Like many people, I went Christmas shopping. While the advertising of one shop invited me to a wish store, a  competitor kept reminding me to give this holiday season. One store encouraged me to fulfill a wish, the other simply to give. This inspired my reflection for this year’s Christmas message.

No matter how generous our desires may be, they must often be cleansed in order to reveal the ultimate true value they harbour: the unquenchable longing for God. To better understand this intense and ongoing desire, we must begin with the root of all desires of the human being who seeks to grow and come to know life in its fullest. Indeed, who doesn’t aspire to happiness, to success, to peace, to love, to be loved, to fulfill oneself as a person, to come out from a difficult life situation, to have children or true friendships to name but a few wishes.  To this list, Christians could also add to walk in the footsteps of Christ in their daily lives, and ultimately, one day, see God face to face.

It has been noted by many over the centuries, that desire is at the heart of the very essence of being human. It is born from a spark which comes to haunt us. The more time passes, the more the expectation of the realization of this desire is long in coming. Deep down, there is a constant force manifested in the wish which makes life seek to confirm itself, to grow so as to embrace beyond itself, and to radiate. Thus, if we really want to fulfill ourselves completely, we cannot help but ask ourselves what it would take to go further and fully satisfy our expectations. Sooner or later we come to the realization that we must go through others, as though the gift of self, in coming to meet our deepest desire, would be the key to our personal fulfillment.

It is the same for parents who wish to embody and prolong their love in children; young people who make friends to learn and to share with them; volunteers who are devoted to the service of others; believers who decide to go a step further in their life of faith by placing their trust in He, the only One who is able to fulfill beyond all hope. But this is not always obvious because the more we agonize in worry, the more we risk distancing ourselves from God. Christmas allows us to put aside our worries, to get closer to our family and friends and to re-evaluate the values we hold dearly but that we tend to forget sometimes because of our daily routine.

Christmas is also the favoured time to get closer to the Christ-Child who came to fulfill all our desires, by taking Flesh of our flesh. He wanted to be God-with-us, not only like more than 2000 years ago, but in all time and in all circumstances, so that nothing can ever separate us from His love. He made His Father known to us and taught us how to live His message in a concrete way. He showed us how to give of ourselves as He did and satisfy His greatest desire, that of doing His Father’s will to the end, with love, under the influence of the Spirit. This desire of union would not have been possible without the complicity of His other wish, that of reaching out to others and leaving them with the best of Himself. Christ bequeathed to us this double communion wish. He calls on us today to discover it from within so as to reveal it to our world.

This Christmas, let us welcome the Gift greater than all our desires, Jesus, and come to a deeper understanding of the mystery of God and His presence in our lives. Let us make ours the deepest call of the person of desire that we all are: Come Lord, come into my life. A Blessed Christmas and a Holy New Year 2008.

+Jean-Louis Plouffe
Bishop of Sault Ste. Marie

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