Caritas Begins in the Home.

I'm sure that driving through our neighborhoods we have seen houses just like this. The first two thoughts that enter my mind are "how did they get all those lights up there?" and "I wonder how much it costs to light that house right now?". I know, I'm a mood killer. You can call me a grinch if you like. And while I certainly celebrate the right of every person to decorate, or not decorate, their house as they see fit, I will call foul when they say that it's in the spirit of the Christmas season.

"We're preparing for the baby Jesus. You know shine the light for the light coming into the world." Wonderful sentiment but sorely off the mark. When I think of a home that is prepared for "the light of the world", I don't think of the perfect Christmas tree, Santa Claus and his sleigh lit in the front yard and a Mickey Mouse Nativity scene by the front door telling me to have "A Very Disney Christmas". Instead I think of the preparations that have taken place in the hearts of those inside the home. This becomes much more evident as the tensest moments of the Advent season (yep, I said Advent) wash over us like breakers. My wife and I finished all our Christmas shopping, decorated our tree, and began the holiday baking earlier than ever this year. But that didn't stop us from being frustrated with each other, about losing sleep with a crying baby, about relatives bickering senselessly with each other, and of course don't forget the dogs. It's during this season of preparation for celebrating Christ's birth that we need more than ever to think of his death and resurrection. We need to ask how he prepared himself; physically, emotionally, and spiritually to face the horrible trial he would endure to bring us back from exile and to the throne of the Father. We need to focus on our own hearts and if we are up to the task of following him.

Where does that begin? It begins with those who are closest to us in proximity but more often than not furthest from our hearts. I am speaking of family. I am speaking of the relatives with whom we make small talk for a few moments, exchange a Christmas card and a fruit cake (if you really don't like them) and then forget them for another year. Or worse, think of the relationship each of has with our siblings, parents, spouse, or children. Caritas was one of the Greek words for love. Many of the scriptures we interpret as talking about erotic love or the love between a man and wife are in fact talking about the most basic and necessary charity that every family needs. When I look at my wife and children my goal is to see not what they might do for me but rather how I might serve them. This is no easy task because I am by very nature a selfish person (just like everyone else). I struggle to love others in the way that God has called us all to love.

In the end, Christ did not come to the flashiest house or the home with the best comforts that money could buy. He came to the home with the greatest amount of love; a love that was given freely and without expectation of return. As we eagerly anticipate the celebration of Christ's birth tomorrow let us focus for just a moment on the home we have built in our hearts and not the one we have decorated. Let us hold one another closer as Mary and Joseph did as they gazed at the innocent child before them. If we can, then we can give a new meaning the phrase "Merry Christmas".

Do You Believe in Miracles?

Whenever I read that question I am always reminded of it being shouted at the end of the famous Olympic showdown between the then Soviet Union and the United States hockey teams. The spontaneous outburst arose because the U.S. victory had been a huge surprise.

However the question once again becomes relevant during this advent season because we are called to ponder the same question. Let's face facts, we live in an age of science and technology where miracles have taken a backseat with mythology and fairy tales as many scientists claim to be able to solve all the mysteries of the universe and debunk the core beliefs of faith. Faith in miracles is presented as a contradiction to reason and logic.

So how then are we as Christians to respond? I believe the answer lies not in what we know and understand but rather in the incompleteness of our knowledge and the limited nature of our human experience. The burden lies not on faith to prove the existence of miracles but rather upon science to disprove them. These may seem like flawed arguments but nonetheless they do bring to the center the discussion about what Christmas truly means more than any "Jesus is the reason for the season" bumper sticker.

The celebration of Christ's birth is itself a central declaration of faith. One cannot be a Christian and deny the virgin birth. While the empty tomb challenges our notions of death and the possibility of Jesus conquering death, the empty manger would also present us with an equally difficult question as we wonder how else could God have come into the world? There are many parts to this argument presented by far more intelligent theologians than I but at the core lies one simple fact: God became man to share in man's experience, and through that sanctification of man's experience bring man back to the divinity he was supposed to share with God from the beginning. It is not that human beings become like God in the same way we attempted in the garden and the fall, but rather we attain the true life we were gifted with but relinquished through sin.

Our images of God have been found in countless forms across history. We find God as the father, the man with the white beard, the judge and all-powerful creator. These are often comfortable because they provide a distance between us and God. But when the word becomes flesh we find that the distance becomes zero. God has become man. God shares in our innocence and frailty, our vulnerability and suffering. Turning to that God, the one who has lived a life like us, save sin, is a much harder God to accept. This God limits himself, surrenders his divinity in a way we never could. He takes on a face like our own, one that cry, smile, and yes even laugh. That God is almost a little too close to home.

