Speaking about the spirit of generosity that comes with Advent as we prepare Christmas gifts for those to whom we want to show our love and appreciation, Bishop Hughes observes, “Our heart opens up, and our goal is to take care of somebody else, and something in that gives us something that we weren’t expecting – an incredible sense of love and peace and abundance and a knowledge that we are in the midst of God’s world doing what God wants us to do, that we are giving what God has to give, that we are giving God’s love, not just our own love, that it’s fueled by God in the first place.” (Time: 4:44.)
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. It is the first week of Advent, that time of joyful expectation, where we start preparing ourselves to celebrate Christmas. And we think about Christ coming incarnating, fully human, fully divine, and we think about Christ coming back again. We don’t know when, but we know that at some point, Jesus will come back to this world again and usher in a completely new age. Imagine that, where everyone has a place, there is no in or out, where everyone is beloved, that we are waiting for that – ultimately, that is what Advent is.
Advent is also a time of incredible generosity. We spend ourselves, spend time preparing for Christmas, and part of preparing for Christmas is getting gifts, gifts for the people that we love and the people we work with, people that we admire, people that work for us. We want to let them know that we love them, that we appreciate them, and there’s a part of us that wants to be able to give them some measure of joy and delight, and so we pick the gift that will do exactly that. We’re so focused on this that as Advent began just a couple of days before, was Black Friday, the day after was Cyber Monday – all of this happening right around the first Sunday of Advent. Those two days, the biggest shopping days, the biggest revenue days in the retail business in the United States, yielded $24.1 billion in sales. That’s a whole lot of shopping.
Now, I don’t think all of those are Christmas presents. I do believe that some people were waiting to buy things that they knew were going to be priced just right at this time of year, so they waited all year to save that extra money. But part of this really, truly, is about shopping for those that we love and care about and that we want to say thank you to, and that comes from this incredible sense of generosity that we feel when we start thinking about Jesus coming in the first place, or Jesus coming again, we get a little piece of his generosity that lives in us, that incredible giving that Jesus gave. We can’t help but want to give to other people. So many of our churches will be giving away special packets of food so people can prepare Christmas in their own home. Many of our churches will be giving away presents for households where people can’t afford Christmas presents. We want to make sure that the people around us get a chance to celebrate the way we get to celebrate.
I want to encourage us to remember, live fully into it right now and remember the spirit of generosity that comes to us in Advent, and comes to us as we prepare for Christmas, and to keep that spirit of generosity. Pay attention to what happens to you when you’re shopping for someone that you love. Pay attention to what happens when you give that gift to someone, whether it’s a person that is in your family or a person that needs the extra help in order to have a gift for their child under their tree because they couldn’t afford it. Pay attention to the incredible feeling of fulfillment, of love, of delight that comes over us when we delight someone else.
It’s a strange thing with generosity. Our heart opens up, and our goal is to take care of somebody else, and something in that gives us something that we weren’t expecting – an incredible sense of love and peace and abundance and a knowledge that we are in the midst of God’s world doing what God wants us to do, that we are giving what God has to give, that we are giving God’s love, not just our own love, that it’s fueled by God in the first place.
This, this gift of generosity that we share with so many people is also a gift to us. It’s a gift to each of us individually. It’s a gift that we give away, and it’s a gift that we receive, and it’s a gift that is meant to continue with us long past our celebrations of Advent and Christmas. Pay attention to it in these weeks, so that you can remember exactly what it is and do more of the same in January and February and March and April, May and June and all throughout the year. Generosity. It is a gift from God.
