When Christmas comes, are you ready?

(Updated version of column for church bulletin)

I enjoy reading, so much that I remember having to be told not to bring books to the dinner table when I was a child. Today my reading interest varies depending on the mood I am in. Subjects can range from history, religious and biographies to best selling fiction.  Sometimes I will let the book I read effect my mood. I remember the first time I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I was so sad when I finished the last book. The characters of the books had entered my imagination and become real. We shared grand adventure, become friends; protected each other and now all at once and very quickly they were gone, never to live again unless I read the books again.

Our holidays can be like that sometimes. The memories become alive just like the characters in the books we have read. We may feel that with each passing Advent and Christmas season something has been lost. Memories and feeling have been made that we may never have again. Luckily the unique sights and smells of the holidays draw us back to our own memories. The sweets that are baked and the scented candles we burn all help us remember our own family memories. We recall our childhood and the excitement we felt at this time of the year. We want to remember our past but also create new memories with our own family and friends. We recall the past and use those memories to build on the future.

This is what Advent should be for all of us. We should be looking back at the birth of Jesus, recalling all the events surrounding it and also looking forward to the opportunity the birth of Jesus will bring to us. It is fitting that today’s Collect helps us to look both in the past and to the future. We pray that through the Incarnation of the Son of God, made known to us through the message of the Angel, God’s grace may be poured forth into our hearts. This grace will help us prepare for our own eternal salvation that is shown to us by the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel tells us that the child Elizabeth was carrying leaped for joy when hearing the voice of Mary, causing Elizabeth to cry out: “And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” We too must be ready to leap for joy when the birth of Christ comes. Our savior wants us to say “Yes” to the salvation he will one day offer to us which begins with his birth. This is not just something from the past, a memory that only lives when we read or think about but an offer of a future eternal life. Advent has helped us to recall the past and to prepare for the future. When Christmas comes may you too be blessed for having believed the message spoken to Mary “the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”