As Christmas approaches and as the pandemic seems to be easing, people are looking to get back to “normal.” Many are looking forward to Christmas parties and gift-giving. They are venturing into stores to buy gifts, or they are ordering them online, perhaps as never before.
Seeing children’s faces light up with joy when they open a gift warms our hearts. Knowing that we gave just the perfect gift to our spouse and receiving in return a gift we really wanted is all part of the charm of this season.
Having endured the pandemic now for nearly two years, the refrain of an old song comes to mind: “We need a little Christmas, right this very minute!”
Yet, no amount of gift-giving or -party-going will fill the void in our lives. Social occasions are wonderful and necessary, and, for a time, they bring us enjoyment, at least most of the time. The gifts we give and receive are tokens of friendship, yet even the most valuable gift fails to bring us lasting happiness. It tends to become an object on a shelf or in a drawer.
The real gift we are seeking, at Christmas and throughout the year, is love. Not fleeting affection. Not a love blemished by ulterior motives. Rather, we are seeking a love that is at once passionate and pure. We are seeking to be loved for our own sake. We are seeking a love that corresponds to that spark of divinity deep within us. We are seeking to be loved, eternally and infinitely. Even the most authentic forms of human love do not fully satisfy the restless yearnings at the root and base of our being.
Christmas is indeed about gift–giving. On the first Christmas night, God the Father gave us his only Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary. On that starlit night, the Eternal Son of God, clothed in our humanity, entered history.
He came to save us from our sins. He came to reveal the depth, beauty and utter goodness of his Father’s loving heart. Christmas is all about that pure, infinite and eternal love for which our hearts are longing.
For some, this gift of love seems out of reach, an event locked in the past and unavailable amid the hardscrabble realities of our lives. Not so. Just as God the Father gave the world its Redeemer on that first Christmas night, so too, Jesus, our great high priest, continuously gives himself to us in the Eucharist, just as he did at the Last Supper and on the Cross.
In the Eucharist, we truly receive the One who loves us like no other – the One who emptied himself, became one of us, preached, healed, suffered and died, rising from the dead to defeat sin and death. In the Eucharist, we make living contact with Jesus, the gift of the Father, the gift of love and the gift of peace.
What should be our response to so great a gift? One response we should not make is to shun the Eucharist by failing to participate in Holy Mass on Sundays, unless we have a truly serious reason for not doing so. Not to take part in the Eucharist is like refusing to open a gift from a loved one on Christmas morning. Unthinkable!
The way we “open” the gift of the Eucharist is through faith, which is itself a gift of the Holy Spirit. Faith enables us to believe in, accept and indeed welcome Jesus’ gift of self in our own lives and in our parishes and communities of faith. How important that we nurture and strengthen the gift of faith we received through baptism, by daily prayer, by reading Scripture, by regularly confessing our sins, and by spending quiet moments in conversation with the Lord.
As you may know, the bishops of the United States are launching a multiyear Eucharistic Revival Project which will continue the work begun in our archdiocesan Year of the Eucharist. Each of us can play our part in supporting these efforts by reviving and strengthening our faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, by attending Sunday Mass and daily Mass when possible, and by eucharistic adoration.
As Christmas dawns, may we gratefully receive the gift of the Eucharist and experience the amazing love contained in the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar.
Read more Year of the Eucharist
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