Christmas is one of the celebrations in a year which we all are waiting for to come. We are expecting people to come and visit us, and, in turn, we are also eager to surprise our loved ones with our presence during this season of love and joy. I would like you all to imagine how you will spend your Christmas if you are only with your family and friends. Maybe some of you would spend a lot of money to buy fireworks, food, and drinks. Some of you would be content to be in a peaceful place with your loved ones and enjoying every bit of your time just by being together taking turns counting your fingers.
We have our own ways to enjoy this season of grace but, often, we always seem to forget the most important aspect of this celebration, that is, the longing of the Child to be with us and to spend time with us during this season of His birth. We have prepared all the food that we like to eat and have already bought the best wines that we can find. We even had our place decorated with so many decorations and, with all these things, Christmas is all set, and we are counting down for the party to begin! But where does the savior fit in?
All had been made ready except for one… we have not yet welcomed the guest of honor into our hearts! Imagine this kind of failure on our part?! We simply failed to make room for the one who is supposed to be the center of all these merry-making and festivities! How can we celebrate the birth of Jesus without letting Him into our lives first?! I wonder what kind of celebration we could have without the presence of the Christ.
Today we are in the second week of Advent. Advent is a special time of grace given to us to prepare for the visit of Jesus in our hearts and our home. It is not just a mere visit but His longing to be alive in us, to be present in us, and eventually to make His presence in us bear much fruit, especially in the way we relate with one another. How do we prepare our lives to be able to worthily accept Christ Jesus in our lives?
Acceptance of Jesus doesn’t require a colorful and elaborate display of our joy because, during the first Christmas, He has finally been born into our midst. Our welcoming hearts can be shown best by our simplicity and honest acceptance not only of His person but also of His commandment to love, because this is what Christmas means for all believers. Christmas and the coming of Jesus into our hearts is also the moment when our hearts and our whole being is permeated by the love of God, and we are thereby summoned to shower that love to each and everyone around us. Jesus is the best gift that we receive each Christmas, and Jesus is Love, and we need to share this Love.
Christmas is the celebration of Love in our hearts and this Advent season is our own spiritual preparation so we may be able to celebrate love in our hearts, just like the way it must be celebrated. The Manger in Bethlehem is a vivid reminder to all of us that love is celebrated by our self-giving to our beloved, just like when God gave Himself to all mankind in the person of Jesus during the first Christmas. If God has given us His very self as a gift, now it is our turn to give our very self to Him as a gift. Our gift has long been delayed and obstructed by some worldly things that may have obscured our eyes of faith, but we still have a chance to pay Him back and that chance is now!
Our world is going crazy nowadays and our values have been thrown to the dogs! Sometimes we undermine important celebrations like this just to give way to our selfish whims and caprices, especially our convenience. We must always remember that it was never convenient for God, in the person of Jesus, to be like us, to be one among us and to suffer greatly because of His love for us. He did all these things, even His dying on the cross, all because of love and I believe that it is now our turn to make Him feel that we love Him.
My dear friends, we may differ in the tenets of our Christian belief, but still, I believe that we are one as Christians in celebrating the moment in time when God decided to embrace our human nature to uplift that wounded nature to the Divinity that He longs to share with us. This is God’s greatest gift for all humankind, and so, let us also give some importance to this gift, at least, by giving due respect to the time and date when God, the Son, became alive in our human existence. If we cannot give importance to this little fact, how much more can we be able to offer our very self to Him as our gift to Him who saved us? Let us think twice because without this gift of incarnation, we will never be able to get past our sinful human nature and experience the Divine life with Jesus.