I’m very glad that Christmas has arrived.  And I’m very glad that Advent is over.  I’ll tell you something: each and every Advent, without fail, I end up in some personal spiritual difficulty.  Usually, it’s a sense of darkness or abandonment, a kind of spiritual emptiness.

 I feel like those ancient Israelites whom the prophet Isaiah addresses in the first readings of the Christmas Masses: desolate and forsaken; walking in darkness; dwelling in gloom; with a yoke that burdens and the rod of the taskmaster weighing heavy upon me.

 Each and every year, however, in some way, that sensation is relieved at Christmas.  Invariably, God does something in my life that lifts me up.

 Of course, that’s what those readings from Isaiah are really about: although there may be present difficulty, the Lord promises redemption, vindication, and joy.  Still, although that happens every year, there is still a little part of me that wonders, “but what if not this year.  What then?”

 Everyone ends up burdened and discouraged by the events of life sometimes.  The way that manifests in people’s lives is as varied as each one of us: problems with the kids, problems with the parents, problems with the spouse, problems with the teachers, problems with the students, money problems, work problems, and the list goes on and on.

We each have that sensation of desolation, of walking in darkness, of dwelling in gloom.  And we wonder where God is.  And we beg Him to keep His promise to us.  Sometimes it seems as if He takes His own sweet time in showing up.

As I said, I go through this every year.  And every year, God does something.  It’s never what I expect or when I expect – it’s always a surprise.  I have to be waiting for it.

That is very often the way God works in our lives.  Because, you see, our own hopes and expectations – the ones that we cook up ourselves in our minds – are way too small for God.  God wants to knock your socks off.

That’s what He did at that first Christmas 2000 years ago.  Lots of folks were watching and waiting for the Messiah to show up and for God’s promises to be fulfilled.  Not everybody, but lots were.  Almost all of them that were waiting had very distinct, very specific ideas about how that was going to happen.  Those expectations usually revolved around God raising up a great king and military leader for them.  All in all, it was a very reasonable and not improbable hope.  But ultimately, it was a very, very small one.

Nobody expected God to do what He did: take a human nature to Himself, unite it to His divine nature, and be born as a baby.  That was so far out in left field that it never even entered into anyone’s imagination.

But to those few who were waiting and watching, to those few who were willing to be humble enough to let God be God and not try to trap Him into very small human expectations, to those few He revealed Himself in a new way.

They were stunned.  Then they were filled with joy.  That’s how we have to be.

I close with the end of one of the poems of St. John of the Cross: