In this final week of Advent, is Christmas already done and gone? This week offers us the opportunity to enter into the celebration of Christmas with minds and hearts renewed.
            As the Church invites us to enter into a period of prayer and reflection in anticipation of the celebration of Christmas (the Advent season), the world is already immersed in Christmas. How many of you have already attended a Christmas/Holiday party? How many of you have already exchanged gifts? How many of you have already grown tired of the tree that you so enthusiastically decorated the day of, or the day after, Thanksgiving? This week offers us the opportunity to pause and remember the significance of the feast we are about to celebrate. We have to choose whether we will take advantage of this opportunity or not. It is not hard. It doesn’t require much time. It simply requires the desire to enter into the final week of this season with the intention of experiencing in our hearts what this feast celebrates.
            Every day this week, find five or ten minutes of quiet time to read this passage quietly to yourself: “For God so love the world that God sent God’s only Son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him.” God loves this world. God loves you personally. As difficult as your life may be right now, you should find peace, strength and joy in the knowledge that God loves as you are and that God only desires what is good for you. To share that love, do something nice for someone this week, particularly someone whom you find it difficult to like. Buy a cup of coffee for a co-worker. Visit someone who cannot leave their home and bring a small gift of cookies or candy. Give a pair of gloves to a homeless person.  In this daily prayer and in your small acts of kindness, you remind yourself of what the feast of Christmas is about; it is about love. It is about the love of God for us and how we can make that love real in our world though how we choose to live our lives.
            Use this final week of Advent to prepare your hearts for the coming feast!