What gift will you bring Jesus this Christmas? The gift of your life….

Brothers and Sisters,

This week we celebrate the Announcement to Mary in our Liturgy. It is through this announcement that God gave us the gift of his very own life through the incarnation of his Son Jesus Christ. God gave us his life in four phases. Firstly through the incarnation of Jesus, secondly through the life and mission of Jesus who as a human being gave himself for the service of the people of first century Palestine, thirdly through the death of Jesus on the cross and fourthly through the outpouring of his spirit at Pentecost. Mary too gave her life to God at the moment she entered into his plan of salvation through her “Yes”. Today, she gives her life to us also through her prayers and intercession.

So if God who is the creator of all things has given us his life, is it too much for us to also give him our lives? God created us in his own image and likeness so that we can be in communion with him. Therefore our purpose in this life is to be in communion with God, to meet him and to one day see him face to face. This should be our ultimate goal, seeing the face of God and being united with him. We must offer our lives to him. This is not easy, I know! But we must try to offer up everything that we do, say, think, possess and everything that we know. We must offer him our all.

A key way of giving our lives to God is by giving of our lives to our neighbour. Our neighbour is not just the people that we know and love, rather our neighbour may be someone that we don’t know, someone that we have never seen before but needs our help. He may be the old man on the road who’s car has a flat tyre and doesn’t know how to fix it; she might be the young woman who has been abused by her boyfriend; they may be the young children who have been made homeless because of war; he may be your next door neighbour who is addicted to drugs; and so on. After all, is this not what Jesus would have done? Think about his relationships. We need to become more Christ-like so that we can have a Christ-life. In giving the gift of our lives to our neighbour, we will be giving our life as a gift to Jesus this Christmas.

Over the last week we woke up to the news of the tragedies in Lebanon and France. I ask you to join me in keeping the victims of these terrible events in your prayers.

Fr Tony Sarkis