FIVE GRINCHES THAT WANT TO STEAL
YOUR CHRISTMAS: BEWARE!!!
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| SCROOGE!!! |
The devil never goes on vacation; he
is always at work, but especially in the Holiday Seasons. The devil is always
astutely planning to throw up spiritual roadblocks to prevent Jesus from
entering fully into our lives; this is true especially around the Christmas
Season!
As soldiers on guard, as athletes fighting
to win the championship game, as boxers with the left-guard up, we must be constantly
on the watch for the enemy of our soul and his crafty, insidious, wily, and
constant traps that he plants and plans for us to slip and fall into.
St. Peter compares the devil to a
roaring lion on the loose looking for whoever he has a chance to devour. (I
Peter 5: 8-9) We are called to resist him by being solidly rooted in our faith
in Jesus. Jesus must be the solid rock foundation of our faith and our lives,
and at all times! (Mt. 7:24-29—The Parable of the House on two foundations)
Therefore, the purpose of this short
essay is to highlight and point out five grinches that are out to diminish the
super-abundant graces that the Lord Jesus has in store for you every Christmas.
Let us pull down and pull off their masks and not allow ourselves to fall into
easy deception!
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| "I want two more dollies!!!" |
1.
MATERIALISM. There is an ubiquitous, ever-present danger
of succumbing to the lie of materialism, especially concerning Christmas. For
many, possibly most, Christmas is a season of shopping (“Shop until you drop”)
buying and consuming. This is the air that we breathe daily in the United
States. How ironic indeed it is: the
circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus. He was rejected even before He
was born—“There was no place for Him in
the Inn.”(Lk. 2:7) His birthplace? A stable! Imagine the environs and milieu
of a stable: refuge for animals, cold, damp, stench, musty, hard ground,
etc. Venerable Fulton J Sheen waxing
poetic states it simply: “The Creator of the universe had nowhere to
be born in his own creation.” Therefore, do not allow materialism to
suffocate Jesus from being born this Christmas day. Put poetically: Jesus
is the reason for the season.
Christmas is not so much a season of things, but a season of a human
GIFT. The “Gift of Gifts” every
Christmas is Jesus born in the stable of Bethlehem for love of you and me, born
to save our immortal souls for all eternity!
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| Clinging to sin, we drop God! |
2.
CLINGING TO SIN. The great Saint Jerome, saintly scholar, who
translated the Bible from Greek and Aramaic into Latin, had a vision of the
Infant Child Jesus around Christmas. The Bible scholar, moved by an impulse of
great generosity, wanted to offer the Child Jesus a gift. The saint began to
suggest gifts: his penances, long prayers and vigils, his Bible translations,
and much more. But the Child Jesus wanted something more important. He revealed
to Saint Jerome that the best gift that he could offer Him for His birthday
would be to give to Jesus his sins! Pope Francis announced a Jubilee Year of
grace, a year of mercy from the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (2015),
up to Nov 20, (2016). Why not in preparation for Christmas, the birth of Our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, clean out the dirty, cold, hard, musty and smelly
stable of your soul with a good sacramental confession. This is the true
Christmas spirit: dying to sin and returning to the life of grace! The Child Jesus is anxiously waiting for you
with His little arms open in the confessional! The name Jesus means Savior; He
came to save us from the slavery of sin!
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| Be reconciled with your loved ones! |
3.
UNFORGIVENESS AND RESENTMENTS. Christmas is a season of peace, joy, love
and sharing. An enormous roadblock iHin
the lives of many is holding on to past resentments and an unwillingness to
forgive. Jesus states clearly what we must do; and it is basically overcoming
our deeply engrained pride! We must
leave our Christmas-gift at the foot of the altar; then we must go and
reconcile and make up and come to terms of peace with this person with whom we
are bearing a grudge!(Mt. 5:1-26) This is the true spirit of Christmas: “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is
merciful.”((Lk. 6:36) Or as we pray every day in the Our Father: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
those who trespass against us.”(Mt. 6:12) By forgiving and reconciling with
this person who has hurt us then indeed we are setting the captives free! That captive or slave that will be set free
is you! Christmas must be a time of freedom from the yoke and slavery of anger
and resentment due to lack of forgiveness!
“Come Lord Jesus, come Lord Jesus
and set the captives free and that captive is me!!!”(Is.42:7)
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| Work overload!!! |
4.
ACTIVISM/HORIZONTALISM/ “MARTHAISM”! Frenetic activity, nervous tension, nerves on
end, anxiety and stress to the max, on the move 24/7 travelling a mile a
minute, rushing like a chicken with his head cut off--- all this succinctly expresses
the state of being of millions of individuals as Christmas quickly approaches!
All of this is as a result of a lack of a deep union with Jesus, Mary, and
Saint Joseph in our prayer life. Unfortunately our modern world prioritizes
work over prayer, the material over the spiritual, having over being, the body
over the soul and temporal over the eternal. The reason for this is crystal
clear: lack of a deep interior life or contemplative life or if you like, lack
of a fervent and dynamic prayer life!
How the hearts of Jesus and Mary would rejoice if the days preceding
Christmas were characterized by visits to the Blessed Sacrament—the House of
Bread. Actually Bethlehem means House of Bread. Better yet, not only to visit Jesus in the
Tabernacle, but to attend Holy Mass and receive Him in the depths of your soul
in daily Holy Communion. Your soul becomes a mystical “Bethlehem” (House of
Bread) every time you receive Jesus worthily in Holy Communion. What a superb
manner to overcome activism! What a great way to go from the frenetic “Martha”
to the calm and contemplative Mary! Like Mary may we sit at the feet of Jesus
listen to Him, talk to Him and love Him; and then receive Him into our homes,
that is—our hearts in Holy Communion.(Lk. 10: 38-42—Martha and Mary)
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| Look into the eyes of Mary |
5.
FROM THE NOISY HEART OF THE WORLD TO
THE QUIET AND CONTEMPLATIVE HEART OF MARY.
We live in a world that suffers many types of pollution: air pollution,
crime pollution, water pollution, but there is another: NOISE POLLUTION! When
Pope Benedict was talking to seminarians in New York a few years back he
commented on the fact that the youth today are bombarded by so many noises that
they find it difficult to hear the voice of God speaking to their hearts. As we
draw closer to the stable of Bethlehem, to the BABY lying on the hay in the
manger, let us draw close to the most pure and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Let us
fervently beg Our Lady, the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of the Church, as well as
our spiritual Mother for the grace to find refuge in her Immaculate Heart. Let
us beg for the grace to listen attentively to the Sacred Heart of Jesus beating
in the depths of her Immaculate Heart. If done then we will most assuredly
capture the true meaning of Christmas!
