christmas falls on a Sunday. I suppose you could see it as having a little more time to buy your Christmas gifts for family and friends. However, I would encourage you to see it as a little extra time to embrace the spiritual journey of Advent. Preparing our hearts for the daily Christmas experience where Jesus takes flesh in us. Consider the powerful spiritual images of both Advent and Christmas – that of a child.
Jesus teaches, “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” We may see that as having faith like a child—innocent, dependent, trusting. Yet this Advent season, let me encourage you to view this teaching as an exhortation to emulate what Jesus himself did: Jesus became a naked, helpless, baby; the greatest in heaven descended, stooped low, became so small, and yet, conquered evil. So we, when told to become like children, are being urged to become small.
Since the first turning away from God in the garden, becoming small has been a difficult task for us. I suspect it’s been a challenge in every age. But in our society today, where the individual reigns, it seems a revolutionary stance to become small. In a world consistently marked by striving and struggling to ascend, to get more, to be self-resilient, followers of Christ are called to frailty and meekness; we are called to descend. We are to be imitators of Christ.
This Advent, as we anticipate and contemplate the birth of the Child, let us ponder how it is that the Lord of all stooped down for the love of creation and became a fragile child. Let us seek ways in which we might, through grace emulate that child in vulnerability, in dependence, in complete humility. We are to place ourselves firmly in the loving arms of God and trust that God will care for us.
Let us bend low, free ourselves of the facades we construct, and embrace the truth that it is only in Jesus that we have the capacity for anything at all. Let us recognize that no matter how much grandness we might seek to surround ourselves with, all of that is nothing and cannot compare to the richness of love, of fellowship with God and God’s people.
So many of our Advent and Christmas songs reflect the wonder of the incarnation where God chooses lowliness and fragileness to conquer sin and reveal His incredible love for us. Pay attention to them as they guide us on the way this season. Here is a sample from O Little Town of Bethlehem:
How silently, how silently,
the wondrous gift is giv’n!
So God imparts to human hearts
the blessings of his heav’n.
No ear may hear his coming,
but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive him, still
the dear Christ enters in.
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray,
cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
our Lord Immanuel!
Peace,
Fr. Damian