The Secret is in the Preparation

I always dreaded the "Christmas Season" and when people asked me why, I told them that the meaning of it had lost out to commercialism and secularism. Maybe, but I think the real problem was me and my lack of preparation, so I approached it differently this year with good results. I changed my focus from Christmas to Advent. After all, life's pleasures for me have always been in the anticipation just as much as the in the thing anticipated, so why not Christmas too? Advent is all about preparing our hearts, minds and homes for Christmas, so I made Advent spiritually real and meaningful for the first time.

I made it a point to wish folks a "Happy Advent," to go to daily Mass more often, receive the sacrament of Reconciliation, as well as some little things like setting my cell phone alarm to remind me each noon to pray the Angelus. The Angelus is a prayer about the Incarnation which is really, if you think about it, what Christmas is all about. I mean, the birth of Christ is awesome, yes, but it is awesome because it is the manifestation to the world of the Incarnation. That is what we really celebrate -- the making of the Word into human flesh from which flows our redemption and salvation.

In the Angelus prayer we say, "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." It was made flesh at the time Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb, but it began to dwell among us, change everything for ever, at the first Christmas. My favorite part is at the end where we say "Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection, through the same Christ Our Lord." There, in a simple sentence, is the story of salvation. We are saved by grace which is free for the asking and God was made man so that he could share our nature and redeem us so that we could partake of His nature.

Prayer is a strange and powerful thing. Saying and meditating on the words of the Angelus made Christmas meaningful this year.