Lifelong Wait, Eternal Reward

Merry Christmas!

Yes, it is still Christmas. Like Easter, Christmas lasts for an octave--8 days. The season of Christmas lasts until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord on January 13th. Yet, much of the secular world has already moved on. We live in a culture that can think of nothing but Christmas as soon as (or even before) Thanksgiving ends, but ends the celebration and starts planning to put away the tree and take down the lights as soon as the day is past. How different this is from our Catholic Faith!

Many of the students who come to us on retreat have fully bought into our culture of instant gratification and pleasure-seeking. They simply don't know any other way to live. Everything around them seems to say, "Do what makes you feel good now, and as soon as it stops making you feel good, find something else." A lot of them are, quite simply, not truly happy. One of the things that is missing is a sense of anticipation, of waiting for a great good rather than grasping at a lesser good.

When I was a child, Christmas was a day that the whole family anticipated. I couldn't WAIT to see what toys would be under the tree. (Yet somehow, I did.) And when I got those new toys, I kept playing with them for a long time. But then I got older, and realized I could sneak into my parents' room and find the toys before they were wrapped. Much of the anticipation was ruined. I started to put aside old toys more quickly. If that's growing up, suddenly Christ's command to be childlike makes so much sense.

Our Faith is very much a lifetime of waiting, waiting to enter into a joy that will last forever. Nobody is going to decide, after getting to Heaven, that it's already time to start shopping for Valentine's Day. But our Faith does not just consist of waiting. We wait in joyful hope, already possessing, in some mysterious way, the great good that we anticipate. Students see this in us, and they want it!

The key is often found in the discipline of waiting. Advent is a great opportunity to practice waiting in joyful hope, and celebrating Christmas throughout the entire Christmas season is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of just what it is we are supposed to be waiting for. A lot of pressure is placed on teenagers today to do anything but wait. By the witness of our lives, let's give them a reason to stand up against that pressure.