Preparing for the Coming of Christ
Summary of Headings
The Spiritual Preparation for Christmas
We just have a few days now before Christmas, so now, well, how are we, excuse me, how are we supposed to prepare for Christmas? Well, there's always a frantic and rather panicked last minute dash for everything that we need to be able to make the Christmas season as memorable and beautiful as possible, whether it's going shopping, or whether it's getting ready for family, or taking care of the menu, or all the other things that we have to do, or getting ready to travel. There's all sorts of activities that we have, and they're always, almost always at this point, all practical things that we need to do for the coming of Christmas, for the celebration of Christmas, I should say. But there is an element that does tend to get lost, and that is the spiritual. We're so nervous about Christmas, and we're so nervous about the Christmas season, and we're so nervous about making sure that we have just the right amount of dishes, that we have enough chairs, that we have, that we're going to make our flights on time, or whatever else. All those preoccupations tend to drive out the more essential and the more important preparation which we have, which we are supposed to have every day, and that is that Christ is coming. So to try to illustrate this, we should look at how people at the time of Christ were actually preparing for his coming. Remember, this was not something that just happened. It's not a sudden occurrence. This was something that the world has been preparing for since the fall of Adam and Eve. This is something that has been expected every day. And with the prophecy of Daniel, the scribes and the scholars of the Jews knew more or less exactly when our Lord was going to come. So they were getting ready with great anticipation for the coming of Christ. And how did everyone prepare? Well, the Roman occupiers, the way they prepared, they didn't. They didn't believe in the figure of a Messiah. They didn't have the Jewish faith. They had heard rumblings of a Jewish king being born, but they didn't pay much attention to it. The second, then you have the Herodians, who saw the coming of our Lord as a threat. So Herod, the so -called Herod the Great, was busy preparing for how he could deal with this threat to his, to his, power, to his authority, which he didn't really have. It was just given to him by the, by the Romans. Then you have the scribes and Pharisees, high priests. How did the high priest prepare? Well, for the high priests, they were concerned with preparing the political environment for the coming of Christ, because they were sure that our Lord Jesus Christ was going to bring glory, and he was going to bring the glory of David back. To Israel, and so therefore they were going to be able to overcome the Romans occupiers and throw them out and establish the Jewish kingdom as the center of the world, and as the great, as the greatest power on earth. So that's what they were preparing for. What were the, what the, what were the Pharisees preparing? They weren't worried, so worried about the politics of everything. They were more worried about the spiritual. So that is, that is where, shall we say, our attention should go, because most of us aren't driven. By just such ruthless ambition as, as, as Herod, or pagan ignorance like the Romans, and, or even, even so much the delusions of the, of the high priests. So usually we can go with the side of piety and devotion, which is what the Pharisees represented for the people in that era. These were men who were trying to purify the Jewish people through the practice of the law that God had given to them. They were people who wanted to raise the people of the world, and they were trying to raise the people of the world, and they were trying to raise the, the practice of the Jewish faith to its purest possible form, so that they could welcome Christ with the purest possible hearts. That was their idea. Where did they go wrong? Well, the obvious answer is because they didn't understand what the law was about. They didn't understand what the coming of Christ meant. They had, they may have had good intentions, certainly not all of them did, but they may, but the principal ones, or the principal ones, were the ones that were many of them, may have had good intentions, but as we know, good intentions don't get you very far when your principal is off base, when the whole purpose of what you do is wrong. The purification of the law wasn't a bad thing, but the problem was why they did it. Christ didn't come to be welcomed into material perfection. He came to perfect. He didn't come into a world free from sin. He came into a world full of sin to free it of sin. So they made, somehow, they made the coming of Christ about their perfection rather than about his glory and his humility. Again, they may have had very good intentions, but they got it wrong. And then we see the last few people who were waiting for the coming of Christ. The first group wasn't even really aware they were awaiting the coming of Christ, and that is the shepherds. Because remember, when Christ came, the very first people who knew about his coming were actually a group of shepherds who watched their flocks at night. How were they preparing for the coming of Christ? They were watching their sheep. That's all they were doing. Father Peake liked to joke with us during our retreats and seminary that the, that shepherds were not known for their intellectual prowess. They were the, the simple people who wouldn't have any trouble watching over their charges. Sheep are fairly dumb animals. You can do, get them to do pretty much anything you want. But these were shepherds who watched their flocks at night. The animals are asleep. You don't have to get them to do anything. So their, their, their job was, shall we say, not exactly stimulating intellectually. So these are the simplest of the simple. In many cases, the poorest of the poor. All they cared about was doing their job, doing their duty. Which is also why, precisely, they were the ones blessed with that first announcement of the coming of Christ. Because they were the ones actually fulfilling the will of God at that moment. They were doing their job. Small and unimportant as it may seem, they did it. They were faithful to it. The other group, of course, preparing for the coming of Christ, Saint Joseph and Our Lady. How did they prepare for the coming of Christ? Well, of course, they had the most, they had the difficult trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem in winter with Our Lady quite pregnant. Not an easy trip by any stretch of the imagination. So that was a very difficult thing. They could have made it easier on themselves. They knew Christ was supposed to be born in Bethlehem. They knew that. and the prophecies declared it as such. But they didn't force the hand of providence by choosing to move out there and establishing themselves earlier. They waited until providence moved things so that they had to go. They