Our Christmas Present

Because he delivered a new sermon every weekday, the ebb and flow of Deacon Michael’s life was defined by an awareness of the seasons of the Church. December 13 would clearly be the Advent season, as the Church prepares for Christmas. Here he integrates the readings of the Advent season with the life of St. Lucy.

He takes the liberty of personally addressing the people who came to the 6:30 communion service, whom he loved so much, and who loved him. Although they were never sure what he was going to say, and so they were nervous when they were singled out, they knew that he never had any hostile or inappropriate feelings toward them. On the contrary, they knew he loved them just as they were, and they loved him.

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:

The Feast of St. Lucy

Jesus talks about, in the gospel reading, being prepared… the ten virgins.  And this is all done in the context of St. Lucy.

We have St. Paul talking about if you boast, you boast in the Lord, and Jesus says be prepared.  St. Lucy, the story is that she was a young lady that decided to give herself to God.  Her mother decided she wanted to get her married and she finally convinced her[mother]. No, she didn't get married. And she gave her dowry to the poor.

Well there was a young man who took a fancy to Lucy and, through a whole bunch of actions, the stories of which again, didn't come up for hundreds of years after St. Lucy, she had her eyes put out, which is why she is the patron saint of blind people, and she was put through various tortures and killed. Finally she had her head chopped off.

So how does that relate to sex and to Christmas?

The Christmas season.  You think of The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: Ebenezer Scrooge.  Ebenezer Scrooge, until this story, does not enjoy Christmas.  And we know a lot of people at the end of the year, the fiscal year... they probably had a different fiscal year… they have to get everything done.  And you have the pressure of getting gifts.  And make sure you get the gifts, and you have all these things.  And you have this horrible music in the background of everything you, do when you go out in public.  Very bad versions of good Christmas carols.  Grocery stores.  Department stores.

It is a period of stress.  And we sing Joy to the World?

We have allowed in our world, the joy of the Christmas season to go away.  We have allowed it to be replaced with other things.  What is more important?

“Oh, I've got to work really hard because I only need to do this much more and I'll get a bigger bonus for the year.  I only need to get my mother, my wife, my children this present and they're going to be happy all the year long.”  Even though we know that when they open the present they're going to say, "Oh, that's really nice," and that's going to be the end of it.  If it is a toy it will probably disappear at that point.  We know all these things.  And sometimes it can get just absolutely overwhelming because we allow something to replace what we're looking forward to, which is the coming of Christ.

We allow other things to take a priority in our minds.  And one of those things, I told you I'd get to sex, looking at the story of St. Lucy, that is very illustrative to our world, the world in which we are living: God made men and women, right?  There are certain ways that we won't talk about but there is a reason why that on a screw there is a female part and a male part of the screw.  Because they go together.

There also is something inherently disordered if you take a relationship that is very close and you disrupt or change the relationship.  It would be very disruptive for Robert, I'm picking on you because you are an engineer, [if] I said, "Okay, Robert, I need to take a week off.  I want you come up into my office.  I will show you how my computers work.  I will tell you what I need to do in the next week.  And all I need you to do, and this is not difficult stuff because I do it all the time, all I need you to do is do what I do, for a week."  And he says, "That's fine, but I want you to spend a week at TI doing what I do." Both of us would be basket cases at the end of it.

And that's part of what relates now to the problems we have with sex.  It is that we are not doing what God wanted us to do.  We decide that it is justifiable for a married couple to get a divorce.  We decided that if you take two screws and not a nut and you tried to put them together, that's the appropriate way of doing it.  We have decided in our infinite wisdom that we know better than God.  And all that manages to do is create unhappiness.

And this is not something new.  The reason it popped in my mind is that's exactly what happened to St. Lucy.  Somebody had in their mind an obsession with sex, presumably with her, or maybe generally, that allowed St. Lucy to die, to become a martyr.  That the person could not accept that she wanted to leave her world as a bride of Christ, not as a bride of man.  They couldn't accept it.

And it is the same thing that affects us, some of us, in the Christmas season. We lose the sight of what we are celebrating.  And if... I'm going to pick on Beth because I don't do it very often… if I decided that Beth is a real cutie, and that her husband doesn't really deserve her, and so I get a necklace for Beth that says “Beth”, but the letters are bigger (than the ones on the necklace she already has), and each of the letters has a diamond in it, and I give it to Bev, and she says, "Go away, Michael," I'm going to be disappointed.

I have unrealistic expectations.  I don't place my expectations in God.  And that's one of the things that throughout our lives we always have to remember.  And the Church says it, and Jesus says it, and this is the reading today, it is exactly about it.  It is, if you allow yourself the goal of true happiness, the goal of true joy, you are only going to find it through God.  You are only going to find it through Our Lord Jesus Christ.

And if you allow anything, like Ebenezer Scrooge with money, with the young man who loved St. Lucy… well, lusted for St. Lucy… anything that we have in our lives that pulls us away from God, ultimately is going to make us unhappy.  And ultimately in this season, Advent, there's a preparation for Christmas, the whole world is saying you're supposed to be happy because Jesus is coming, and you are going, "Pffft!  My life is not happy!  If my life was happy I'd have more money.  I'd have beautiful women.  I'd have... substitute whatever." 

And so what we always have to keep in mind, is the wonderful, unbelievable joy that comes through the coming of Jesus Christ.  His birth that we are celebrating, and the promise of a second coming.  That's where true joy is.

And that's why, in this season, one of my favorite songs is "Joy to the World."  That's the whole key for having joy in life, for being happy: allow God to be a part of everything because that is what will lead you to joy, to the eternal joy of being with God in Heaven.

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