How's this for a Christmas wish list? May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all His holy ones.

     This was St Paul's wish for the early Christians at Thessalonica, as we heard in our second reading, and I don't think St Paul would mind if I make it my wish for each of you as we begin this Advent Season. The difference between this wish list and a wish list made up of all the latest gizmos and gadgets good plastic can buy, is that this wish list from St Paul reflects what the Lord wants to give us during this Advent season - and the wonderful thing is that the Lord has no credit limit! The only restriction on what the Lord can give us is our own capacity to receive the good things He showers upon those who love Him.

     What are some of the things our Lord wants to give us during this Advent season? He wants to increase us, and make us overflow with love for one another and for all whom we meet. He wants to strengthen our hearts and make us blameless and holy. He wants to enable us "to stand straight and raise our heads...to stand secure before the Son of Man," as it says in today's Gospel. Does what we want for ourselves during this Advent and Christmas season match what the Lord wants to give us? If not, why not? And what can we do to bring our Lord's wish list and our own closer together?

     That would seem to be a worthy undertaking for each one of us during this season of Advent, wouldn't it? To bring what we desire for ourselves in line with what the Lord desires to give us. To want what the Lord wants for us, knowing by faith that whatever the Lord wants for us is truly our good; that, being God, He can only desire what is good for us. And when we desire only what God wants for us, whatever that might be, then and only then do we know true satisfaction, true fulfillment, true peace, because what we want and what the Lord wants to give us (what He alone is able to give us) are one and the same thing.

     "That's all well and good, Father, but, uh, I want so many things! I need so much! Is God going to give me what I want and need? I mean, who knows better what I want and need that I do?" The answer is: God does. And the Advent season is a time for us to enter ever more deeply into the reality that God has already given us all that we truly need, everything to satisfy the longing of our hearts. And He has done this by sending us His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in His First Coming as Man, when He was born of the Virgin Mary in a cave used for a stable in Bethlehem. Because in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, God's heart and the human heart become one. In our Lord's perfect obedience to His Father's will in all that He did, all of us who share His human nature are now made sharers in His divine nature, and we are made capable, once again, of desiring for ourselves only what God desires for us.

     But Advent is not a time for us to sit around trying to remind ourselves of something God did 2000 years ago in Roman-occupied Israel. Nor is it a time for us to wait around until the Lord returns in glory as He promised. No, because between the First Coming of our Lord and the Second Coming of our Lord in glory at the end of time, our Lord comes to us now a third time, a third way, as St Bernard of Clairvaux once wrote in an Advent homily of his. Now, in the time between between when our Lord was born of the Virgin Mary and when He will return as the Lord of Glory, now He comes to us daily. He comes to dwell in our hearts; He comes to transform us by the gift of Himself in the Sacraments. He gives us Himself as our Food and Drink. He desires to be so closely united with us that we don't know where He leaves off and where we begin, and vice versa.

     This is that the Lord wants to give us during this Advent season: an openness to the many ways that He comes to us each and every day. God's one desire is to be one with His holy people. He wants that desire to be the desire of our hearts, as well. That is possible only when we live in the Lord Jesus Christ, in Him in Whom the desire of the human heart and the Divine Heart are made one.

     May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all His holy ones. May it be so. Amen.