The mark of the true Christian is a willingness to give of oneself freely for the sake of loving God and neighbor. Further, the committed Catholic’s very life should be a lifelong prayer offered to God. That forces us to reexamine our priorities. We must ask ourselves, is our commitment to our faith sufficiently strong so as to make this happen? I’ve had several individuals, with a perfectly straight face, ask me from time to time to curtail the length of my Mass because it makes them late for afternoon football on TV. Football is cool, I guess (I don’t really care for it), but when it becomes so important that prayer is tossed in favor of a game, well, a good examination of conscience is necessary. The same goes for failing to honor our obligation to attend Sunday Mass each and every week. What does casually forgiving ourselves of our promise to grow in the faith say about our relationship with the God who loves us so unconditionally? Freely giving of oneself is the very mark of the true Christian.

And with that being said, I want to thank all who have recognized their Christian call to serve God and neighbor and have continued to give so generously of themselves for the sake of God’s Kingdom in the year 2008. These include our Parochial Vicar, Fr. Ridley, our two deacons, the staff, the catechists, the Finance and Parish Councils, the volunteers, the choir, the lectors, the altar servers, the Eucharistic Ministers, the Women’s Guild, the Bible Study coordinators and participants, the Knights of Columbus, those who cook and help with our monthly pasta dinner, those who have organized the Giving Tree, the Remembrance Tree, and the Christmas Pageant, our Trustees, our sexton, and our parking lot safety team. If I’ve forgotten anybody, sorry. So many helpers is an indicator of spiritual growth. And each and every one of you who come to Mass to be part of our community and contribute to the support of your parish. YOU are the Spirit of Christmas, and I love you all.

We have many plans for 2009 to make this a better parish and to be a more effective outreach of Christ’s love to each other. Wait till you see what we have planned for Epiphany! Come, be part of our gift to ourselves in Jesus’ name! Give yourself as a present to Jesus Christ this Christmas and this year by giving yourself as a gift to your parish and your family. Forget about receiving, focus on giving.

We’re delighted and thankful that you’re here.

Merry Christmas with love.

Let’s see if I’m getting this straight. Looking for a bargain on stuff (for Christmas???) a mob creates a surge which damages the building and takes a life. Over his now-lifeless body they rush to be the first to get 60% off or whatever on a 50 big screen TV, (why pay more??) displaying absolutely no human compassion or care for the horrible thing they’ve just done. Then, being told that they can’t get their precious stuff, they complain that their rights have been trampled upon!

I’m writing this on Thursday morning, having just proclaimed the Gospel for the daily Mass in which Jesus, in the seventh chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

I’d love to interview those people who surged the door and killed that young man. I’m willing to bet that the majority of them were baptized Christians. And I’m willing to bet that a large percentage of them, having accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior as the saying goes, are positive that when they die, they will be going straight to heaven, their personal behavior notwithstanding. Hey, why bother worrying about asking forgiveness for our sins and preparing for Christmas when we can have the NFL in high-definition on a screen big enough to use as a lifeboat? Too bad about the kid, but TVs are important! Now, am I the only one who sees this as a bit ambiguous? Is greed and manslaughter doing the will of God? The utter selfishness of what happened! All this to buy Christmas gifts at a cheaper price? If they were seeking Christmas gift giving items, maybe the first item they should acquire in their shopping carts is real Christianity. Let’s all learn a lesson from this sad episode: gift giving should be a sign of charity, a mirroring of the charity that God himself showed when he sent his only beloved Son to us as a gift, which resulted in our redemption. If Christ is removed from the season, this kind of Unchristian vulgarity is inevitable. May God help us to truly honor Christ in our gift giving, by giving, and shopping, as Christians.

In time, as she aged, Thanksgiving Dinner started to get later and later. She was beginning to slow down, and one year, exhausted to the core, she served the meal at 9PM. That was the year that I declared that Mom had cooked her last Thanksgiving turkey; it was now time to pass the torch and let somebody cook for her. She ended up passing the torch to me, which wasn’t exactly my plan… And so, thinking fast, my ‘cooking’ consisted of an invitation to mom to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, at a rambling wooden country inn not far from where Norman Rockwell lived and painted. Americana at its best. And since then, my family has been enjoying Thanksgiving in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, where once again last week I found myself with those I love most doing what I love so much: spending time with my family (and eating). Hope yours was as pleasant, too! Bravo to all those turkey-cooking moms!