didn't anticipate providence. They followed it. They waited until there was a decree in the vanity of Caesar Augustus to know exactly how many people were under his care. He charged that every person go back to the region of their birth, the region of their forefathers. And for St. Joseph, that was Bethlehem. Something so far removed from the prophecies of the coming of Christ, and yet somehow it affected providentially the plan for Our Lady to be traveling there just at that moment. So again, they went through cold and discomfort, through their acceptation and love of divine providence, through their humble willingness to follow providence and not to take matters into their own hands. That was one aspect of their preparation. The second aspect was contemplation. They knew the mystery and the miracle that was being performed at that very moment. They appreciated better than anyone what the incarnation meant. The contemplation that St. Joseph must have had at that time, traveling, knowing that the Messiah was coming, that God himself was being born by his wife, must have been truly extraordinary. And of course, the contemplative spirit of the Blessed Virgin Mary, how she must have understood the mystery that was being performed within her. Even before she could see her child, she knew exactly how to see her child. She knew exactly what he is. And so, if we take all of these figures, all of these ways of preparing for the coming of Christ, let's start thinking a little bit about these last couple of days before Christmas. What are we going to do to prepare for Christ? Yes, we have a lot to do. But we should never lose sight of a couple of days and a couple of things. Like St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary, we cannot force providence. We cannot force his hand and control situations. We cannot, and we shouldn't try. We are with the family we are with. We can't have an ideal of Christmas. We are in the situation we're in. We cannot force and change that. We cannot change the heart of this world and make it less comfortable. We cannot force a commercial in the aspect of Christmas or anything else. We cannot silence everybody else. But at least we can listen to what providence is telling us and follow it. And we can follow it with the same example of what the shepherds performed. It doesn't matter how small or how big our charge is or our family or our celebration or anything else. We have to do it with the same single -mindedness and fidelity to duty that the shepherds demonstrated that night. That even though it was a menial job, very slow, boring, probably not terribly rewarding, they still did it and they did it well because it was the will of God. We must also see the will of God in everything that we do. Everything that we do. And if we don't see his will in it, maybe we shouldn't be doing it. That goes for how we behave, how we speak, what we're thinking. And what we leave out. It is necessary for us to start seeing things in that perspective. His providence, his will. Not our decisions. And not our desires. It's also crucial for us to have a spirit of contemplation. Yes, we have so much to do. But we must appreciate what is being done. If we lose ourselves, so completely in all the stuff around Christmas, we tend to fall into the pharisaical aspect of what Christmas is about. Which is it's about us and not about him. That is a danger that is very real. And we must, and the solution to it, is contemplation. How do we contemplate this mystery? It's something that is so far outside of our own minds. It's impressive. It's impossible to comprehend. God and man united in one person. The hypostatic union. This baby born in a manger. Poor. Unknown. Ignored. Is the savior of the universe. He is the one who is actually going to, he is the one who is actually going to save all of us from our sins. Through his sacrifice and death. Through his sacrifice and death. These are mysteries we can never contemplate sufficiently. These are mysteries that should shock and awe us all the time. The immensity of his love. The generosity of his sacrifice. The perfection of his nature combined with our very imperfect nature. We should never stop truly marveling at it. And we should never lose sight of it specifically in the moment. moment of celebrating it. We are celebrating Christmas. We are celebrating with family. Family should bring us back to the hypostatic union and the coming of Christ into this world. There should be lots of joy and happiness, which brings us back to the source of all joy and happiness, who is Christ come on earth. Through all the noise, we must always make sure we have silence in our minds to contemplate the mysteries of the incarnation of our Lord. If things are getting too busy, if things are too loud or whatever else, it's important to take a step back and remind ourselves why. Why we celebrate so much. Why this is such a festive and important occasion. Contemplation is a necessary aspect of the consecration of Christmas to what it is supposed to mean. So these last few days, let's learn from these examples. Let's learn from the cautionary tale of the Romans and their ignorance, the Herodians and their ambition, the priests and their absurdity, the Pharisees and their good -intentioned misdirection, and of course the shepherds and their simple fidelity, and our Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph and their submission to divine providence, and through their contemplation. May we follow those examples of those three virtues so that we may be able to celebrate Christmas with a full heart and learn of the love of God more profoundly, so that we will be able to live our lives in union with the incarnate God and be able to be eternally happy with him in heaven. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen. Thank you.
Summary
We just have a few days now before Christmas, so now, well, how are we, excuse me, how are we supposed to prepare for Christmas? Well, there's always a frantic and rather panicked last minute dash for everything that we need to be able to make the Christmas season as memorable and beautiful as possible, whether it's going shopping, or whether it's getting ready for family, or taking care of the menu, or all the other things that we have to do, or getting ready to travel. The Pharisees were more worried about the spiritual. So that is, that is where, shall we say, our attention should go, because most of us aren't driven. By just such ruthless ambition as, as, as Herod, or pagan ignorance like the Romans, and, or even, even so much the delusions of the, of the high priests. So usually we can go with the side of piety and devotion, which is what the Pharisees represented for the people in that era. It's also crucial for us to have a spirit of contemplation. Yes, we have so much to do. But we must appreciate what is being done. If we lose ourselves, so completely in all the stuff around Christmas, we tend to fall into the pharisaical aspect of what Christmas is about. Which is it's about us and not about him.