-Fr. John Roche, SDB
I don’t know about you, but every Advent and Christmas season reawakens inside my heart the desire for the perfect Christmas, the perfect family celebration or the greatest and most meaningful spiritual experience of the Incarnation. Swinging from the secular to the religious, the longing is all the same. Madison Avenue has long capitalized on that latent longing in the human heart that is sparked by the first strains of a Christmas Carol of the hanging of a light in the town center. In fact, that tug we all feel can be easily manipulated into great profit-making if handled shrewdly. But this essay is not about commercialism vs. religiosity. There is enough of that already. This is not a polemic against materialism and the true spirit of Christmas. We have many traditions and Charles Dickens to lead us through those meditations each year. Deep down, we all know what God is up to. But we all need reminders. So, thank God for the liturgies, the lights, the traditions and the celebrations of the Season. You see, God is not born to us in our perfection. In fact, God does not come to those clearly prepared for his coming. God does not appear in the most likely place with the best of circumstances for getting the message out. Instead, God chose to become one of us in circumstances that almost seem to derail his purpose. He is born in obscurity, in a dark corner of the world where there is political and religious upheaval. Jesus is born to a poor and confused couple hiding out in a stable for animals which turns out, soon enough, to be too dangerous even for this little family. They flee to a foreign land and a foreign culture and language to protect their little son and their little family. This mission begins in obscurity and carries forward in mystery. So, what does this reveal to you and me? It shouts louder than the Glorias of the Angels that “God is born in the mess.” So, if your life is a mess, if you find yourself unprepared for Christmas, for God’s coming, for your plans to find the perfect Season, you are on the right track. God wants to come to YOU! Don’t wait for the perfect setting, the best disposition and do not try to win God’s favor with this or that practice of devotion. Instead, let God come into your mess. Let God find a place in your manger, perhaps even in your lack of welcome or readiness. God comes to redeem those messy lives, those hardened places, those longings for perfection. Allow this Christmas and the Seasons leading up to it and following the feast to be opportunities for God to redeem your mess and my own. Jesus came and still comes to bring light into the darkness, so put your flashlights away and allow the light in.