The Advent season, with its readings of hope, inspires time to think, to make sense of events in our lives and prompts us to look at our present reality with new abilities to see God moving in our lives. I truly believe that the Advent season, rich with its stories of surprise, generosity and amazement, provides glimpses of our God who loves us tremendously.
As a recent entrant to the 7th decade of life, I find myself more reflective with the reality that I have more years behind me than before me. And as this Advent season arrives, I have found myself recalling and reclaiming memories of the past. One story percolated through my recent thoughts and prompted surprises and deep feelings of gratitude.
At that time, in my short life, I had experienced about eight Christmases before my siblings and I were thrilled to greet Santa in our home in central Minnesota. On that particular day, it was early and still dark on Christmas morning, and my young self was asleep and did not see him welcomed to our home by my parents. We were simply awakened excitedly by our older sibs and told to come down to the living room for a surprise.
When I arrived downstairs, I saw Santa standing in our home! He handed me two large gifts from his huge bag – a doll and a game, both of which had about a year’s lasting power. I pestered each of my sibs as to their gifts as we all roamed around the room and our excitement grew as we all learned of each other’s gifts! Never had Santa visited our home until that day. My mom made sure we all thanked Santa for the gifts and the visit. What a wonderful surprise for us! My mom snapped a picture or two as documentation of our memories.
Unbeknownst to us, my dad, a welder at Minneapolis Moline, had a group of co-worker friends who decided to share their time, treasure and talent with our family. One of my dad’s co-workers was Santa and all the friends contributed toward the gifts. What a generous surprise to my dad, mom and family! All of us kids, probably about 10 at the time, benefited from the generosity of people who did not know us but were friends of my dad. We benefited greatly because of the generous hearts of others.
When I reflect on this surprise experience on that Christmas morning in 1961, two Gospel stories come to mind; the Christmas story with its surprise simplicity, yet lavishness, and the story of the sick man who is healed by Jesus because of the faith of his friends.
The Nativity features a story about a favored woman who experiences a deep call, a generous response, surprise visits, and gifts from strangers with little understanding of the reason or their origins. Visits from strangers prompt tremendous gratitude for the encounter that reveals hints about the future of the baby through the gifts the strangers present. Mary and Joseph must have felt great internal joy and some questions about this birth with its surrounding events (Luke 2:1-21).
The second Gospel story (Mark 2:12) reveals the incredible faith, persistence and generosity of friends who recognize that Jesus can make a difference with His gifts. Through no initiative of his own, the paralytic man was lowered by friends into the overcrowded home so that maybe their friend could be healed. And the Gospel says that Jesus, seeing the faith of the friends, heals the paralytic man. Generous hearts – all of them; Jesus and the friends.
Recently, my siblings recalled this Santa event and were amazed again at the generosity of our dad’s friends and their organizational skills to make sure that their friend’s children had special Christmas gifts. I hope that our thank-you cards and the generosity of their gifts brought them some joy in their giving.
During this Advent season, may we all be attentive to the surprises and generosity that permeates the readings and stories of this time. And may each of us know of God’s generous hearts which prompts us to be generous to others as well. Blessed Advent and Christmas!
Sister Michele Dvorak lives in East Chicago and works with the Poor Handmaid of Jesus Christ religious sisters from Nigeria, Kenya, Mexico, Brazil and India through an online educational program.