Merry Christmas

This past weekend, we dressed up in costume, all eleven of us who were home, and journeyed to the movie theatre for the premier of the latest and possibly last installment of Starwars, The Rise of Skywalker.   Our sheer size of a group, ranging in age from eight to fifty-three, plus the assortment of characters, (both light and dark, old and new, comic and film canon), drew lots of smiles and stares and chuckles.   Occasionally, some of us who were less encumbered by our outfits, would forget, yes, we are in costume, and that made the ordinary acts of say, purchasing popcorn or escorting a child to the bathroom (it’s a long movie), all the more fun.  My children loved waving at the motorists as we drove home, and some asked if we could go to IHop or some place just because it would be fun. (We declined, but understood the desire).   The movie, the whole of it, was fun in part because the outfits, the outlandishness of it all, invited other people to also enjoy the experience more. 

Preparing for Christmas is like that as well.

A neighbor and friend of mine starts to trim the outside of her home the moment Thanksgiving ends.  Each weekend, new lights, new colors, new displays until we get to the fourth week of Advent, when her yard is a riot of joy, of whimsy and light.  One cannot drive by without a smile.   Even better, her home pushed some of us who get to the outside if it’s not too cold or wet or when we get to it, to “up our game,” and thus the whole block is awash with light, with reminders of the joy we’re about to both commemorate and celebrate and take with us for the rest of the year.  Her enthusiasm spread joy throughout the neighborhood, which in turn, made it multiply and grow outward, until the whole neighborhood outwardly shown with light, with enthusiasm, with something of joy.

We ought to know by now, joy is contagious. 

Beauty and enthusiasm are the hallmarks of joy, and they must be shared, that is part of the experience of joy.   Mary knew the joy of the incarnation, and shared God with the world through her yes, through her willingness to cooperate with God’s will, that we might know the Father’s love through the Son.   Joseph knew this joy too, and thus protected Mary and Jesus from those in the world who sought to destroy it.  They could not have, but still, joy must be preserved even as it must be shared.   We cannot manufacture it as a feeling, we can only hold it as we would a soap bubble, and yet it is more real than anything we could grasp.  

It is more real than we can bear, and so we receive the cause of all our joy, the source veiled in the Eucharist.  God knows our littleness cannot long endure, we do not yet know how to live in joy, to swim in mercy, to breathe in only, and breathe out only, the Holy Spirit to others.  Advent is an attempt to prepare for that ultimate joy, such that we can experience it more.   Christmas is that more-ness, and we’re to bring it to those around us in all of our everyday.  

The great beauty of this reality, is we can start today, to infuse all of our actions with that joy, with that anticipation of the greater joy, and it requires as always, only our assent, only our fiat to God.   Let us today, make each day going forward, a growing imitation of Mary’s annunciation. 

Come, let us bring the source of all Joy to the World to the World.   Merry Christmas!