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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