Welcoming Jesus

Dear Friends,

On this Sunday before Christmas, today’s first and third reading, taken together, offer us a telling contrast between two men who were important in their own times.

Ahaz was king of Judah – the lower part of what we today call Israel – the area surrounding Jerusalem. Faced with a difficult choice, Ahaz refused a sign from God to help him with that choice. His unguided choice had ramifications for his people.

Joseph, the talented but lowly carpenter from Nazareth, lived some centuries later. He did accept a sign from God. It directed him to a decision that would affect all generations to follow – right down to us today.

Both Ahaz and Joseph were tempted to say: “Things don’t look right to me, but I’ll decide for myself what to do.”

Ahaz succumbed to the temptation. Joseph did not.

Instead, Joseph paid attention to the messenger who came to him in a dream. He accepted Mary and the child whom he named Jesus, thus laying claim to the child.

As the story unfolds in Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph’s fidelity to God, to Mary and to Jesus, is like a rock. Unshaken. I sometimes wonder if, in later years, when Jesus talked about building a house on rock, if He didn’t think of Joseph, the man who was rock for Him and Mary.

What motivated Ahaz was expanding his own power. But Joseph realized his powerlessness.

What’s it like to feel powerless like Joseph? We weren’t there, of course, but we know. We know powerless pregnant women like Mary, and indignant men, like Joseph could have been.

We know how hard it is to sort things out, and communicate when things don’t look right, feel right. We know how gossip hurts, and how people try to second guess what’s going on.

We know how governments require that we show up in certain places to do certain things.

Some of us know what it’s like to be without shelter at night or what it means to be threatened with death, to be refugees from destructive powers, to be foreigners in a strange land.

We know these things in our own world and in the world of the Holy Family. We weren’t there, but we know.

As we celebrate Christmas Eve next Saturday and Christmas Day itself, we won’t be just remembering in some tenderly sentimental way the events of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. Rather, we will be called to welcome and embrace Jesus in our day as Mary and Joseph welcomed and embraced him then.

This week, all week long, let’s each of us whisper in our hearts or say aloud "Come, Lord Jesus."

Let’s Practice.

I welcome You here and now.               Come, Lord Jesus.

I meet You in the world around me.      Come, Lord Jesus.

I believe you know the depth of our human experience and don’t shy away from it.

Come, Lord Jesus.

I trust that signs of Your presence will be given to me so I can recognize You.

Come, Lord Jesus.

With people all over the world who weren’t there but who know You, we say

Come, Lord Jesus.

Come, Christmas in me and in my loved ones.

Come, Lord Jesus.

~Sister Joan Sobala