The fourth week of Advent (this year a full seven days, thank God), promises to be active with preparations, last minute purchases, and social engagements. In my parish office, we are busy getting ready for the Festival of the Nativity and the many guests we expect on Christmas Eve.
Spiritually, the goal is the same: getting ready. We must try to find a way to turn activity inward as we approach the last few days before Christmas and become centered, open to the tremendous mystery at hand. Our model is Mary. Despite what must have been a stressful late-pregnancy, rough travel, and the uncertainty of where she would actually deliver, she is ready. Since that surprising day when her cousin Elizabeth told here she was blessed in her believing, Mary has been waiting expectantly. For us too, the time draws close. We believe and wait for the fulfillment of God’s promise.
I think of my own daughter Rebecca, in her late pregnancy, and her unborn child expected in late December or early January. The waiting is nearly over for her and her husband Nate. Beyond the labor there will be fullness of joy, though perhaps initially, joyful exhaustion!
It’s important to realize as we turn toward Christmas, that joy runs deeper than happiness, which is so often predicated on favorable life circumstances. Joy is the quiet, confident assurance of God’s love and presence at work within us–no matter the challenges that life presents. Coupled with this conviction, I find the practice of gratitude helps to re-direct negative cycles of thinking toward positive things, especially in times of adversity. There must have been times in Mary’s life when her circumstances left her feeling discouraged and unhappy. Yet there can be no doubt of her deep joy and assurance whenever we hear or sing her wonderful Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55).
This distinction between happy circumstances and confident joy can help us enter into the mystery of Christmas as we are and where we are, without trying to achieve our own or someone else’s expectations. We cherish the story of Christmas precisely because it is such a human story and because in that story, we find inspiration and hope for our own lives and for the world. May the story of God’s coming as a child of blessing and peace find a home in all of us once again.
