Father Chris – SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT 2021 – Homily

 
“Youth Waits For God”

 
In Christmases past, my mother often read to us younger ones in the family the story of “The Little Match Girl” by Hans Christian Andersen, apparently based on a real child he knew who sold matches in the streets of Copenhagen.
 
A little girl, poor and starving, beaten by her father, her mother long dead, was driven out by him into a cold winter storm to sell matches for food and logs for fire. She was barefoot, her clothes threadbare, having no coat or hat to protect her. The crowd passes, paying no attention, despite her pleadings. After awhile, she is so cold, she takes shelter in an alley next to a shop, its window full of beautiful things. Then she decides to warm her hands, even if just for a moment, by lighting just one, single match. When she does, in the small light of the match, a vision appears of a pot-belly stove full of burning wood. But it disappears soon as the match goes out. She tries another, and then sees a vision of a plump, succulent goose on a sideboard. Her next match reveals a tall, sparkling, green Christmas tree.
 
The visions are so brief she decides to light all the matches at once. Then, she has a vision of a most magnificient, beautiful lady, wearing a blue mantel and a white veil with light beaming and glowing all around her. The lady reaches down and takes the little match girl up into her arms and carries her away to heaven. In the morning, the body of the little match girl is found huddled in a corner of the alley having died from the bitter cold, but with a glorious smile of peace and joy on her face.      
 
I remember us thinking it was a pretty gloomy story, but our mother wanted us to know all is not joy and celebration for many at Christmas, especially for the poor. Yet, even though our mother meant well, we figured this was just an old-fashioned, Victorian fairy-tale. Things were not like this anymore in our sophisticated 20th C.
 
But we were wrong! Unfortunately, there are too many little match girls and match boys still begging on the streets, their young lives hardly even begun in the world. The deaths from the opioid crisis in our country from coast to coast has rivalled the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sadly, these lives have been lost to moments of escape from their troubles by using drugs which promise only brief visions of happiness like those in the flames of the little girl’s matches.
 
But who is to blame? Parents? Their communities? The young people themselves?
In a way we are all to blame, and it all boils down to some kind of lack of love, love maybe not given, nor received or recognized, or maybe the false love behind abuse.
 
Still, the young must learn to shoulder most of this burden of the need for love, because it always starts with loving yourself first. Perhaps we can help them by pointing out life was never meant to be particularly easy, that the struggles and challenges, including lack of love in our lives, are meant to teach us the wisdom of Jesus who himself walked through the valley of darkness, who struggled through the wilderness of life in his early years. Jesus never turned away nor hid from difficulty, never sought an easy way out nor distraction through escapes to give him momentary pleasure or a heightened escape from reality. He faced all head-on.
 
Our youth, indeed, all of us, must learn to accept the dark side of our lives along with the light. We must face, try to understand, and ultimately accept our ‘whole’ selves. Chuck De Groat in his book, The Toughest People To Love, says, “This is not merely a self-improvement project. The biblical pattern is clear: one must go through a wilderness to discover the promised land [deep within ourselves].”
 
While we all want to be loved and accepted for who we are as unique creations in the same way God loves us, the way to living one’s life, the way to holiness is through becoming whole in one’s integrity as a fully realized human being.
The way to healing is not around it, but ‘through’ it! To become whole we need to reassemble who we are, accept both the dark and the light side of life, because this is from where true healing comes. The divided person is unhappy, relying on a false self to navigate a challenging world. Yes, it often takes a lifetime, but facing our true selves and addressing our fears and roadblocks face-on, giving rather than expecting love, results in a wisdom and self-confidence which no pill can provide.
Like the slow arrival of Jesus through Advent, our youth can slowly come to know themselves as the beautiful creations they are, confident that God loves them.
 
Jesus, this Advent, hear the call of our youth in their wilderness, straighten the road for our teenagers, calm their struggles, and guide the feet of our young adults entering the world of work and study to find their way along the path of peace.     
 
– Rev Fr Chris Tracey, Saint Joseph Parish, Saugeen Shores, Ontario