Gifts, hoping and waiting

Dec. 28, 2008

My excellent pastor here in VA is two for two with his homilies on Christmas Eve and the Feast of the Holy Family. Although I am still homesick for TN, I have to admit that the pastor here is wonderful and the church is absolutely beautiful.
On Christmas Eve, in a packed church where seating was, shall we say, competitive, he talked about gifts. The difference between gifts and rewards is that gifts, of course, do not need to be earned. And in Christ we have the gift of God's pure love. But then he also talked about how sometimes we can be disappointed by gifts and added that sometimes children and grownups can focus more on life's disappointments than all of the wonderful gifts we receive from God, such as peace, love joy, etc. I wonder if he chose to mention that because he had spent the previous two evenings offering extra hours of confessions for the last-chancers among us. Anyway, it was spot on, for me at least.
And today, he spoke of the Holy Family and our own families. And he said that we all hope, in our earthly families, that each person reaches the potential that God has for us in this world. We hope that, we pray that and then we wait. Again, perfect homily for me to hear on this day as we prepare to begin a new year and we wait and hope to hear about hubby's potential new job or anything else for that matter.