The holidays are here. In downtown St. Petersburg there are lights galore, a Christmas crib, a menorah, and the Christmas tree.
While many people enjoy this festive time, some may experience the so-called holiday blues. Here’s one bit of advice to beat the blues: look for the good everywhere: in yourself, in other people and in the situations in life you encounter every day.
Advent and Hanukkah begin today. Both are all about hope in a bright, glorious future.
Hanukkah, aka the Jewish Festival of Lights, celebrates the stunning victory of the Maccabees over their powerful Greek oppressors in the 2nd century BC. The nine candle Menorah or candelabra symbolizes, among other meanings, religious and national freedom.
The Advent season begins the Christian liturgical calendar and anticipates the birth of Jesus. The Advent Wreath features four candles, representing four weeks of preparation and the growing light of Christ's presence at Christmas.
So, we pray: Come, Lord Jesus to transfigure us into the likeness of God; and re-create this universe into a “new heaven and new earth.” “Come, Lord Jesus” is the so-called “maranatha prayer” in the Book of Revelation.
Advent invites us to contemplate the threefold coming of Jesus. He came to us centuries ago; He comes to us now sacramentally in this liturgy; and He will come again with great glory at the end-time.
How might we celebrate Advent? Some families create a wreath with four candles, and light one candle at the dinner table during the first week, two candles the second week, and so on. Upon lighting the candle, they pray for the coming anew of the Messiah into their own lives. Others make a Jesse or genealogy tree to recapture the story of our salvation. Still others set up a Nativity scene and share in their own words the meaning of Christmas, Emmanuel, God-with-us. These are but a few customs keeping alive the profound meaning of Advent. Our redemption is at hand.
The word of God carries us back to a prophet named Jeremiah. In the midst of calamity, Jeremiah spoke about hope: God one day will raise up a new king who will do what is right for his people. We might ask ourselves: do we try our best to do the right thing?
Paul in his letter to the Christian community at Thessaloniki in Greece urges people not to focus so much on the “world to come” that they forget how to live here and now. Yes, care for one another, pray fervently, please God and be ready when the Day of the Lord comes. Paul might say to you and me, seize every opportunity to do all the good you can.
The Gospel according to Luke speaks dramatically about signs that will signal the coming of Jesus Christ with great power and glory to transfigure us and create a luminous new heaven and new earth.
Here we gather around the table of the Lord to hear God’s voice in the bible, to re-experience the sacrificial, life-giving death and resurrection of Jesus and to become one with the living Christ in communion. Through this mystery, we encounter the living Christ who has already made us by grace sons and daughters of God in the waters of baptism.
This great truth of our faith (God within us, children of
God) challenges us especially this Advent season to look for the good: in ourselves, in other people and in every
situation of life.
Remember the magnificent hymn of the
Virgin Mary:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit
rejoices in God my savior. Because He the Mighty One has done great things for
me.
Mary rejoiced in the gifts God gave her, and so too should
we rejoice in the gifts God has given to us for others.
Look for the good in people. If you ever studied a wildflower, you would discover the delicate veins, the fragile petals. Turn it toward the light. The wildflower has a beauty all its own. So do people.
Think of all the people that Jesus met; he recognized goodness in each of them. We are called to see, beyond appearances, the image of God. God so loved us that he became one of us. We surely wouldn't want Christ to chide us:
“I was hungry, and you bought another luxury. I was thirsty, and you hoisted another brew. I was lonely in a hospital or nursing home, and you were too busy to see me.”
