Dear Oxygen readers,
The Core Team wishes one and all a blessed, peaceful and joyous Christmas filled with God’s graces and love. May He continue to light out paths and guide us on our journeys as we come to know Him more.
Christmas Day — Midnight Mass
Isa 9:1-7
Tit 2:11-14
Lk 2:1-14
…and taught us that what we have to do is to give up everything that does not lead to God, and all our wordly ambitions…
The end of the year often marks a time of reflection for all of us. There are yearly performance reviews and even department get-togethers to identify what went right in the past year and how we can continue to improve in the next. Some people might even consider for us to give up certain ways of doing things if it helps the team to move forward. St Paul in the Second Reading of today provides us with a similar perspective, but Christ-centred, to put aside “all our worldly ambitions” which is an appropriate theme for us to begin this season of Christmas.
There is often the desire to achieve progress in the material aspects of life and the world often rewards us for these actions. However, these actions may appear to be rewarding at the first instance, but eventually it could lead to a sort of “emptiness” in the heart; almost as if the pursuit of such goals does not satisfy our needs. Such a feeling can only be satisfied with Jesus in our hearts. This means that we need to remove all desires which prevent us from becoming closer to Jesus and instead, replace them with the Christ child. Jesus becomes the light that Prophet Isaiah shares in the First Reading, which brings us out of the darkness of the world into the light of His love. The desire to pursue the things which are fleeting are replaced by the eternal love of God and our response to this love.
This will not be an easy journey, because our hearts may be filled up with ambition, vainglory, pride and other desires and sins which take us away from focusing on Jesus. Just as “there was no room for them at the inn,” our hearts also do not have the space for Jesus to come inside. What then can we do to allow Jesus into our hearts? I believe it starts with what the angel said, “Do not be afraid.” Perhaps our pursuit of the ways of the world stems from various unhealed emotions e.g. fear, loneliness. This is not an easy journey, but one which requires effort and time for us to work on through a combination of spiritual direction, professional mental health experts and deep prayer life.
As we enter into the season of Christmas today, let us ask the child Jesus to illumniate the areas of darkness in our lives that we have been so scared to offer to Him, and to allow Him to heal us of our wounds and to continue to walk towards His love.
(Today’s OXYGEN by Nicholas Chia)
Prayer: Jesus, enter into our hearts and dispel all the darkness which prevent us from knowing you. We give you thanks for all the blessings you have given in our lives, Amen.
Thanksgiving: We give thanks for all who love us in spite of our failings.
OXYGEN 
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