This Christmas our focus should be not just on the miracle but on the actual gift given to us by God. Christ's coming into the world signals not just the arrival of our savior, but the closeness that God desires from us. He doesn't want us to keep him at arms length. He wants us to hold him in our arms. He wants us to be a family.

The Light of the World

There are something that we see that defy the boundaries of cuteness. Yesterday I was privileged to see the prekindergarten class at my school do their telling of the Christmas story. What I found most interesting is that watching these little tykes engage one of the beautiful stories ever told genuinely fed my faith and made me focus spiritually on the reality of Jesus Christ having come into the world. Also, seeing our children participate in their faith gives us an assurance that our faith and traditions are being passed on to the next generation. The only downside is that when we see performances such as these we tend to focus on the storytellers and not the story. The familiarity of the story and the countless times we have heard it lends itself to experiencing the pride of a parent instead of the penitence of a hopeful sinner.

When they were done I began to relate to the parents and students present how watching these kids present this story made me immediately think of the birth of my own children. As a parent, you always remember the birth of your child. You remember the excitement tinged with anxiety and anticipation. The first moment you see your child's face freezes for an eternity as you look down and realize that your whole world, your definitions of life and love, have been shaken to their foundations. You may have never seen God but you are convinced that in this child's eyes God is present.

What I wanted them to see more than anything was that every birth is important to God, and going a step further, that every moment of creation of life is important to God. Christ could have chosen any way to come to us. But he chose the authentic human experience of the incarnation, of true innocence, humility, and vulnerability. As we journey to the day when we celebrate Jesus Christ coming into the darkness of our world we recognize just how bright his light truly is. It shatters the darkness.

Christ calls us to be the light of the world. I've told my students throughout this advent season that they are to intensify the light within them. They are to be lights to others, especially those who are in the darkness of despair and are without hope. This can be especially difficult when we are faced with tragedy. Personally I have struggled as I minister to those who have lost family and friends in this holiday season. But I know that darkness does not diminish the power of the light Christ is for us. If we focus on that light it will bring us closer to a God who longs to love us, to heal us, and to sustain us. The challenge for all of us remains to draw closer to that light, to embrace it, and to reflect that light to others.

Journey to the Light

With Thanksgiving securely behind us we now turn to the last and most important season left in the year: the shopping season. Of course I jest but I do so in a half-serious tone because for many people, even Christians, the season is less and less about the birth of Jesus Christ and more about the search for the perfect gift or purchase. It seemed to happen so subtly. We celebrated the advent season, a season of prayerful preparation towards that wonderful day where we commemorate the coming of our savior into the world, with songs and lessons about the the history and spirit of Christmas. We strove for ways to demonstrate how the love of God had touched us and how the gift of His Son had saved us by being charitable to others. But the gifts became more elaborate as the season became more commercialized. We found newer ways to shop, save money, and elicit that tell tale smile that lets us know that we have evoked a warm and fuzzy feeling in our loved one.

Then we began to succumb to the popular culture's desire to remove everything that is Christian from Christmas. They argued that Christmas was their holiday now. It didn't have to be about Jesus Christ. That was too narrow. It was about the "season of giving", that feeling we get inside that we get for doing a good deed. And while it is important to give we must acknowledge the greatest gift we have received (our salvation) and the greatest gift we can share (the love of God). So now sadly, Christmas has become an endangered holiday with countless distractions, anxiety over making the perfect dinner, decorating the perfect tree, and making the perfect memory.

The challenge then for Christians is to draw the focus away from the distractions back to the true meaning. I have been using an analogy all week with my students in chapel that I feel has edified both them and myself. Anytime we look up at the sky at night we are blessed to see a number of stars. But unfortunately most of us live in areas, both suburban and urban, that prevent us from seeing the brightest starts and even planets. To see them we must leave the comfort of the city and town to the country where the night sky is unchallenged by the light pollution. In a sense we remove the distractions, remove everything that was getting in the way of the light, to see what we were looking for all along. It is the same with this season. Can we be strong enough to push aside the materialism, the desire for self-fulfillment for the true focus of the season? Can we recognize the most brilliant light in the heavens that has come down to be one of us?

Each year I have seen so many people (I include myself in this guilty act) of loving a gift momentarily and then forgetting about it after a short while. That is the nature of the gifts we receive. We love for them a moment and then we love the next thing that comes along. But what if the gift of a savior, the gift we receive this season was meant to love us? What if that gift never lost interest or love for us? What if that gift came to reconnect us with a God who loves us as his wonderful creation made in His image? If we could recognize that gift under the tree then we wouldn't wish each other a "Merry Christmas". We would welcome each other as siblings in a reunited family. We would see the greatest light touch each of us in a way nothing else can.