LOVE, JOY, PEACE, GRACE AND LIFE The beautiful themes of Christmas are love, joy, peace, grace and life. It reveals to us that: God is love 1 John 4: 8, 16. It is assured of the joy of the Lord…
Immanuel: God with us is the most beautiful and comforting theme of the Advent and Christmas seasons. The intervention of God in human history through Christ Jesus, after so many seasons of sins and failure, was a life-changing moment. Our lives, existence and history were changed forever. Indeed, it was a moment of encounter when God redirected and reformulated everything about us, our relationship with Him and with one another.
We are invited to hope and joy at this season of Advent and Christmas. Traditionally, the third Sunday of Advent is called “Gaudete” Sunday. The day takes its common name from the Latin word “Gaudete” (“Rejoice”). The first word of the entrance antiphon of this day’s Mass: “Gaudete in Domino Semper…” which means “rejoice in the Lord always”.
Honestly, we cannot prepare and celebrate Christmas without reconciliation and peace with God, others and ourselves.
This Sunday, we have the theme of peace through repentance and reconciliation with God, others and oneself in loving preparation for Christ’s birth at Christmas.
It is a new season of the church’s liturgical year, the season of advent which means the lord’s coming to save us and our hopeful waiting in preparation. The word advent in Latin “adventus” means “coming”.
This is the coming of Jesus into the world. Advent is intended to be a season of anticipation for Christ coming, preparation for Christ coming and reparation for Christ coming at Christmas. Advent also marks the start of the liturgical New Year and a moment of grace, mercy, peace, love, and salvation.
What marks the kingship and reign of Christ from every other kingship or reign is peace. The kingship and reign of men have always been one of violence, bloodshed and lack of enduring peace. The British movie “THE GAMES OF THRONES” depicts this horrible reality and the characteristics of the reigns and kingships of men.
On this penultimate Sunday to the end of the Church’s liturgical year. The central theme of today’s readings is an invitation for us to muscle courage to stand firm in/with Christ Jesus. Especially, as it pertains to the Day of the Lord or the Second Coming of Jesus in glory as a judge.
The Afterlife reality or experience is not just a Christian hope of the resurrection of Christ Jesus through the action of the Holy Spirit. It is an existential reality of our human life on earth. It is a religious or spiritual reality that every religious faith holds onto. To give full meaning to our hard and miserable human existence.
One of the beauties of our Christian faith is the mercy of God that always finds us wretched sinners when we are lost. God’s mercy finds and reaches us profoundly more than we can ever imagine. The nature and essence of God is mercy. This mercy is the saving and amazing grace that always finds and saves us even when we are spiritually dead, lost or weak.
The mission of Christ continues through our Christian vocation to witness to the Kingdom of God with humility and prayer. It is a mission where God calls the humble, the weak and the insignificant to shame the proud, strong and important.
Christ’s mission is the humble acceptance of the need for God in our lives. The admittance that we are naughty and God is all. The mission of God (Missio Dei) is the encouragement of God to us to be good on earth as followers of his Son Jesus Christ.