Father George's
Comments

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, 

We are making our way through Advent and on to the event of Christmas.  It is a season filled with anticipation and joy and frought with pitfalls for us as Christians.

Over and over throughout the last years we've heard calls to decommercialize Christmas.  My guess is that we are far too late to effect any kind of change in society.  Christmas has become a secular holiday for the purpose of gift-giving, partying, catching up with friends and relatives and that's not all bad.  

We have, obviously, long lost the idea of celebrating the Christ-Mass, the feast that calls our attention to the birth of God's love in our world.

We we need here, I suggest, is a return to the idea of celebrating the Incarnation.  That's a 24-7, 365 day a year concept, not confined to one, or even twelve, days once a year.  Incarnation is the act in which God comes to us to stay as a part of human life. Emmanuel - God with us.  The love of God in Jesus Christ is a continuing and lasting part of humanity.

What we are called upon to do now is to recognize that the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is a part of every meeting with every human being we meet.  Where God's love has been, God's love always is. So that when God's love entered our humanity in Jesus, that love came to stay.

It is for us to recognize that love in the world around us.  We can easily recognize it in those whom we love and who love us. But God's love is there is those whom we do not love. God's love is in the people with whom we are estranged. God's love is in the stranger on the street; in the person who asks us for money; in the homeless and hungry; in those who live by our rules and those who don't; in those who are part of our country, our values and our religion, an in those who live in the Middle East, who don't share our values, our culture or our faith.  

If we can hold our attention on the Incarnation, then this becomes more and more obvious. If not, we are in danger of missing so very many of the blessings that God offers us through all of the People of God.  Christ is born; born into our world in billions of ways every day of our lives.
 

 Faithfully,

 George+