Fourth Sunday of Advent

Candle of Love

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

                                            Lao Tzu

In the Liturgical Calendar, today is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and we light the Angel Candle, the candle of love, on the wreath. It was, according to the birth story of Jesus, angels who proclaimed God's love for the world, and God's gift in the form of a Hebrew baby who would be Emanuel, or “God with us.” Love is a gift worthy of consideration. We humans, being warm-blooded mammals, need the closeness and comfort of a love community, a family either of birth or of choice. Love grounds us, gives us strength and purpose. When we love, our hearts are opened to compassion and courage. Jesus, the man, demonstrated love again and again, by refusing to reject the outcasts, by his kindness to the poor and the marginalized, and by his healing of the suffering. He brought a lesson of love for all people in his manner of teaching—using women, and foreigners, and 'unclean,' rejected people as examples of how things were in the Kingdom of heaven.

I see the courage of love playing out today very graphically in the scenes of families fleeing the Syrian civil war—mothers and fathers carrying their children through bombed out streets, running for their very lives from smoking buildings with their babies clutched to their breasts. I see it in the face of Pope Francis when he kisses people with disfiguring disabilities. I see it in the the parents, and husbands, and wives who have lost loved ones to gun violence, and who are now working for gun-control legislation to protect other families from such tragedy.

It is easy in these days of anger and unrest to overlook love as a powerful means of healing. And, as important as it is to be loved, to feel loved by someone or by a community, it is of equal importance to love. Love of anyone, or of anything, expands us and brings us closer to the real meaning of this season. Let's not let the commercialism of Christmas blot out the gift of love given two thousand years ago in the form of one Hebrew baby.

                                         In the Spirit,

                                              Jane