According to Forbes Magazine, American holiday spending exceeded $1 trillion in 2016, and it dropped to a little more than $700 billion in 2017. As we are now just a few days away from Christmas in 2018, no doubt Americans have started to rack up an impressive amount of spending again this year.
While it is understandable that people want to express their love and affection for one another in a material way, I nonetheless cannot help but think that this instinct could be met without accruing such exorbitant expenditures. As the old saying goes: It’s the thought that counts.
The season of Advent is drawing to a close, and hopefully we can use these final days to prepare ourselves for a truly blessed and spiritual entrance into the Christmas season. The Letter to the Hebrews calls to mind that our Lord is not interested so much in our material offerings, but in our desire to do the Father’s will. A purification of the soul and our intentions is what makes for a worthy act of worship and love of God.
In the life of faith, each of us is called to offer ourselves to God. Yet, this offering will only be pleasing to God if it truly flows from the heart.
We can say all the right words and adopt all the right gestures, but they do us no good if our hearts are empty of a sincere desire to fulfill God’s will.
In what remains of Advent, in which we are called to prepare ourselves for Christ, we can reflect upon the Blessed Mother and St. Elizabeth as a wonderful way to ready our hearts and minds for a worthy celebration of the Savior’s birth. In St. Luke’s Gospel, we are told that Mary sets out for the hill county “in haste” to visit her cousin.
Our Blessed Mother does not accumulate large expenses to see the work of God in her family — she simply is moved by faith to pursue God’s great goodness. In our forthcoming celebrations of Christmas, we can follow Mary’s example and move in haste to see God working in our families, friends and parishes.
Instead of exerting energy to make Christmas just right, dwelling on the right wrapping paper or the perfect surprise gift, we should instead focus on cultivating loving hearts that propel us forward to joyfully encounter those God puts in our path during these privileged days of Christmas.
The presents we buy and travels that we plan for the holidays will fade into history, but the love we offer to one another will be joined to our Lord’s love for us, the love we see so clearly in the Incarnation.
Let us ready our hearts now to move past material things to embrace the spiritual realities of God.
Father Meyers is pastor of St. Francis Xavier in Buffalo.
Sunday, Dec. 23
Fourth Sunday of Advent
