As the excitement of Christmas draws near this year there are many who contemplate their blessings while they prepare for family and friends to visit and celebrate with them. But there are also those among us, who find it difficult to open themselves and find reasons to hear and heed the joyful message of the angels to the poor shepherds in the fields about Bethlehem, that there is born to us a savior who is Christ the Lord. Even people of deep faith sometimes find it difficult to clear their heads and hearts so as to embrace the deeper hope of Christmas as they hurry to meet the demands of the season.

We know too well there are many of us that will come to the manger with cares we did not have in former years. Some persist in their adoration and in their prostration before the gods of silver and gold and it is pathetic to see them surprised, stunned and terrified when those material gods fail, as they must.

Those who turn from false gods to serve the Word made flesh have a different attitude. Perhaps during these last few days before Christmas we all may pause to evaluate what God we truly hold and to release ourselves from the materialism that overtakes the spirit of our savior’s birth.

Perhaps the words of our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, can assist in this reflection:

“Hope is indelibly engraved in the human heart because God our Father is life, and for eternal life and beatitude we are made.

“Every child born is a sign of trust in God and man and a confirmation, at least implicit, of the hope in a future open to God’s eternity that is nourished by men and women. God has responded to this human hope, concealing Himself in time as a tiny human being. St. Augustine wrote: ‘We might have thought that your Word was far distant from union with man, if this Word had not become flesh and dwelt amount us.’ (Confessions X, 43, 69, cited in Spe Salvi, n. 29).

“Thus, let us allow ourselves to be guided by the one who in her heart and in her womb bore the Incarnate Word.”

Let our prayer at Christmas be this:

O Mary, Virgin of expectation and Mother of hope, revive the spirit of Christmas in your entire Church, so that all humanity may start out anew on the journey towards Bethlehem, from which it came, and that the sun that dawns upon us from on high will come once again to visit us (see also Lk 1:78), Christ our God. Amen.

God grant to you and those you love every blessing for this Christmas and the coming year, and may He bestow upon our difficult world a new and compelling Epiphany.