While it is relatively easy to prepare our home with beautiful decorations for the feast of Christmas, are we matching those preparations with an equally beautiful spiritual life?
Rabanus Maurus, a holy monk of the 9th century, urges us to prepare for Christmas as if we were to welcome a king into our home for his birthday. His reflection is taken from the Liturgical Year and provides a profound meditation during Advent.
If at all times it behoves us to be adorned with the comeliness of good works, we should be so with an especial care on the day of our Savior's birth. Consider within yourselves, my brethren, what you would do, were a king, or prince, to invite you to come to celebrate his birthday. Your garments would be as new, as elegant, even as magnificent, as you could procure them, for you would think it an insult to him who invited you, were you to appear before him with anything upon you that was torn or poor or unclean.
Prepare your heart for a King
Maurus explains how we should prepare our heart in a similar way, looking to adorn it with virtue.
Show a like solicitude on the occasion of the coming feast, and let your souls beautified with the several ornaments of virtue go forth to their King. He loves the pearls of simplicity and the flowers of chaste sobriety, wear them therefore. Let your consciences be composed in a holy calm now that the solemn feast of Jesus Nativity is so close upon us. Assist at it lovely in your chastity, gorgeous in your charity, beauteous by your almsdeeds, brilliant with justice and humility and above all radiant in the love of God.
Sometimes we need to radically shift our interior view of Christmas in order to treat it as it is, a glorious feast to celebrate Jesus coming into our own personal lives.
Beyond the gifts and decorations, may we prepare our hearts for the King of all kings.
