'So many tears this Christmas.'

ORDINARY TEACHER'S NOTES. 25 DEC 2014. THURS. N2.
'So many tears this Christmas.' 

THERE IS A NEED to redeem Christmas from the hijackers. 

The hijackers are many, and one of them are those commerce people who have no mercy making us believe that Christmas is about conspicuous consumption, that one heck of a feel-good act of gobbling up whatever Walmart and Costco and chain stores can offer.

All these are meant to give a balm to our already wounded hearts, souls, spirits.

All these are meant to bandage our bodies, bruised, brutalized. 

All these are meant to put some Band-Aid to our broken sense of self. 

For Christmas and what it means, from its non-Christian beginnings (think of the reverence to the sun here!) and to its transformation into something that reminds us of our duty to others and to ourselves, in that one heck of solidarity in the name of humanity that we have forgotten, is lost. 

Has been lost. 

We need to call it back, call out its name and what it means so that, like Pope Francis, this would not become a Christmas of tears again. 

In the meantime, however, let us be real: today, with the world going awry, with the world going berserk, with the world going nuts, we can only kneel in prayer and say, plead: Lord, Lord, Lord: Take these tears away from your people, from the women, from the children, from the orphans, from the persecuted minorities, from the displaced, from the hamletted, from those who have nothing to eat, from those who have no bed to lie down and rest. 

Lord, Lord, Lord: give us a Christmas without the tears.

Amen.