The Gift of Hope and Love

Over the past few days, I have been feeling a bit blah.  That's not an all too uncommon feeling for many as the holiday season approaches (or winds down from the commercial viewpoint - but that's a topic for another blog).  You see I was bewailing the fact that I won't get to see many I hold dear this Christmas.  Some of that is due to my new life in Granville when many of my closest friends and most of my family still live in Cincinnati.  Some of it has to do with situations in their lives. 

As I lay mulling over my feelings of lonliness and rejection in my prayers last night, I thought of Jesus on the cross and his feeling of abandonment by God.  I've always wondered how Jesus being divine as well as human could feel abandoned by God, but he did.  Any of us would have in his situation.  Jesus was experiencing his human identitiy.  Our feelings are always to be honored, but they don't always reflect the reality of things. Even as he expressed his feelings in a loud cry, there was a deep down trust in God.  His knowledge of God gave him hope.  In that moment he could also know that his feelings were not expressing the truth.  He was not abandoned.  God was with him as close as ever if not more so in his time of trial.

It might seem a bit odd to be reflecting on Christ's passion at the time of the year that we are celebrating his birth, but we really can't begin to comprehend either without the other.  All of Jesus' life, death and resurrection are incarnational.  They are the reason for his birth in the first place.

As I pondered all of this, my spirits lifted and my feelings shifted.  I realized the truth was that I was not abandoned either.  I began to feel less lonely and thought about a parishioner who lives in a nursing home with a severe handicap from birth.  How lonely might he feel this time of year.  As far as I know he doesn't get any regular visitors except from church and some of them have been "out of commission" themselves lately. 

I'm going to visit him tomorrow.  Together we will know the incarnate presence of Christ as we break open the Word, share in the prayers and receive Christ's Body and Blood together.  We will be God's gifts of hope and love to each other.  These are the same gifts God gave to us 2000+ years ago in the birth of Jesus Christ, God's Only Son, our Lord and Savior.