1 Jn 2:12-17 / Lk 2:36-40
“Carnal allurements, enticements for the eye, the life of empty show….” Those words from today’s first reading seem especially cogent as we stand in the wake of Christmas, awash in bills and overdosed on the shopping mall culture with its urgent pressures to buy and consume. There comes to mind the familiar line of W. C. Fields in reference to a town he scorned: “There is no there there.”
So what and where is the “there” in us? What are we at the core? Is there anything more substantial than what we can get from the culture of the mall? There comes a point at which we need to decide quite consciously and deliberately to construct a life that has some weight and fiber to it.
We do that on a variety of levels, beginning with our relation with the Lord, which needs to go well beyond the surface if it’s to mean anything at all. That God relationship will in turn give us the foundations upon which to build friendships that last, friendships that flower into service and the sharing of life.
Don’t settle for emptiness. God wants us to be filled full. That’s why He sent His only Son to be our brother and to show each of us how to build a life that is a life.
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