Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

As we move through Advent I find myself just catching up to it. I am suddenly aware that Christmas is closing in quickly! I tend to avoid stores and online sales and the like so I don’t get many of the early warning radar blips that I used to such as Black Friday sale ads or seeing the Christmas decor up at Home Depot in August.

But these weeks it becomes a little more real as we start to settle into Christmas liturgy details. We start humming “Once in Royal David’s City” after looking over the Christmas Eve bulletin. A few strains of “In the Bleak Midwinter” pull at my brain and I try to figure out why and then realize our son has been playing a few bars on the piano. We’ve started costuming kids for the pageant (54 kids at last count!) so I have little visions of sheep and angels bouncing around.

The reality starts to set in after the blitz of the commercial and consumer-driven.

Even as we plan the big celebrations, the reality beneath them starts to set in. Christmas has the feel of a wedding about it a bit. Lots of planning and preparation. Lots of pomp and circumstance. Lots of details. Then the reality beneath it all starts to set in.

For love’s sake, two are made one.

For love’s sake, the daily stuff of human relationship is taken on.

For love’s sake our future is bound together.

For love’s sake we’ll endure the hard days together because of a new covenant.

Christmas is much like a wedding because as we are bound together with Christ, he takes on our human reality, he seals our future together, all in the hope of a new covenant.

And all for love’s sake.

That is the reality beneath it all.

Thanks be to God.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert