Reflection by Fr. Chris

During the classic Christmas movie Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, we hear the song “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” If I may borrow a line from former-president Reagan, this song needs to be left to the ash heap of history (ok, I have your attention). For those who are unfamiliar, the titular character Rudolph winds up on an “island of unwanted toys” and the toys sing a song to portray the predicament that brought them to the island. The first three toys mentioned are, “a spotted elephant,” “a train with square wheels on its caboose”, and “a water gun that squirts…jelly.” Let’s take these toys one at a time. First, the spotted elephant. It would be easy to simply say that some children may like a spotted elephant. On further reflection, we note that the appearance of the elephant does not change the nature of an elephant, black, white, spotted, or stripped, a stuffed elephant is still a stuffed elephant, and who doesn’t love a stuffed elephant? Secondly, we look at the “choo choo with square wheels on their caboose.” This causes a dilemma, because square wheels do indeed change the ability of the choo choo to function, but you can change the wheels and it is still a choo choo, it does not become a lion or an airplane. Five minutes of work, and that choo choo would be up and running. Now we come to the squirt gun filled with jelly. I must admit this is the most troubling. To put it as bluntly as I can, the squirt gun works. It’s the owner of the squirt gun who filled it with jelly and not water that caused the problem!

Thank you for reading my rant, and thus the point of this article. We have been given great freedom from God, and the world tells us that this means that we can do whatever we want. Hedonism, live for the day, if you are not harming anyone simply do what makes you happy. This mentality leads us to sin. We often seek instant gratification, and we seek to show we are adults by casting aside the wisdom of our ancestors to do what we want to do and by doing so we fall into sin and disorder. Like the water gun, we are created for a purpose. Our purpose is to do the Will of the One who created us, (simply put, to love God and love neighbor). We aren’t wrongly created. God did not make a mistake. But when we experience disorder in our lives, it is often our own fault. This is hard for us to hear. It is much easier to say that we were poorly created, rather than say that our own decisions put us on “the island of unwanted toys.”

Here is the point, despite all our shortcomings, every year at Christmas we celebrate the reality that God freely choose to enter into history in order to save us. As broken as we are, none of us are unwanted, none of us are mistakes. We do not follow the Will of God so that He will love us and desire for us to be with Him. He already wants that! We do those things so that we can be our fullest self, so that we can be the people God created us to be. You are not on an island of unwanted toys, you are in the Church, you are part of the body of Christ, and we need you.

On behalf of Fr. Greg, Deacon Matt, all the staff of our family of parishes, and myself, we wish you a happy and blessed Christmas season!

In Christ,
Fr. Chris

p.s. I actually like the song “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” it just happens to help me prove a point about our worth.