Homily - The Fourth Sunday of Advent - 24 December 2023

The Fourth Sunday of Advent (B)

Dear brothers and sisters,

As I waited in line the other day, a father asked his daughter, who appeared to be about ten, “You know Christmas isn’t about getting gifts?” She answered him, as might be expected, “I know.” I put it to you that they were both wrong.

Christmas is indeed about getting gifts. Christmas is about an interior disposition of the heart, a disposition of gratitude and of receptivity. At the very least, Christmas is about getting one gift. I can already feel parents cringing, but I ask you to hear me out.

Christmas is all about a very great gift that ought to engender wonder in each one of us, no matter how old we are. If it “doesn’t feel like Christmas,” as many have said again this year, it is because we have lost this wonder at the gift given us that is the very reason we celebrate Christmas.

When was the last time you said or thought, “It feels like Christmas”? Did it feel like Christmas last year when it was cold enough to snow? Did it feel like Christmas the last time we had snow on the ground in late December? Did it feel like Christmas the last time you were as giddy as a schoolboy? The feeling of Christmas is not really found in cold or snow or giddiness; it is found in something much greater.

In my favorite Christmas movie – The Muppet Christmas Carol – the Ghost of Christmas present sings, “It’s true wherever you find love it feels like Christmas.” If it has not felt like Christmas in some time, I dare say it is because we have forgotten – or perhaps misplaced – the central aspect of this great feast. At the heart of Christmas is the gift given to the world through the Blessed Virgin Mary, her Child who is “called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). This is why Saint James tells us that “every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

There is still time to recover the feeling of Christmas. There is still time to awaken the wonder at Mary’s Child, to receive the gift of his love, the gift of his very self, which he gives given to us in the Eucharist each time we gather at his altar to fortify us in his love against all those things that would draw us away from him (cf. Romans16:25).

There is still time to prepare our hearts to receive the great gift of God, the gift that Christmas is all about. Let us see to this interior preparation more than to the many external ones that too often seem more important. If we attend to the preparation of the heart it will feel like Christmas because we will have found love in the Babe of Bethlehem. Amen.