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Once again we have a special “confluence” of liturgical celebrations, with the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (aka, New Year’s Day) followed immediately by Epiphany (aka, Three Kings Day). There is some additional association with them in my mind, beyond their location in the calendar this year.

Lord, make our families holy—make us rooted in you, in spite of frustrations and disappointments and in our joys and satisfactions. Help us to be holy.

Why did they gather? Why do we gather? If it’s only for “entertainment” of any form, Sunday football is a better option. But if we come to serve and honor our Lord and not be served (the typical term for this is “being fed”), we’re missing the point. The word “liturgy,” after all (from the original Greek) means service. It’s our service of worship and praise to God in Jesus Christ, and our enablement to serve the Lord in our brothers and sisters. Let’s keep things in perspective, please. Let’s re-examine our quality of commitment to the Gospel and Jesus Christ.

Here, then, is the bottom line: we are called to be community in the Spirit for the sake of evangelization, of testifying to the truth of the Gospel; to be active members of the Body of Christ; to be people of the Beatitudes, living witnesses to the reality of the Kingdom. We cannot do this alone! This is where any “me and Jesus” theology fails. We must come together in solidarity in order to be credible. This is why we cannot be satisfied with live-streamed Eucharist and on-line tithing; physical presence is critical because we need to be reminded that we are not alone. Together, we can accomplish things for the Kingdom that we cannot accomplish by ourselves.

And that brings us back to the key word in the older translation of this prayer: “joyful.” We can’t imagine it, but we are confident in its reality. Our Advent preparation for the remembrance of His coming once in Bethlehem is rooted in our expectation (blessed hope, joyful hope) of that day when our Lord will call to us, in the greatest love we can never imagine. “Come ye, blessed of my Father; inherit the Kingdom…”