The fourth Sunday of Advent signals the approaching end of our Advent journey. The theme of this fourth Sunday reflects the destination of our journey: love.
The Advent journey ushers us into the celebration of the birth of Christ — Christmas. Christmas proclaims God’s love. It displays God’s steadfast, faithful love that never wavers, that never gives up on or abandons us. It demonstrates the lengths God will go when living out of the divine character of love. Christmas reflects the self-emptying, self-sacrificing nature of love as “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” John 1:14. It proclaims the objective of love — the good of the other. Christ came that we might “have life, and have it abundantly,” John 10:10. God’s life is the life of self-giving love that seeks the good of the other at any cost.
The Advent journey leads us back to God’s love on display in a helpless infant, wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a feed trough in the midst of a broken world full of hostility and violence.
The journey also reminds us that God loves us so that we, too, might love as God loves. In taking on our life, God shared God’s life with us — what John’s gospel calls eternal life. As we respond to God’s love, opening our lives to it, that love transforms our hearts and minds. The Spirit — the on-going expression of God’s self-sacrificing love — moves us beyond the anxiety-driven ego-centric self and its self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit. The Spirit frees us to give as God gives — unconditionally, generously, sacrificially, for the good of the other. The Spirit leads us into life.
As we walk the final stage of our Advent journey, we once again walk into an encounter with love — a love that transforms our hearts and minds, setting us free.
Thank you for traveling with me on my journey. Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and healthy, happy new year.
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