Now, this weekend, we put aside the turkey leftovers and begin the period of waiting called Advent. The Church asks us to slow down, and enter into a period of delicious waiting… waiting for the incredible event which is the commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ. A time to take spiritual stock of our lives and to present a clean slate to God with a promise to do better next year by loving God and our neighbors more deeply, by putting aside past sins and entering into the spirit of conversion.

In the first reading, Isaiah pens what are among the most profound words of all scripture: You (God) are the potter, and we are the clay. Oh, how we love to be in control! How we just love to be the potter! Who needs God as long as I have me, myself, and I seems so common. Or its modern variant: who needs God as long as I have my stuff to divert my attention from my salvation?

Advent reminds us to continue the theme of Thanksgiving all the way to Christmas and beyond, by emphasizing that we await the giver of all good gifts, Jesus Christ, who has re-formed us into what we are called to be: Thankful and holy children of God, but fragile as clay: let us never forget how much we need him! Drop a clay pot, and it will break into a thousand pieces. It is destroyed. So are our souls if we beat them up and abuse them with sin. Advent reminds us of just how fragile we really are and how badly in need of repentance we are for our sins and the world’s terrible sins, especially against the dignity of human life: war, abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, crime, starvation, and political or religious injustice, and how incredibly loving God is to us, to send his only son into the world, to take on our brokenness and raise it to the dignity of God himself through the Redemption of the Cross. Our pride tells us to deny that we are fragile, but I paraphrase St. Paul, who reminded us that only when we are weak are we truly strong, for then the power of the living Christ shines through. Allow yourself to be fragile and repentant this Advent, ask for God’s strength and forgiveness, acknowledge your sins, especially by making a good sacramental confession, and bask in God’s power to save, while we await the coming of the Christ-child.

But, before we can start a new year of any variety, we must first end the current one (and I’ll bet the end of 2008 is a really welcome idea for many of us!!!). This we are doing this week, at least liturgically speaking. We celebrate the 34th and last Sunday of our liturgical year, also known as ‘The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King.’ This is, I feel, a fitting way to finish: by remembering that Jesus Christ is first and last, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end… of everything.

Our readings today cause us to focus on the one thing that really matters: our destiny. While it may be a surprise to many who have not been given the gift of faith, we have been, as St. Augustine reminds us, created by God for the purpose of spending eternity with the God who loves us so dearly that he sacrificed his Son for us. Following the example of Jesus, we as Catholics can see that our earthly life is a temporary, finite, all-too-quickly-ending testing ground of charity: we are expected to use the talents God has given us to further God’s kingdom on earth by doing good works, that is, worrying less about ’stuff’ and more about our immortal souls. In other words, this life is NOT ‘all there is,’ and we will be judged by God as to how well we kept focused on God as the central Being of our existence (first and last!) and how well we proved it by the things we did and said on this side of the Pearly Gates.

The radio and TV economists are worried about the falling stock market. Retailers are worried about the prospect of a poor ‘holiday’ (gosh I hate that word!!!) season, and the banks are worried about losing their assets if they loan them out. Speaking as someone trying to keep our expenses down, I can say I’m worried about these things too: but while we’re worried about all this ‘earthly’ stuff, an old saying comes to mind: ‘Nobody will remember a thing about today a hundred years from now.’ In other words, what seems so incredibly important to us now will be a long gone memory tomorrow. Things pass and go in cycles. But, if we focus too much on mammon, we’ll forget that one and only one thing matters: our salvation. If we lose our souls over earthly stuff, we’ve made a very, very bad deal… with the devil. So, of course, be prudent with your financial decisions. These are tough times. But never forget that Jesus Christ, our King and our God, came to earth as a human being and sacrificed himself for our sakes to help us to recognize our real treasure. Because of Christ, we are royalty: and you can take that to the bank!