Homily

As the season of Christmas comes around it often finds us making some changes in our lives and our routines. We take things out. Maybe we take out the Christmas cards left over from last year and we take out our Christmas card list to send them this year. We take out decorations for Christmas from storage and put them up in our homes and maybe our yards and on our Christmas tree. If we have an artificial tree, we take that out too. We might take a turkey out of the freezer for Christmas dinner. We take out our credit cards to buy Christmas gifts. Sometimes we might even get a little frustrated and feel like pulling out our hair (or someone else’s hair.) And there might be times when we get so busy with things that we take out take-out food for dinner.

But today in his epistle, St. Paul doesn’t talk about what we should take out, but rather what we should put away. He says: “But now you must put them all away: anger, fury, malice, slander and obscene language out of your mouths. Stop lying to one another…” Put them away. It’s not a complete list, of course, of the things that we should put away. But it’s a start. So, my suggestion is that just as we intentionally take things out to prepare for Christmas, that for the next 10 days we work on one or two things to put away in order to prepare for the feastday. What shall they be? It could be anger, or lust, or speaking badly or falsely about other people. It could be lying or using bad language. St. Paul writes of these things. But it could also be envy, jealousy, spiritual laziness, impatience or not being thankful for the good that God has given us.

We know the things we should be putting away, getting rid of, removing from our lives, the things that keep us from becoming better Christians, and better people. Santa Claus knows who is naughty or nice, but we don’t need him to tell us where we can be doing better. What should we choose to try and put away, more and more before Christmas day? I suggest choosing one or two things because trying to be good in general is generally a good thing, but it’s hard to focus on avoiding all sins. It’s easier to focus on one or two areas and work to do better on those so that we can become better ourselves.

So I suggest we work on putting one or two things away for Christmas. As much as we can. Impatience, not being patient, нетерлячість, impaciencia—that might be a good one. Spiritual laziness in prayer—that might also be good to work against and put away. But whatever we choose, let us choose something, and focus on that every day from now until December 25th or, if you are celebrating on the Old Calendar it gives you until January 7th—even more time to get better. Every day to focus on that area we have chosen. Every day to ask the Lord to help us with what we want to put away. Every day to make the effort to avoid sin and let grace take its place in this specific thing.

But I want to remind you that emotions are not sins. For example, someone does something against us and we get angry. That is not sin. That is just an emotional response. But if we take that anger and start to hold on to it, and let it eat at us, and let it stay in our minds and maybe even start to work on paying that person back—that’s when anger becomes a sin. And, to be clear, there is such a thing as righteous anger, being angry against sin, especially sin against another person. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with righteous anger. I don’t know about you but most of my anger is not the righteous kind of anger. It’s more about what you did to me and how dare you do it! In any case even if our initial anger is only an emotional response, which is not yet a sin, it would still be good if we had less of that in our lives also, no?

Dear friends, let’s put something away for Christmas, let’s work on one thing or two we should have less in our lives. To think of it every morning, and to remind ourselves of it every afternoon, and to review and see how well we did each day before we go to bed, and to ask Christ our Lord to give us the grace to put it away. If we fall, then let us notice it and ask Him for pardon. Then let us get up and keep on trying, because, like so many things in life, practice, practice and practice is what is needed to achieve what we want. And also, like so many things in our lives, Christ our Lord is ever-present and ready to help us in the good we wish to do. Let us ask him and let us work on it. We work on so many other things this month…let’s also work on the good of our souls.

Please think about it. If you are not sure what sinful behavior to choose to work on, ask your spouse, your children or your parents. They will have plenty of suggestions. But choose something. Something for every day before Christmas. Bring out those things to celebrate the feast. But also put something away, more and more, to welcome Christ our God Who is born for us.