Home stretch

A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024

Mi 5:1-4a, Heb 10:5-10, Lk 1:39-45

Hope.

Peace.

Joy.

Love.

All four candles of our Advent wreath are glowing today, the candles symbolizing hope, peace, joy and love. Our season of preparation to celebrate the Nativity of the Prince of Peace is nearly complete.

Our wreath is glowing its brightest just as the sunlight in our days has started getting longer again. Hooray for the solstice!

Hope, peace, joy and love.

We’ve been getting ready for Christmas in that spirit, a gift we receive every year, thank God. And now, as we’re in the home stretch before the big day, we remember that Santa’s not the only person with a list that needs checking, that needs checking twice.

What’s at the top of our lists? What should be? Here’s a thought:

Have we made the time to visit with friends and relatives, the way Mary visited Elizabeth? Getting together with loved ones — even over FaceTime, if that’s all we can do — strengthens our all-important relationships and usually catches us up on news and gentle gossip, like who’s expecting or who’s getting married.

Have we made the time to visit with strangers this Advent, especially strangers in need of food, clothing, shelter, warmth and dignity? Do we know of any job openings we can tell someone about? 

Do we recognize those strangers as our sisters and brothers, as fellow pilgrims, as fellow children of God? Do we see Christ in their faces? Do we make eye contact with them?

Every year, more and more, I’m proud and humbled to know our parish family can answer yes.

That we are sharing hope, peace, joy and love. 

That we are again welcoming the Son of God, the helpless baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger in Bethlehem. Who humbled himself to share our humanity so we could have a share in his divinity. Who came to serve and not be served.

Whose example the weeks of Advent are designed to help us remember and follow.

One other item from the list: What have we done, big or small, to leave every place we’ve visited better than we found it? To care for Creation, whether animal, vegetable or mineral?

That’s what Advent is supposed to be about.

But these four short weeks of preparation and service are ticking away. Time is short.

Years ago, when I was younger and a different kind of foolish, I thought it was cool to hold off buying one Christmas present for Andrea until the last minute.

Yeah, talk about foolish, indeed.

After a few years of disappointments, and a few well-deserved eye rolls, I learned that, by Christmas Eve, Macy’s has only frying pans and really hideous socks left on the shelves. 

I likewise learned that frying pans and hideous socks do not a merry Christmas make.

Mostly, though, to my naive self’s surprise, I learned that presence — P R E S E N C E — is a far better gift than any present under the tree. Even better than a pony.

Don’t just bring a gift. Be the gift. 

Mary and Elizabeth spent a few months together, helping each other, supporting each other, working and laughing and trading hopes for their lives and their children’s lives.

They prepared for their sons’ births with hope, peace, joy and love. 

And after John and Jesus entered the gritty Middle Eastern world of their day, Elizabeth and Mary continued to wrap them in that same hope, peace, joy and love. 

They gave their sons a place to call home.

Christ challenges us to do the same for the least among us.

Soon, our Advent wreath will go back into storage for another year.

What it symbolizes doesn’t have to.

Let’s pray that its light burns in us every day.

The light of hope, peace, joy and love. 

The Light of Christ, born on Christmas Day.