Adapted from Talks for Children
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"Look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand." St. Luke, 21:28
Did any of you boys ever play cops and robbera, or cowboys and Indiana, or train or fireman? When I was a boy I liked to play train, and make believe I was an engineer or conductor. Did any of you girls ever play house, or nurse, or teacher? I just know you did. It's lots of fun.
"Let's play" you boys and girls are always saying. Let's play house; let's play circus; let's play train; let's play store. You make believe you are the daddy and mamma in a big house; you make believe you are the clown or the strong man or the acrobat in a circus; you make believe you are the grocer and some other boy or girl is the customer.
I've seen some of you scooting down the street in your wagon or on your bike, playing truck and going, "Chug, chug." I've seen some of you tooting along like a train. Sometimes you play soldier; other times you play doctor and nurse; then you play policeman and fireman and cowboy. Why some boys and girls even play church and Mass.
Really you are not a policeman or a doctor or an engineer. You know that. But you make believe you are. And it's lots of fun making believe.
But, will you believe it - we priests also make believe. Yes, we do, and right here in church, too. Oh, yes, we know it is wrong to play in church but this is a kind of game Mother Church wants us to play.
Let me explain. Usually Mother Church is very solemn and very serious. She knows that God is great and she wants us to remember that God is great. That makes us serious.
But today, the first Sunday of Advent, Mother Church says to all of us, "Let's play." What game does Mother Church want us to play? Not baseball or jacks or hide-and-go-seek or policeman or anything like that. It is a much better game, and much more fun.
Let's play that Jesus never was born. Let's play that we are living thousands and thousands of years before Jesus was born at Bethlehem. Let's make believe that there never was a Christmas before, and that we are waiting for the first Christmas, we are waiting for Jesus to come into the world. It's a great game.
Sure, we know that Jesus was born almost 2000 thousand years ago, but we are going to pray and act and live as if He had not yet been born. We are starting our game today, just four weeks before Christmas. Each of these four weeks will be like a thousand years before the coming of Christ. We priests are wearing purple vestments to show the sadness and the sorrow of those hundreds of years of waiting. We make believe that we are the chosen people of God, and really we are, like the Jews of old, who prayed and did penance and cried out for Christ to some.
Just imagine, just make believe, just play that you were a boy or girl living long before Christ came to us as a little Baby. How you would have longed to see Him. How you would have longed to touch Him, and hold Him. How you would have longed to hear Him. How empty and sad life must have been when people had not yet seen the Savior.
That is the "game" Mother Church wants us to play during Advent. Advent means coming, the coming of Christ. Advent means the four weeks just before Christmas when we act as if Jesus had not yet come. We long for Him, we pray for Him, we do penance for Him, we get ready for Him.
"Come, come," the Church cries out to Jesus. "Come to us as our Lord and Savior. Come to save us and redeem us. Come to show us how to live. Come to make us love Thee."
But the best thing about our Advent game, boys and girls, is that it will come true. When you play doctor or engineer or priest, it does not always happen that you grow up and become a doctor or an engineer or a priest. But when you play Advent, when you make believe that Jesus is coming, it really does come true, it really does happen. Christ will really come on Christmas day.
More than at any other time we try to be good just before Christmas. Your mother has perhaps told you that Santa Claus will not come if you are bad. Jesus will not come either, if you are bad. And if Jesus does not come, neither will Santa Claus come.
Let's play, then, boys and girls, that we are waiting for Jesus. Let's play that He never had come to this earth and that we are getting ready for His coming now. Let's pray and study and obey and go to Holy Communion and Holy Mass and stop in church for a visit - just as if we wanted Jesus to come to each one of us. Then He will really come to each one of you. Amen.
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Adapted from Talks for Children
by Fr. Arthur Tonne, OFM (© 1948)
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