Christmas is a scant 10 days away. In today’s first reading from Zephaniah, we are reminded that God delights in coming to us. Our Mass translation is rather restrained: “He will sing joyfully for you,” it reads. But translations closer to the Hebrew assures us that God dances, twists, turns with shouts of joy for us.
God is like Gene Kelly in that famous dance sequence from “Singing in the Rain.” God is like King David, dancing in the streets because the Ark of the Covenant was being carried into Jerusalem. God is like the cripple in the Acts of the Apostles. Cured by Peter and John, Luke tells us the newly cured man took a tentative step and then another. Realizing what an astounding gift he had been given, the man began to leap into the air with shouts of joy.
Our God is not a reluctant God who comes because we need to be saved. In fact, Our God can’t wait to send His Son to our age, our time and place, our special moment in history. Sure, Christmas is our celebration of God’s coming, but it is also a celebration of God’s belief in human worth. We are not the only ones who dream of being loved and accepted. God dreams of being loved and accepted by us.
One of our great human weaknesses is to believe that we are not worth the coming of our God. We are bogged down not only by the very real weight of sin, but also by the suspicion that sin is winning out in us and in our world. Our secret wants and angers, the secret scorn or dislike we carry, the hidden scars we carry are so well known to us, so big in our eyes, that they override any good we feel about ourselves. We may not like ourselves for what we’ve said or done to others, the demands we’ve made, the pain we’ve inflicted. Secret shame can isolate us to the point that we say, “if they only knew what I am really like, they wouldn’t like me.”
We beat on ourselves.
But just as the father ran to meet his dejected prodigal son in Luke’s Gospel, so God runs to meet us.
Christmas, coming soon to your home and your heart, is the feast of God running to meet us, bearing Love Incarnate. Come as far as you can, God says to us. I will meet you the rest of the way.
That surprising insight, if we can grasp it, can stir up in us immeasurable joy. God wants us, loves us and holds us close.
Finally, be like God this week. Rejoice over someone, actively, tenderly. Say to the people closest to us:
Thank you.I love the way you did that.You are so good.I appreciate you so much.
To speak words of appreciation to others, to let them see joy in us because of them is to echo God at Christmastime…God – who says to us – “I love you…You are special to me.”
~ Sister Joan Sobala
