Fourth Sunday of Advent - Year B - 21st December 2008

Christmas

I cannot remember a Christmas time that saw so many people out of work across the world. Our pound is going down like a lead balloon and more young lives are sacrificed to this elusive thing we call security, so what are we about as we sing our carols and set our tables? It is tempting to dismiss Christmas as an over-the-top materialistic extravaganza, until we look at the Gospels and see Jesus going around to dinners and wedding receptions while the prim-faced Pharisees fasted with their faces as miserable as a rattlesnake with a toothache.

Jesus wanted us to be happy in both this world and in the next. That is why he healed people, but he started with the inside to see was there a malaise within that was causing a sort of darkness in the person's life.

Our newspaper commentators keep asking what is wrong with the world at the moment. Why are we in such trouble? There is a darkness of some sort that needs the light of the Gospels to shine deeply on it.

Maybe our politicians and financial leaders are tinkering with the outside symptoms without getting down to the root causes of our problems.

We find the child in the crib no threat, nor should we be put off by the adult Christ who challenged the things we cherish so much: our pride, greed, lust, anger; I could go on, but maybe I'm just being too old-fashioned?