My dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Today, we celebrate the fourth Sunday of Advent. Today's Gospel invites us to concentrate on the figure of Mother Mary.

Happy New Year! And, with the New Year we are blessed with three occasions for this day. First, we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary as Mother of God. Second, we also celebrate the Octave of Christmas and lastly, we celebrate the beginning of the New Year.

There was a story of a man who was deeply devoted to St Joseph and when he died he was at the gates of heaven and being interviewed by St Peter. St Peter, after assessing the record of this man declined him entry to heaven straightaway, but the man argued that he was a St Joseph devotee.

I’m unashamed to say that I’m a “Mama’s Boy”. Whenever I needed something and I couldn’t get it from my dad, I always turned to my mum and without a doubt my dad would give in.

I feel squeamish when I see those paintings of Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, which depict this trio as the ideal family!  In reality, no one in the Middle East, either now or 2000 years ago, would consider a mother+father+child as a family unit.

The account in Luke’s gospel of Mary going to visit her cousin Elizabeth tells us that Our Lady “arose and went with haste” to share the joy she carried in her heart and in her womb, reflected Pope Francis in last Sunday’s Angelus address.

“She arose and went. In the last stretch of the journey of Advent, let us be guided by these two verbs. To arise and to go in haste: these are the two movements that Mary made and that she invites us also to make as Christmas approaches.”

A Christmas quip goes: “Don’t get so preoccupied in what the world has to sell that you miss what God has to give”.

As a child in our parish school I can remember how every time our parish priest would visit us just before Christmas he would come with a hand full of Holy Cards. 

As I write this message, Sydney has been placed into another ‘COVID lockdown’. The timing, just days out from Christmas has been a blow for many as interstate family Christmas celebrations have to be cancelled and many people face the prospect of celebrating alone.

Despite these challenges, it is my humble prayer that the celebration of Christmas lifts our hearts above present trials and difficulties as we recall the angelic proclamation: “To you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, who is Christ, the Lord.”

The movie, “To be or not to be” is a comedy film by Mel Brooks which is about a group of stage actors who are trying to escape from the Nazis in the newly occupied Poland in 1939. In one scene, Frederick Bronski, played by Mel Brooks, is asked to act like a Nazi Colonel in order to fool a Polish spy for the Nazis.