DECEMBER 23, 2007

'Tis the week before Christmas, and all through the house - utter confusion! As we approach Christmas Eve, a host of scenes tumble before my eyes, like rapid flashbacks from a grade B movie on the late, late show.

Parishioner volunteers will be working feverishly to decorate the Church in time for Tuesday's anticipated and Midnight Masses, because the Scroogey Pastor won't allow them to get a head start until the final Sunday of Advent is observed. The streets outside are crowded with people on their way to the Malls and Station Square and downtown to do their last minute shopping. As they pass each other, strangers and friends alike call out hearty holiday greetings. Bars are filling up, even this early, with those who wish to lubricate their celebration. People are carrying arm-loads of cakes, cookies and other goodies for office and home parties. Donations are still coming in of food, toys, clothes, money for distribution to the needy. Almost a couple of hundred recipients have already received their gifts of baskets, vouchers, clothes and toys from the generous donors to the "Angel Tree". Phones are ringing, children singing, all of good cheer, Christmas is here (almost).

But there is another level of activity that is a subtheme to what presents itself to the eye. Beneath all the merriment, there is also depression. Not all who stand in the long check out lines to buy gifts do so with a light heart, for there is anxiety over being financially able to pay later for the generosity shown now. Not all who take a (or too many) holiday drinks do so to lighten their spirits, but rather to deaden some deep, personal pain. Not all have families to reunite with, but rather are alone and alienated, either physically or emotionally. For some, Christmas is a time of despair and desolation and depression, because something in their lives, some lack or loss, is highlighted much more radically in contrast to all the apparent joy surrounding them.

Only one thing makes this time universally meaningful: God became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth whose birth we honor at Christmas. And as a human being He shares all that is human with us - the joy and the sorrow, the companionship and the loneliness, the laughter and the tears, the satisfaction and the hunger, the consolation and the grief, the fulfillment and the need. No one - NO ONE - is left out at Christmas, because it is in Him and in His birth that we are all made one. Jesus is the reason for the season.

In the midst of the hub-bub and hassle, underlying all the noise and the hoopla, is the quiet, firm and heartfelt wish from those of us who serve you pastorally: a most Blessed Christmas to each and every one! All of our Christmas Masses are said for your intentions as our priestlygift to you.