are you ready to let it be done?

Homily

4th Sunday of Advent B

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

20 December 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

Father, are you ready for Christmas?  Don't ask me that unless you want to turn me into the grinch.  It's my only job as a Catholic priest, to be ready.  Yet I never am.  It's frustrating.  I need to have my best Christmas.  So do you.  If not this year, then when?  Yet here I am worried about what's left to do and how everything is going to come off during COVID.  I don't know if I'm going forward or backwards, with as many Christmas parties already past this year as remain in the future.

Yet I want to look forward with great hope and anticipation to Christmas, not just get it over with.  This year again, I need Mary to help me.  She always appears on the 4th Sunday to rescue my Advent.  Mary, are you ready for Christmas?  You got this thing started.  You're the mom of our family.  If you're ready that's all that matters.  I may as well entrust myself to you on these final days.  Mary, save my Christmas!  Are you ready, Mary?  Yes, Fr. Mitchel I am.  Let this be the best Christmas ever.  Let it be done to me.  Let it be done to you.

These four words are what matter.  Let it be done.  Before I have any chance to do Christmas well, Christmas must happen to me.  Christmas starts with receptivity.  The temple David wanted to do for the Lord was gifted to the world in the womb of Mary who let it be done to her.  That temple of God that is the Christ child, through whom God shows his face to the world, has invited you, a child of Mary, to also be his temple.  You are to become his dwelling place, his mystical temple and body.

That's how the prophecy of Nathan to David is fulfilled, through a temple and throne that is your body and mine.  That's why Christmas is ultimately named not after the scene in Bethlehem, but for Christ's Mass.  For what happens in your temple when you receive Jesus at Christ's Mass is the fulfillment of what is begun in the womb of Mary and made visible in Bethlehem.

Let it be done she says.  Make her response yours.  Your body is a gift you did not make.  It is where Jesus wants to be born and show his face this Christmas?  Will you let it be done?  Will I let him visit that place where I still want to be alone and independent, where I crave privacy, selfishness and control?  Jesus be born in me in that place.  Mary, teach me how not to be afraid.

That's how you do Christmas from the inside out.  If Mary our mother is ready, then so can you be.  Let it be done.