The Gift of Each Other (Advent 4C)

4th Sunday of Advent, Year C | Dec 22, 2024

See today’s readings here. Video recordings of the Sunday evening Mass, where Fr. Brian regularly preaches, are available on Facebook at Delaware Koinonia. The archive of all of Fr. Brian’s homilies can be found here: Salesian Sermons

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Every year, the weekend prior to Christmas, I go on a whirlwind set of visits to friends throughout Maryland, DC and northern Virginia.

From high school friends to seminary classmates, from Nativity grads to numerous god children, it is 48 hours of laughter, food, story-telling, and fellowship.

An ever-changing array of characters who have come to define the story of my life.  

It is amazing how much has changed since I began making this journey.

There are so many more children in the picture and they are getting so much older.

There have been marriages and break-ups.  New jobs.  New degrees.  New vocations.

There have been meet-ups filled with tears.  And meet-ups when I am running on empty.

We have talked about politics and grief.  Religion and the future.  We have swapped memories and vacation stories and current events.

But at the end of the day, we show up for each other.  Meet each other where we are.  And journey onwards together into whatever awaits us in the coming year.

It’s work, for sure.  

Every relationship is.

And yet, this Gospel this weekend reminds me that this work.  This sacred work of building, maintaining, and nurturing a relationship.

It is miraculous.

I think it is the thing I most appreciate about this Gospel.

It is so utterly ordinary.

2 women.  2 family members.

Travelling to see one another. 

Trying to figure out life together.

There are no angels appearing with messages.  No light piercing the clouds.  No dramatic voices reigning down from the heavens.  No prophetic dreams.

And yet, in the ordinary, the miracle shines through.

The miracle that is a relationship.

The miracle that is family.  The miracle that is a child. 

The miracle that is two people who choose to love each other.

The miracle that is seeing God at work in our lives.

My friends, it is so fitting that on the final Sunday of Advent we are returned to the one thing that ultimately matters.

The relationships we have been gifted with.

The relationships we have chosen.

The relationships that we give ourselves to.

Yes, these relationships are work.

Loving another human being is always work.

It takes time.  It takes commitment.

It takes sacrifice.  It takes forgiveness.

It takes a willingness to listen, to show-up.

It takes honesty.  And boundaries.  And vulnerability.

But at the end of the day, it is the relationships we choose that reveal to the world who we are.

Whose we are.

Who we will become.

It will never be money or degrees.  Titles or achievements that will define who we are.

It will be who we loved.  And who loved us.

So in these final days, as we await the reminder of our God who loved us enough to want to enter into a relationship with humanity, let us pause to take stock of the most precious miraculous gift we receive each day.

The gift of each other.

The gift of our love.

May God be Praised.  

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IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Zuccarelli, Francesco, 1702-1788. John the Baptist Preaching, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56714 [retrieved January 2, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zuccarelli,_Saint_John_the_Baptist_Preaching.jpg.