By Father Rich Tomkosky
We are in the final hours before celebrating the great mystery of the Incarnation on Christmas day: that the eternal Son of God, through the Virgin Mary, fully took on our human nature out of infinite love for us human beings, to save us and point us back to God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The best way we can prepare our hearts to receive Jesus in the Christmas mystery is in the company of Mary. As Saint Elizabeth says to her, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” Mary takes us directly to the heart of Jesus, as our dear loving spiritual Mother, who is the protector of our interior life given to us by the Blessed Trinity at our Baptism. As our spiritual mother, she is the one who can lead us to an ever-deeper life of intimacy with her Son who will lead us to the heart of the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Please pray her Rosary to spiritually get ready for Christmas. May we also ask her help to love the relatives, friends, and parishioners we will encounter over the holidays — to love them all in Christ, and not to get irritable and short with these same people because of the clash of temperaments and busyness, which can get us stressed out if we are not vigilant in prayer. In moments of temptations to show impatience and anger, immediately pray a Hail Mary and ask Mary to help you to love them, like she showed selfless love to Saint Elizabeth, her elderly cousin.
Hopefully we have made a good Confession of your sins this Advent and have made some sincere spiritual resolutions to live a better life in God’s sight. Please ask Mary to help you to accomplish this in daily practice. She who is a model of divine obedience throughout her life – but particularly at the Annunciation, when she said to the archangel Gabriel, “I am the servant of the Lord, let it be done to me as you say,” can always help us to always say yes to God as well! Through her prayers she helps us to be more docile to the Holy Spirit who gives us the strength and courage to trust God and be obedient to the Divine commands.
May we say with Mary to God on a daily basis: whatever it is, Lord, that you are asking me to do, may it be done, not according to my will, but Yours alone. Yes, to make of our life increasingly a selfless gift to God in His service is the greatest gift we can give to Jesus on Christmas and always. May Mary help us to sincerely offer ourselves to the Blessed Trinity in generosity!
“I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say.” This is Mary’s holy motto throughout her earthly life. She did everything for God and others, not out a sense of obligation, but rather out of a motive of love. What a beautiful lesson for us who often say to ourselves: what’s in it for me? She didn’t have to visit her cousin, Saint Elizabeth, and could have been justified on a human level in just staying put at her parents’ house in preparation for now being the mother of the long-awaited Messiah. But she didn’t think of herself.
The first thing she thought of after the Annunciation event was: how can I help my elderly cousin who is miraculously pregnant according to the Archangel Gabriel? Mary was willing to make that sacrifice of hard travel and time to help her cousin, and stayed with her three months, out of selfless love. Mary was about God’s will throughout her life because she knew God loved her, and so she wanted to return that love to God and show His love to others.
We can be sure that we are doing God’s will if:
1. We are faithful to daily prayer.
2. We are trying to live all of the Catholic Church’s teachings on faith and morals.
3. We are not neglecting our daily duties in a serious way.
4. We are asking the Lord daily to help us grow in charity.
5. We have a sense of interior peace (conscience not bothering us and not consciously committing mortal sin).
May Mary also help us to do everything from the motive of sacrificial love, to keep the Commandments out of love, to follow all the teachings of the Catholic Church out of love, to help others like she did out of love, to do our daily duties in our vocation out of love, to forgive those who hurt us out of love, to give of our time, talent, and treasure out of love to spend significant time with God in prayer each day out of love, to be grateful to Jesus for coming among us as a little baby out of love.
May all we do increasingly be done out of sacrificial love for God and our neighbor. Then we will be truly living out the spirit of Advent/Christmas always in holiness. God bless you.
Father Rich Tomkosky is the Pastor of Saint Thomas the Apostle Parish in Bedford and the Pastor of Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Beans Cove.
