EXCHANGING GIFTS

A TV reporter interviewed a suburban New York retailer on Friday, the big shopping day after Thanksgiving. The retailer said, "The holiday spirit has begun. We have lots of gifts, nice things, and people will want to spend their money when they see what we have." Retailers hope for a commercial bonanza in December.

We Christians hope for a spiritual bonanza in December. We take our Advent cue from James 5:7,"Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord." We spend Advent getting ready for the holiday spirit of exchanging gifts. How beautifully the ancients put it: O sacrum commercium, that is, o holy exchange. God's commerce was to send the embodied Word, Jesus, as freely given gift to humanity. In turn, this newborn enabled us to have access to divinity. So we wait on the Lord's coming to us now. He comes as the risen One who once was born of Mary, who lived among us, died for us, was raised up, and who will come again to claim us as his very own. O sacrum commercium, o marvelously holy exchange between God and us during this time.

Why do we exchange gifts at Christmas? We give gifts to one another to celebrate the great gift, the embodied Word, Emmanuel, God-among-us. We are tempted to give many and expensive gifts. But how can we measure the lavish love of God in sending us the Christ? How many gifts are needed to demonstrate our appreciation of God's graciousness, our response, and our human loves?

Advent can be anything but patient waiting on the coming of the Lord. It can be hectic, frantic, busy. We have to be good stewards of our time, talent, and treasure. We have to make conscious efforts to set time aside to wait on the Lord, to pray, and to prepare for the Lord. We have to commit ourselves to quiet time with the Lord so that we can appreciate the beauty and wonder of this season. The time we set aside may limit our shopping times. We may wind up buying one less material gift so that we cash in on the spiritual gift that awaits us.

Many times family members ask us for Christmas gift suggestions. Or, we figure that we have to give children and grandchildren lots of stuff, presents galore, more and more. Before we shop til we drop, we might ask: is there anything I need? Is there anything family members need? Maybe everyone in the family has enough. What to do, then? Here is a suggestion. Let each person provide a nice gift for another family member and invite each family member to donate money to Catholic Relief Services for people in Central America affected by the recent hurricanes. If our families were to sit down and talk about this, we might come up with other practical ways to be generous gift-givers.

O sacrum commercium! O holy exchange! A tired world got rejuvenated when the newborn came as Emmanuel, God-with-us. We still harvest blessing and benefit as embodied disciples of the Christ.