Are we ready for Christmas?

Only a few hours separate us from this long-awaited moment when the whole family will sit at the Christmas table. Again we will say the words of Christmas wishes, shake hands and kiss each other as a sign of peace that the newborn brings into our lives. Then we will look under the Christmas tree with the hope that we will find there at least a small gift, which is an expression of the fact that someone here on earth loves us and remembers us. At midnight, we may go to the traditional midnight mass, and tomorrow we will continue to celebrate in a narrower or wider circle of relatives or friends.

Then...? And then the prose of everyday life will return – the glow of the Christmas tree will fade a bit, sumptuous dishes will disappear from our tables, relatives and friends will return to their homes, and the festive atmosphere will be quickly replaced by the daily rush, generating anxiety and even conflicts. Oh, that's all we will have left of these "merry Christmas"...

Instead, in today's Gospel we hear the prophecy spoken (and perhaps even sung...) by the priest Zechariah, having recovered the speech that was taken from him when he doubted God's promise given to him. And he says, that thanks to the newborn God will, rescued from the hand of enemies, without fear we might worship him in holiness and righteousness before him all our days (Lk 1:74-75). He foretells that the birth of the Messiah is to deliver us from the power of our enemies (and is not man's greatest enemy our human sin?) and change our lives definitively, making us righteous in God's eyes to the end of our lives. Not only for a moment, not only for the time of a joyful meeting at the Christmas table, but until the end of our days.

Are we ready for this? Has the time of Advent, the time of preparation for Christmas, for the coming of the Lord Jesus, awakened in us this readiness to change our lives, to take seriously the birth of Christ and to allow it to be a kind of "springboard" to a new and better life, to a life of piety and righteousness before Him?

May it be so. May this everyday life, to which we will more or less willingly return after Christmas, be really different, changed, filled with this peace that the Rising Sun is to bring into our lives from on high – Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with us. May this kindness and this peace, which we will share at the Christmas table, not end with the last bite of Christmas dish, with the last unwrapped gift, with the last Christmas guest leaving our home, but let them continue and accompany us all our days.

Until Tomorrow

fr. george