December 19, 2023

Coach's Corner 10: Why I Hate (and Love) Christmas

6 minutes

In this time of preparation for Christmas, do you find it hard to slow down? To appreciate the way Jesus comes to us? Small and humble. Well, I certainly do. I love Christmas, but I’ll be honest, I have conflicting emotions. I want salvation to be bright and loud! I want the world to be all better, and I want it to be all better now. And yet, the Lord asks us, especially during this season, to trust in his slow work and maybe to slow down a bit ourselves.

So, spend 10 minutes with me today and discover:

The unexpected joy hidden in the small and slow aspects of Christmas.

My honest reflections on grappling with the desire for immediate, grand transformations.

A prayerful invitation to trust in the slow and small salvation of God.

Prayer of Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—

and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (Excerpted from Hearts on Fire.)

For more practical advice and experiences from real people sharing their mission with the world, go to https://equip.archomaha.org/podcast/.

A Production of the Archdiocese of Omaha

Editor: Taylor Schroll (ForteCatholic.com)

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