Makin' A List, Checkin' It Twice

Photo by Ben Smith at unsplsh.com

Here we are just three days from Christmas.

Time for that last-minute rush if we haven’t yet prepared

All the gifts we plan to give.

Gifts—offered, accepted, given, received and reciprocated—

Are a common underlying theme of Scripture.

And that theme is particularly strong in the Advent season.

For example, this Gospel passage from Matthew that we hear today

Tells of gifts.

And this Gospel is repeated three times in these pre-Christmas days.

In addition to today, we heard it, last Wednesday

And it’s an option for Tuesday’s Christmas Vigil.

All our Scripture readings today deal, at some level,

With the offering, giving and acceptance of gifts.

Underlying all the readings is that one great gift of

Jesus coming into the world as our Savior.

But we see other gifts as well.

Ahaz is offered the gift of a sign.

Somewhat surprisingly, he refuses it.

He doesn’t want a sign proving that God will protect Jerusalem.

Because he’s already chosen to have Assyria protect him.

But Isaiah gives him a sign anyway.

Foretelling the coming of Emmanuel—God with us.

The Psalm also speaks of God’s gifts to us.

The creation of the world and all that’s in it, including us.

The blessings that God bestows on us.

In that long greeting, opening the Letter to the Romans,

Paul speaks of the gift of that coming of Emmanuel, the Son of God.

And the grace and the blessings, and the calling, he brings.

Our Gospel passage again refers to that primary gift,

The coming of Jesus—Emmanuel.

But it tells of other gifts as well.

Joseph’s planned gift to Mary; a gift of mercy.

Not exposing her to the law, which could have led to her stoning.

God’s gift of a reassuring message to Joseph, through Gabriel.

God’s gift of faith to Joseph, that enabled him to accept the message.

And Joseph’s reciprocating gift of obedience to God.

In this Christmas Season, we think a lot about giving and receiving gifts.

And about being thankful for all we’ve received,

It brings to mind a suggestion from St Ignatius.

We should ask ourselves and consider:

Look at all that God has given me …

What will I give in return?

Ignatius’ answer was his prayer, called in Latin the Suscipe—

Which in English means, receive or accept.

It says:

Take Lord and receive

All my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire free will.

All that I have and call my own.

You have given it all to me Lord.

To you I return it.

All of it is yours.

Take it and do with it what you will.

Give me only your love and your grace.

That is enough for me.

It’s a bit shocking when you first think about those words.

How can I give all those things away?

What would be left of me?

Without them, what use would I be to myself or anyone else?

But then we realize that, in our prayer, 
We’re not throwing all those things away.

We’re offering to use them for God.

To let Him use us.

In return for all he’s done for us.

There’s a popular poster that tries to sum it up:

What we are is God’s gift to us.

What we become is our gift to God.

In the old days when I was an altar boy and the Mass was in Latin,

We had to memorize another prayer, the Suscipiat, 
So we could recite it at Mass.

The congregation didn’t recite it, just the altar boys.

Suscipiat Dominus sacrificium de manibus tuis, ad laudem et gloriam nominis sui, ad utilitatem quoque nostram, totiusque ecclesiae suae sanctae.

We didn’t have to understand it, we just had to recite it.

And indeed, we didn’t understand it.

So we’d just compete to see who could say it fastest.

Nowadays at Mass we all recite the Suscipiat, in English.

But even in English we might not understand or appreciate

The full meaning when we pray those now-familiar words:

May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands,

For the praise and glory of His name, for our good

And the good of all His Holy Church.

We say that in response to the priest’s words:

Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours

May be acceptable to God the almighty Father.

When the priest says my sacrifice and yours,

He’s adding the gift of ourselves to those gifts of bread and wine.

Offering our whole selves to God.

And asking God to accept us.

Our response with the Suscipiat

Is our opportunity to voice our agreement to that offer.

To make a conscious renewal of the gift of ourselves.

A gift including all that detail that Ignatius spells out in his prayer.

So, for those of us who haven’t yet decided

What to give God this Christmas.

What to give Him in return for all he’s given us.

There’s an idea.

It’s very convenient.

Sincerely adopting that simple prayer from Ignatius.

Or making a sincere re-commitment 
Whenever we say the Suscipiat at Mass.

It may not be the easiest gift to deliver on.

But it will be the most greatly appreciated.

And, even though we give it in return for what we’ve already received.

God will respond with still more grace and blessings on us.

We’ll enter a continuous cycle of giving ourselves and receiving grace.

And as Ignatius’ prayer says:

Give me only your love and your grace.

That is enough for me.

Asking for only God’s love and grace.

It seems like an almost comical understatement.

What more could we ask for, or want?

4th Sunday of Advent

Mt 1:18-24

  Read this Scripture @usccb.org