This Changes Everything.

In my youth I thought it would all work out. This world would get it together. Good people, working together for the common good, would make this world a happy place.

If we just put our minds to it, we can solve the problems that cause so much pain in the world. Hunger, poverty, hatred . . . are all fixable if we just work together.

I don’t believe that anymore. Something is broken. (Of course, we keep trying….that’s why God put us here. Read on.)

Even on our best days, there’s just something in the human condition that causes us to go off the rail. This dark pull causes many to turn to an anxious life of getting and protecting what they can. A suspicion about people’s motives keeps us from trusting each other. And on and on.

But something outrageous has happened.

Someone has come into the world to show us how to fix the downward spiral of selfishness. God, who is love, has come to make “all things new”. There is in the human heart a self-inflicted wound that brings fear, greed and other nasty things. But the remedy God provides is beyond our wildest expectations.

The short of it is, God gives us a new heart . . . a heart like His.

How will this happen? (Here’s the mind boggling part). God became a human being. God took a human heart (God’s human heart . . . think of it!). Born of Mary, his human name is Jesus.

He has the only remedy deep enough and true enough to break the chains of the selfishness that grips the world. How will Jesus show us this life changing love? (Get ready. This is the part that’s hard to understand.) He will have to die.

Why does he have to die? Because love can only “love to the end”. And by dying, Sin has finally met its match – – – a love that is willing to die at the hand of the hater for the purpose of revealing the love of God for humanity.

St. Paul tells us, He “became sin for us. He who knew no sin.” (2Cor. 5:21) And he took all that sin can do and KISSED IT! Taking it in his loving arms down with him when he died. “Father forgive them, they know not what they do”. (Lk. 23:34.) Sin and Death died in Christ. It’s a kind of love never seen before.

God’s not done.

He will raise this noble heart of Jesus to a new life in the Resurrection. And here’s where we get a new heart. We now are reborn by the grace of God. By adoption we be- come Children of God and begin a new life “in Christ” seeking to live as Christ lived.

This changes everything. There is something really new here. Now there is Hope. Hope that, with Christ (ONLY with Christ. . . we’ve tried everything else!) . . . with Christ we are reconciled to one another since we have all been loved and saved by Christ who kissed us in our sin. He lives in you. He lives in me.

We are brothers and sisters in Christ who has loved us all. Let’s let the world know.

But first, on this fourth Advent Sunday, we wait and pray. “Lord, come into my heart. Change me. Help me to trust in your promise that I can live a new life.”

A blessed Christmas to you and your loved ones.

Fr. Tim