In the hustle and bustle of Christmas a pivotal and timely work to consider is Josef Pieper’s “Leisure: The Basis of Culture.” Pieper argues that the key to the moral and spiritual crisis of modern society consists in the refusal to receive and accept a gift. He asks the question, most appropriate to ask at Christmas: Have we lost the ability to receive gifts? Or to put it another way: Do we think that everything we receive is acquired, earned or achieved?
Subconsciously, what we describe as a “gift” during this season is not gift in the proper sense of the term in relation to God. Case in point: we can ask the following question: if I give Michael a gift, but I do not give a gift to every other child, is that fair? We may be tempted to respond: “No!” But remember, a gift is something unearned and hence does not concern fairness. Likewise, family and friends say around this time of year: I “need” to get something for so and so; I “expect” to get presents from my parents, I “deserve/want” this for Christmas, and so on. When we go out shopping for Christmas, there is the “expectation” that presents will be under the tree. Ironically at Christmas it is so easy to forget the true meaning of “gift.”
All of this points to a more serious spiritual crisis: that we are unable to receive the great gift of salvation which God offers to us. The gift of salvation is something entirely unearned and undeserved. Understood as such, it leads to gratitude, an essential part of spiritual life. Having received salvation as a gift, we are then able to give and be a conduit of that salvation to others. Worship, and particularly the Mass, where we receive the incarnate Christ who came at Christmas, is the source and summit of this salvation. When we are bored at Mass it signals our inability to be at rest and see the Mass as gift rather than as entertainment. How we give ourselves to others, in our workplaces and in our families, is based first on what we receive. You can’t give what you don’t receive. And our salvation/rescue can only be received.
Receptivity concerns not only objects and things, but also concepts, ideas, and values. The person who cannot receive is someone who determines for himself or herself what is true. Truth itself is no longer received from without, but produced from within. In such a mindset, God’s offer of salvation is often ignored or seen as unimportant.
In reality, everything we have—our talents, our ideas, our time, our families, our workplaces, our lives—all of these things are gifts to us from our Creator God. In giving gifts to each other this Christmas, we can remember the greatest gift of our salvation from God.
