By Father Casey
A funny thing can happen when you rewatch a movie you loved as a child. Characters and side-stories that were not terribly interesting way back when, or else flew right over your head, suddenly become the thing you notice most.
Take, for example, Home Alone. I was 12 the year Home Alone debuted in theaters, which meant I was the perfect age to absolutely love it. I was the target audience, an adolescent boy more than ready to project myself right onto Kevin McCallister (Macauley Culkin). Grown-ups are obviously such dopes, and if kids were just trusted with cool toys and tools, we would not only get by perfectly fine, we could also gleefully make any and all bad guys pay. I can’t begin to estimate how many booby-traps and Rube Goldberg machines my friends and I were inspired to make after watching that movie.
Thirty-four years later, and it sits totally differently now. Maybe I’ve become the very dope of a grown-up I rolled my eyes at in 1990, but it’s no longer a story about a kid who fends for himself. Now it is quite obviously a story about a desperate parent who has become separated from her child and will stop at absolutely nothing to get back to him and make sure he’s okay.
When I was a kid, the mom played by Catherine O’Hara seemed utterly ridiculous. Now, she’s a pretty good stand-in for God. Home Alone might not make everyone’s list of religious holiday films, but if you ask me, watching Catherine O’Hara’s relentless journey back to her son is pure gospel.
We’re coming up on Christmas. I very much hope you’re making plans to be with us – both this weekend for the Fourth Sunday of Advent and again next week for one of our several Christmas services. The music will be exquisite, the décor will be gorgeous, the prayers will lift our hearts, and the great story of the Incarnation will once again be told. If there’s enough grace leftover, God may even help the preachers find a few words worth saying, too.
Depending on your place in life, it’s a story that can seem utterly ridiculous. A prince in a manger? A messiah born to peasants? A savior without a palace or army? How is any of that good news?
But there comes a day when you realize what it’s all about. Indomitable love will always find a way. Though mistakes may separate us across great distances, there is no length that our God won’t go to return to us and make sure we’re okay. That’s who is lying in the manger – the one who wouldn’t, who couldn’t leave us home alone, and stopped at nothing to be with us forever.
Fr. Casey +