Obey the Church

It seems like the holiday season is one of the most difficult times to follow the life of the Church. Around every turn our society is urging us to turn away from following the life of the Church in favor of secular parties and materialism. With the burden of Christmas shopping, laying out decorations, attending holiday parties at work or in the neighborhood, most people are just happy Christmas is over, once it finally arrives. Attending Divine Liturgy is nothing more than an obligatory punctuation mark to an over-scheduled, over-hyped and over-worked season. An all the while the Church expects us to prepare for Christmas with fasting, prayer, reading the Scriptures, helping the poor, going for Holy Confession. We have a choice. We can either obey the Church, with her two thousand year history of experience and grace, or we can obey the society and look at the expectations of the Church with ridicule. The choice is yours.