Prepare the way for Jesus this Advent

Romance: finding our way back home
Who wants more Romance in their lives? I don’t mean cheap harlequin romance or the superficial love stories you see on TV and movies.  Those romances last about 48 hours before they go south. Authentic romance is the heroic quest to recover our true love, our true home. It is a lifelong search for our lost childhood. All of the great stories tell tales of this heroic search. The world’s first novel, the Greek Odessey of Homer, is perhaps the best example. The hero Ulysses wanders the Aegean for ten years searching for his lost wife and home. Don Quixote is Europe’s great novel, where Alonzo Qixano wanders about Spain in a rusty suit of armor searching for lost virtue. More contemporary examples include The Lord the Rings, the three children in the Chronicles of Narnia, Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. All of the great stories are “romances,” heroic requests to recover a lost childhood, to find life’s true love, to find our way back home.

The Glad Journey Home
Advent is a season to focus on this journey home. What makes Advent and Christmas joyful is the founded hope that we will, at the last, recover the lost joy of our youth. We will find the child after a long journey, like the Three Wise Men. The First Reading is taken from Isaiah Chapter 40, the so-called Book of Consolation. The prophet addresses the Jews who are returning to their homeland after 40 years in Babylonian Exile. “Comfort, give Comfort to my people. Speak tenderly to her, that her guilt is expiated.” You have paid double for your sins, and you can now return home. Isaiah describes the road back: “Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Zion, be the herald of Glad Tidings, for here is our God. These Glad Tidings define Christmas. Happy Holidays means nothing because it excludes God, the source of happiness. Merry Christmas, on the other hand,means that we can be merry because, although we have lost our innocence, we are on the way to recovering it. God is on His way to meet us, and we are on our way to meet Him. The World needs a real Christmas wish at least once a year.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ
St. Mark opens his tale, his romance, in these words: The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. First, what is a “Gospel?” The word means “Glad Tidings,” the same glad tidings Isaiah proclaims. In Greek, the word is Eu-angelion, the “good message.” It comes from the same word as “angel.” meaning “messenger.” The Gospel is the angel’s good message. And what is this good message, these glad tidings? Simply one word: Jesus. We find Jesus, we have found it all. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the Resurrection.

So how do we find Jesus? How do we find our way back home? One thing’s for sure, we won’t find him if we stare at a TV screen with a remote dangling from our fingers. Jesus comes to us, but we must come to him. We must search for him in the desert. A voice cries in the desert—not on MTV. You will never hear this voice on MTV or the myriad entertainment venues of our time. We’ve got to turn off MTV and seek him. We’ve got to embark on the Romance, the search for him. Note that the crowds came out to hear John the Baptist. They left Jerusalem; they left their homes and came to him on the edge of the desert. Advent must be in some way be a desert experience for us.

Prepare a Way
John the Baptist is the greatest man of woman born because he made the journey to the desert, and there he found God. For us, Advent must be in some way a desert experience too. To find our way back home for Christmas, we have to get away from the TV, the computer, the iPhone. We have to enter the silence of the desert. “Souls of prayer are souls of great Silence,” Mother Teresa would say. What are we doing this Advent, in between all our Christmas parties and shopping trips, to find silence? I recommend this Advent: a significant penance on Fridays, such as no snacking, or no desert, or no meat, or drinking only water at meals. I further recommend: daily Mass when you can, a good confession, the family rosary at least three times a week, and a holy hour in the adoration chapel once a week.

If we don’t make room for some silence, we will never hear the Eternal Word. Christmas will be just another disappointment. Prepare a way for Jesus, by prayer and penance, this Advent.

Intro
What are you looking forward to this Christmas? When I was a kid, it was all about the growing pile of presents under the Christmas tree. Once in a while a really BIG one would appear, dwarfing the others. As we mature, however, we begin to understand that giving brings more joy than getting. In Pope John Paul’s words, “the divine gift grows inside each of us in the measure we give it away.” To get we need to give. Giving is getting.

A Penitential Season
For this reason, Advent is, like Lent, a penitential season. The Church wears purple. We are to discipline our senses, learning how to give of ourselves. We are to still our racing hearts in deeper prayer. Funny thing is, in America we do just the opposite. We pray less and eat more; we race around from one party and shopping frenzy to another. We spend more money at Christmas on more junky things, precisely at the time the Church invites us to simplify, to get quiet, to think of others. The commercial world has turned Advent and Christmas upside down. It has become a time of tinsel and superficiality. It is becoming a time of violence! Did you hear about the woman at the Los Angeles Walmart who attacked rival shoppers with pepper spray? Why? To get the latest X-Box before the others. We laugh about it, but notice that we’ve desacralized Christmas. We laugh at it—it’s become not much more than crude comedy. It has lost most of its meaning.

If we are real Christians, we prepare for Christmas not with pepper spray but with personal penance. And what is penance? It is recognizing first, that we are sinners. Thus the reading from Isaiah: “Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts… Behold, you are angry, and we are sinful; all of us have become like unclean men….” But beyond recognizing our sins, it is recognizing God as our Father. “You, Lord, are our father… we are the clay and you are the potter, the work of your hands.” True joy is knowing our own limitations, and knowing that God has no limitations. We are in his hands. We are safe if we are in his hands.

Real Joy
And this is the real joy of Christmas, not the counterfeit kind of Black Friday excitement that passes for joy in our culture. Don’t settle for the counterfeit! So many settle for the smaller gifts, and they miss the real gift, the Father’s Gift. This is a large gift. But it is nothing compared to what God has prepared for us. God wants to give us himself, eternal life, eternal joy.

Watch!
Jesus tells us only one thing in the Gospel today: “watch.” “What I say to you, I say to all: Watch.” Expect Him. Wait for Him with eager longing. Prepare for Him by purifying your hearts. It is so easy to miss him, especially in a culture driven by the latest and hottest smartphone or video game.

Advent Mission
I have one recommendation to keep a good Advent and so enjoy a Merry Christmas. Learn to pray the rosary. Learn to pray it better. I want to help you do that. I’ll be giving three Advent evenings of reflection, Monday through Wednesday this week. My talks are adapted from those I give to Mother Teresa’s sisters on the Joyful Mysteries of the rosary. I will throw in lots of wisdom from Mother Teresa, and some fascinating stories.

Mother Teresa shows us the simple power of the miraculous medal, which my mother put around my neck when I was five years old. I’ve never stopped wearing one. She shows us the ways that Mother Mary softens hearts and brings real joy. There are many more stories about the rosary. Mother Teresa would pray it unceasingly, whether she was meeting with a national president or alone in the chapel. I would like to share them with you, to bring a bit more joy into this Advent season. Please come to the Advent evenings of reflection, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at 7pm. We will pray a bit of the rosary, have Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and confessions will be available. May we all have a truly joyful Advent and Christmas.

Click here for more information about the Advent Mission