Dear Parishioners,
I started and finished my
Christmas shopping yesterday. I pulled
into a Hess station, and purchased
this year’s featured toy truck for my two young nephews (who really seem to be
into trucks and cars), and it was over.
Christmas shopping completed for another year! Woo-hoo!!!!
Truth be told, I can’t see all the
wasted time, energy and frenzy surrounding events like Black Friday. Each year for
Christmas I choose a religious
Christmas card for my other nieces and nephews and place either money or a gift
card in them. My brothers, sister (and
their spouses) and I generally have limited or entirely eliminated
buying things for each other. I remember
my mom each year by taking her out to
dinner and/or planning a trip with her sometime later—something she really
enjoys.
What I have to say here has nothing to do with stimulating the economy or supporting
our local merchants and has everything
to do with resisting the materialism
and the consumer mentality that has
seemingly swallowed up the true meaning of Christmas.
When I saw certain retail stores
advertize pre-Black Friday sales, and
encourage shopping on Thanksgiving Day itself, I have to say “Enough is
enough!” Thanksgiving for my siblings and me is a family holiday where we get to spend some quality time with each
other. If people resist buying on such a
day, then the stores would see that there is simply no profit in opening at
this time and would cease this practice.
No profit would translate into
don’t open today.
It is like many other things in
our society that indicate we have certain priorities out of whack. As long as we are willing to pay astronomical
ticket prices for athletes and entertainers, as long as we feel the need
for status symbols like over-priced luxury
cars, extravagant jewelry and the
latest electronics, as long as so
many unborn children are seen as
disposable, as long as the worship of God
appears to be on or near the bottom of our priority
list, then our Western society will continue to suffer from a disastrous, spiritual poverty.
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta had some thoughts on this spiritual poverty:
The greatest disease in the West
today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine,
but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for
a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of
poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a
hunger for God.
Filling our narcissistic
tendencies with things and more things will only bring more
emptiness. Finding time for God, for our
families and to love one another will
fill the void in each of us.
We need to
say: “Enough is enough!”
Fr. Ed Namiotka
Pastor
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
Amen!
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