God became a worm for You
Friends in Christ, today Our Lord uses the example of children playing in the market place to show how fickle and ungrateful the world is. “To what shall I compare this generation, he said. It is like children who play in the marketplace.
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At the time of Christ, there was a game where the children were supposed to dance or cry or act out something when flutes were played. If a sad song was played, they were supposed to cry; if the flute switched to happy, they were supposed to dance; whatever the song told them to do.
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The world is this way with religion; it wants to manipulate and distort religion to it’s own ideology. It wants religion to dance according to it’s tune. This secular spirit even tries to manipulate the wonder of Christmas, distort it into anything except what it is: God become man, to save his people. God has become a baby, in order to save us. This is astounding, or it SHOULD be astounding.
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But the world has turned it all into shopping and Santa and snowmen and parties – anything, except Christ. There is no gratitude to God for what he has done for us.
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St. Alphonsus says, who could believe that a God, for love of a worm such as ourselves – that a God would become a worm like us, to save us? Suppose that walking along you accidently step on a worm and crush it, and then someone says: ‘if you wish to restore that worm to life, you yourself must become a worm, and then shed your blood for it; we would say, ‘what does it matter to me whether that worm lives or dies if I have to purchase its life with my own death? We would say this especially if the worm were ungrateful.
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But this is what Christ has done for us, we vile and lowly worms. Really, for us poor creatures, what difference should it make to God whether we are forever dead in hell or not? Yet God has such a love for us, that to save us from eternal death, he has become a worm like us, and poured out his blood to the last drop. As scripture says, He has loved us, and washed away our sins in his own blood.
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In these two weeks remaining of Advent, let us be full of gratitude to Christ the Lord, for all he has done for us.
