Whenever people ask me, “Hey Sherry, or Hey Mom, what do you want for…insert holiday here?” I draw a blank. I have a standard joke I tell people who need to verify my identity when at appointments. “I like chocolate, silver and anything red.”
So when my husband in November, gave each of us a piece of paper on which to write what we wanted for Christmas, I wrote down a few things, but not what my heart first desired because I knew it wasn’t feasible. Children had school, work, lives. It was a fleeting thought as I scribbled down, black suede boots, size seven, ponchos –jewel tone, and a gym membership. All things I liked, all things I wanted, but things, and what I wanted was everybody. Everyone together at the table. That wasn’t going to happen.
My mom died last Tuesday, and everything changed.
Now, I will see them, all of them, all of everybody. It often takes marriage or birth or death to pull us out of the ordinary, to recognize that this time is all we have, and the darkness of life that comes from suffering, from loneliness, from disconnect is what the sacraments, most especially the mass, address in fullness. The cure for the human heart, is to rest in Jesus, to be at the mass and praying, offering all we have to our Lord as before the manger, before the cross, before the Eucharist. God answered the secret longing of my heart, to be with everyone, to have everyone at my fingertips.
Being Catholic means longing for that communion with God, and community with everyone.
My heart always wants the feast. It always wants everyone –unwittingly, at every mass, I look for the faces I know. My mom used to chide me for it –but I can’t help it, I love seeing people go up to receive communion. I love when I see people I know receiving. It heartens me each and every time. It’s why I was a Eucharistic Minister for a time, but I probably smile too much while presenting the Body or Blood of Christ.
Our society is so disconnected, we no longer see neighbors, friends, or even acquaintances with any regularity, as we have 427 emails, mail, bills, phonecalls to make, things to order, stuff, stuff and more stuff at any given time that prevents the peace and retorative components of encountering.
Perhaps we should consider that reality as part of our celebrations going forward. Traditions are built by recognizing the need not met by what is. Perhaps we should make Christmas a different sort of feast day, with a meal after the mass as a community, and presents at the end of the day –once we’ve feasted on the true presence, and the presence of others.
God has answered my secret prayers, and I intend to feast on that reality as I do on the Eucharist.
So if there is someone you’ve been meaning to visit, visit. Someone you’ve been meaning to call, call. Stop putting it off and bring that joy of presence to someone who will rejoice at being seen, being remembered, being loved. Hug your children. Text those you love if they are far away so they know, you are thinking of them. Do something today to let someone you love know, really know. Thank those who bother to love you.
This is a means of making room in the inn. It is to imitate Mary and Joseph, to attend to Jesus by attending to those around you. Life will have aches and sufferings and deaths. It must. Life need not be defined only by sin, and indeed, it was never intended to be seen as only what causes pain or what is neutral. We were created for love, for light, for life, for joy.
The wages of sin are death, and the taxes of pain, struggle, confusion and loss. The devil would have us know and define all by their sins, by their faults, by their past, or by their failures. God knows all of this, and loves us beyond death, beyond sin, beyond our own understanding. That is the joy of Christmas completed in Easter.
We the poor shepherds at work in the fields doing what we must do, must look up. We the kings who study and seek, must also look up. The world must look up, it is the only way to peace, the only way to hope, the only way to a world less dark, more healed than it currently is.
Mary’s fiat is that sort of pre-emptive offering –signifying her complete trust that whatever God offers is for the good of her and all. She does not know the whole of the plan, only the orientation and purpose. Neither do we, but we know the pattern she reveals by her life. All love is to bring us to the source of all love. All sacrifice is love. All offered is received. We are to offer our all. Go. Gather everybody and feast.
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