Preparations for Christmas are familiar. Lights and trees are going up. Greenery clings to mantles and banisters, to porches and front doors. Ornaments of all kinds hang from every available protuberance. Homes smell of rich candles and baking. Cookie jars are full. Parties, parties, parties! Familiar carols reverberate through radios and minds. Nativity displays are tenderly placed in prominent places. Wonderful!
Truly, I am not a grinch itching to steal these delights. But what do they mean?
These preparations mean nothing at all unless we are also preparing our hearts. Christmas celebrates the incarnation; Jesus, our Lord, was born a man. He humbled himself to be one of us. He died, and rose from the dead. He will come again. We are preparing to celebrate this joyful anniversary of His birth. He did not come for nothing. He did not come so that we could throw a huge international birthday party for Him every year, though I am sure He likes a good party. He came to bring us to him. As we celebrate His birth we remember that He will come again and we must be ready.
Thus, this is a season of repentance. We hear the call of the baptist! "Make straight the way of the Lord!" (John 1:23) We will! We open our hearts. We clear our minds of the mountains of meaningless clutter. We recall and renounce our sins.
We pray:
Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you. I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, but most of all because they offend You, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Your grace, to do penance and to sin no more. Amen.
I had truly forgotten the importance of repentance during Advent!! It has been commercialized,as you have said, in a way that focuses on the party, and not on the repentance. Often we remember that Christmas is about Christ, and celebrate him, but forget to repent.
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