The Banquet of Love

Dear Parishioners and Visitors,

What will you be having for your Christmas dinner this year? Perhaps you are the one planning the meal or maybe you are sharing in one portion of it. Maybe you are headed to a mystery table and will eat and drink whatever might be served.

This Sunday we light the fourth Advent candle, which means the festivities associated with Christmas Day are just around the corner. Are you ready? As we scramble to complete all of our plans, I’d like to focus on the food, because not only does eating allow us to enjoy the fruits of the earth, it is perhaps the best means to express ourselves culturally. Food also plays a most important part in the Christian experience of worship. In that regard, let us be forthright about our plans to gather at the Lord’s table this Christmas and to bring the fruits of that sacred meal to all our other tables.

Franciscan spirituality emphasizes Incarnation, meaning that God made a deliberate choice to be with and among us for the primary reason of love. The goal of love is communion and there is no greater or more intimate level of communion than to dwell within another. Love has come to us in the form of Jesus Christ, who abandoned heavenly privilege for humble, earthly simplicity in order to gather the rejected and the lost to the banquet of his love. He has made himself food for us so that his love might pulse through our bodies, radiating warmth and light to a cold and darkened world. Will your Christmas plans include the sacred meal that He has prepared for you?

May we enjoy holy communion this Christmas and at every Eucharist in order to bear God’s love into our world.

Together with you in this Holy Season!

Fr. Daniel F. Barica, ofm