December 2024 Notes
Written by the Reverend Michael Ruk, Interim Priest in Charge
Advent is one of the most counter cultural parts of the Christian calendar. While the world is going through Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, and whatever else the retail world comes up with this year, the Church pauses.
Yes, we pause for four weeks. No jumping ahead to the birth of Jesus. We pause and wait in stillness and hope. While the world is a whirlwind of activities, sales, and parties, the Church invites us to be still and try to understand what is about to happen. While Christmas music might be on a continuous loop in stores, you will not hear any at church. While the malls might be covered in decorations since Halloween, the church is simple and plain.
Advent is countercultural. We are challenged to prepare ourselves not just for the birth of Jesus some 2,000 years ago, but God breaking into our world at this very moment. A few years ago, I started making the distinction between christmas and Christmas. The word with or without a capital “C”. The world celebrates christmas with over working, over spending, and excess. There is very little of Jesus in christmas. Christmas or Christ’s Mass is the yearly remembrance that God became human and present in our world. God came to a forgotten town, a poor family, and a simple life. Jesus did not come rich, powerful, popular, or privileged.
This year take time to pause and celebrate the countercultural season of Advent. Take time to be quiet, be still, and pause. This year embrace more Christmas and less christmas. Look for God breaking into our simple lives.
“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.” –Thomas Merton, “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room” in Raids on the Unspeakable