Saturday, December 07, 2013

In Harmony


By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.  The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD, and his delight shall be the fear of the LORD.  Isaiah 11:1-2

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to think in harmony with one another, in keeping with Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Romans 15:5-6

John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”  It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: A voice of one crying out in the desert, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.  Matthew 3:1-3

Piety
Piety has many different forms and places where it is expressed.  In any one of its forms, it expresses our readiness for the coming of the Lord. The shoot that comes from a stump has the roots of the stump. Nothing is wasted in our journey to be with the Lord at his coming.  God builds on everything about ourselves that we give him. The journey to the Lord has a middle stage. He comes to us in the good people of our lives, in the wonders of creation about us and in the saints of old. Christ is our way and our truth and our life if we but let him have our hearts. The gift of God’s love is forever at work in our hearts. Every good thing we try to do has God as its author in our desire for holiness. There is nothing more satisfying to our souls than the presence of God to us in the workings of the spirit in our hearts.

Study
We have been blessed by God with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. We come to God through Christ. We are chosen by God in Christ. Our relationship to Christ is already there in Baptism. Our growing up in Christ is what we do by living the Liturgical year with its seasons of the different parts of the human life of Christ. We study in the Scriptures how to be more like the Christ that we are waiting for in our expectation of reliving his first coming as a preparation for the second coming when he will come with all his power and glory.

Action

A day of prayer before the celebration of his coming is part of a good preparation. Praying over the gifts we are going to give is a reliving of the gift of Christ to us by God. It is in Christ that we find the one voice to glorify God. The simplicity of Christmas takes fear out of our celebration of the most important person that would live in the history of human race. He comes into our lives as the purpose of our lives. We honor God by how alike to Christ we become. We are called to be his life to our world by the Sacraments and it is in our preparation for the child of Bethlehem that we find meaning for all the little things we do with our lives. What we do might make us seem to ourselves to be a voice crying in the wilderness. We can never be worthy of God’s love. The only limit on his love in our lives is what we accept in his coming into our lives. We are called to give away his love so that we might hold unto it. We have to lose our lives in Christ in order that we might find them. We can never be worthy of being his love to the world. But with the simplicity of the baby we can become his love to our world. Thus with one voice we will glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By being the brothers and sisters of Christ, we become the children of God.

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