Why wait during the season of Advent?

By Adam Ganucheau
For The Catholic Week

In healthy relationships, compromise and complementary personalities are often found. Each person can make a little sacrifice, a small choice to die to oneself for the greater good of the relationship and the other person.  
My wife and I usually disagree about the appropriate time Christmas decorations can be put up in our home. She is very happy to cozy up with a cup of coffee and a Hallmark movie, while I am usually opposed to any kind of Christmas acknowledgment until the last bowl of leftover turkey gumbo is consumed after Thanksgiving. 
However, I historically make two exceptions to this rule: Little Debbie Christmas tree cakes and the 1980s classic, “Muppet Family Christmas.” These two things are timeless and welcome in my life at any time. 
This year, weeks before Thanksgiving, I felt that I needed some Christmas spirit. I needed some fresh air. I needed the soft twinkling of Christmas lights hung outside our home. So I put up the lights, much earlier than I ever had. 
Granted, it would be easy to say that this year has caused some of the exhaustion and discouragement. In all its many ways, 2020, may have had a hand in my heart feeling three sizes too small. 
But if I truly examine further, it might have been the distance I put between God and myself through my sinfulness, through my selfishness, through my brokenness, that caused my sour mood. 
When we forget who we are and whose we are, we look to fill those voids. 
Perhaps, my hope in boosting myself with Christmas spirit was a way to invite Jesus into my heart more. Of course, we know that Jesus “is the reason for the season.” But we often get caught up in the commercial and material nature of the holiday season that we forget the awesome mystery of the Incarnation — God became man. 
It might seem counterintuitive in this season of Advent to advise not waiting, but if we truly believe that Jesus is fully God and fully man, and that Jesus left us the Eucharist as true food and His whole being, why are we not running to the Eucharist? Why wait to come back to Mass? Why wait to run into the arms of the Merciful Father in the sacrament of Reconciliation?
At each and every Mass, we receive a gift — not of something, but of someone. I hear from young people that there are times they find the Mass boring or distracting. I’ll also hear from young people that when they have a powerful experience of Eucharistic Adoration, it can be challenging to have that some reaction to a regular Sunday Mass. 
As we enjoy the beauty of the Advent and Christmas season, let us contemplate the words of St. John Paul II: “It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives … the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity … making the world more human and more fraternal.”
It was Jesus that I was seeking when I needed Christmas spirit. It was Jesus that I could see in the smile and affirmation from my family. Hope and joy can be found when we seek the Christ. 
All of us, young and old, are challenged this Advent and Christmas season to seek Jesus, to embrace the Eucharist as the source and summit of our Christian lives, and to spread the love of God to each person we encounter. When we live a faith bolstered by the Eucharist, we can bring that Christmas hope and joy throughout the entire year. Let us hunger for the Eucharist … and save the Little Debbie Christmas tree cakes for another day.
 — Adam Ganucheau is the Director of the Office of Youth Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. He may be emailed at [email protected]
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