Today is Gaudete Sunday in which the Church is exhorted to rejoice in the Lord. The opposite of rejoicing is grumbling. St James warns his congregation: "Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged." (Jm 5: 9) He also tells his flock to be patient. In a time of commercialism and secularization Catholic can sometimes have the tendency to turn on one another. We blame each other for the decline in Mass attendance and the failure to pass of the faith we love so much to the younger generations. The season of Advent asks us to turn our minds and hearts to God. By focusing on him and how he is vindicated in history and his promises kept we can have the faith to hold on and remain true to the Gospel. This, however, means that we cannot place our trust in human ways of doing things. The Incarnation meant that Jesus became one of us in all things but sin. This ultimately leads to the cross. If we want to celebrate Christmas, implicitly, we need to embrace the Cross as the key to our salvation and not worldly political or cultural ideologies. St Paul told the Corinthians: "For Jew demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jew and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than man's wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." (1 Cor 1: 22-25)
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