The Stripping Begins: From Christmas to Ordinary Time and Looking Forward to Lent

I always decorate the house for Christmas over weeks, not days. The stripping as the season nears the end also takes time. My first action this week was to gather up all the displayed Christmas cards, put a few of my favorites in a card album, and add the rest to my craft bin.

 Today I'm returning the dining room table to ordinary time. I love my Christmas placemats, but the twelve days they depict ended with Epiphany, so they are washed off and ready to go back in the Christmas drawer until next year. The fancy Christmas balls never go on the tree because of all the pins that tend to fall out. They add to the beauty of the table, but it's time to collect all the pins and bangles they've dropped, put them back on, and gently wrap and return them to their home in the tin until next year. The rich looking table cloth will come off next. I made it from a bolt of material a friend gave me after she had a chair reupholstered. I will spot clean it unless it needs a trip to the dry cleaners. And then the plain wood of the table will once again be relatively bare. All of this takes on a metaphorical meaning for me. The return to relative bareness reminds me that we should strip and bare our souls every time we enter the confessional.

The hallway may be the next target, but the days are so gloomy, I still need its cheery welcome whenever I go up or down the stairs. There are other things that I can remove first like the bells on the closet doors and the wreaths. The last two things to come down will be the tree and the creche. 

There is something symbolic to me about stripping. While I was working, I thought of a bride on her wedding day or Queen Esther as she prepared to approach the king uninvited, or Judith who arrayed herself in finery before going to save the Israelites from Holofernes and the Assyrian army. There is a time and place for the elevation of beauty. But there is also a time for stripping, for changing our finery into penitential garb and trading the feast for the fast.

Wednesday is adoration day for me and Larry. I want to reflect this afternoon on what I need to strip from my life to be more pleasing to God. What sins and faults still have a firm hold on me and need to be ruthlessly attacked? I trust God will tell me. And there are always the indications from daily life: the rebuke that rankles because it injures my pride, the procrastination that points to my laziness, the whining over the smallest suffering. 

Change me, Lord, like the potter working the clay molds and shapes it. Speak to me like you did to the prophet Jeremiah and make me a useful vessel that I might be filled with the water of grace and pour it out on those who touch my life. 

Cannot I do with you as this potter, saith the Lord? behold as clay is in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7,,,,let every man of you return from his evil way, and make ye your ways and your doings good. [Jeremiah 18]

Come, Lord Jesus! As You were stripped on calvary, strip me of my sins and faults and make me a new creation, one worthy to be used for Your purpose.

O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine.