Homily

I've been seeing a commercial this past week on TV that is almost unbelievable. It begins with Mike Rowe, the guy from the show, "Dirty Jobs," wearing a denim shirt and baseball cap, and then all these people start rushing past him, even bumping into him, while he says something like, "Are you worried about all the panic and stress of shopping on Black Friday? The people at Ford want to help you with that." And the camera pulls back and we see that he and all people rushing him are in a Ford dealership looking at cars and trucks! Don't get stressed out running from store to store! Just buy a car or a truck! For stupidity, I give this commercial an "A." But can you imagine the people who came up with this idea, not to mention the Ford people who thought it was a great ad?

St. Paul advised us today to, "Put on the armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against the Principalities and the Powers, and against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness on high." And in this, my annual warning, I'd like to remind you that for the powers of darkness, the next four weeks are a prime hunting season as they seek the ruin of souls, whether those souls are believers or not. If they cannot always ruin the soul of their prey, they certainly hope to cause as much suffering, turmoil and damage as they are able to inflict on people.

Our one-month goal is to be able to participate in the true joy of celebrating the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The devil's goal is to encourage us in every way possible not to look for that joy, not to celebrate the birth of Christ in order to draw closer to the Lord, but rather to substitute for that joy other values, desires and hopes that are bound to disappoint, to tempt us away from grace in the constant suggestion that we can find our own happiness if we just work at it hard enough. To lure us into thinking that material things can bring lasting pleasure. To play up problems that exist in families, or weaknesses with relatives so that we suffer from our interaction with those who are closest to us, or should be closest to us.

Now that I am in my truly senior years, I've been reflecting on how my attitude and observations about November and December and Christmas have changed over time. When I was younger, I warned against commercialism and materialism. As I grew older, I began to realize how much trouble is created because of relatives or difficult family situations, and the tensions and harm and sin that can come from those relationships at Christmas. Both of those areas can cause us trouble as we move towards Christmas. Yet now, after many years of thinking on these matters, I take a more fundamental approach to the question of why so many people seem to have so many troubles that weight on them in the weeks before Christmas, and I think Fr. Alexander Schememann in his book, For the Life of the World, explains it in an excellent way.

He writes that we are hungry, and what we are really hungry for is God. But we find it so difficult to turn ourselves over to Him, to trust in Him, to rely on Him, to places our lives into His hands. So we try to satisfy our hunger by going after other things. How crazy is it that Adam and Eve were told not to eat the fruit of just one single tree in the Garden of Eden, and that became the fruit they just couldn't keep their hands off, the fruit they couldn't resist because it would give them God-like knowledge, rather than simply accepting the knowledge God had given to them. And they had a helper in that garden to suggest to them that what was clearly wrong could be made into something that seemed irresistible. God tells them if they eat it, they will die. Serpent says, "Ahhhh. . . Who you gonna believe, God or a snake?"

Oh, yes, snake it is!

So I very much like Fr. Schmemann's image. We are indeed hungry for God but we are constantly tempted to satisfy that hunger with other things, both good and bad, but they are incapable of bringing the satisfaction we desire. Because it is so much easier to fall into sin than to stand up in virtue, our hunger can lead us to partake of things that actually make us sick and cause us harm, even when they can seem so attractive and good to us, at least at the time.

So I suggest to you that this image may be a good and healthy way for us to check ourselves and orient ourselves every day from now until Christmas: What am I hungry for? Maybe it is a Ford truck, with easy financing and no money down, and if you come in on Friday, you will get a pre-loaded MasterCard worth up to $1,000.00!!

What am I hungry for? Is it for emotional satisfaction, or self-centered goals, or an Xbox, or pizza, or health, or love or what? What am I hungry for today? Am I hungry for God, am I hungry for His own divine life, or would I rather have something else; what am I hungry for? The last few days sometimes when I ask myself that question, I get embarrassed for myself. So if it works for me, maybe it will be helpful for you as well and serve as a check against temptation from the evil one, and as a guard against our human weakness.

Today as we eat His Body and drink His Blood, let us ask Him to help us form our desires and shape them so that we continue to better and better understand only He can truly satisfy.