Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. And they were all together on Solomon’s Portico. None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem. Yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women, so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he came by. A great number of people would also gather from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all cured.

–Acts 5:412-16

Reflecting on this reading from Acts, I spent a lot of time wondering what it had to do with the Advent or Christmas seasons. Jesus isn’t even mentioned here – only the apostles, the people who joined the early Church, and the people who received healing through the ministry of these early Christians. But then it occurred to me that perhaps there is a Christmas theme in the reading. It has to do with two presents that we have all received through Jesus and his life on earth, the beginning of which we celebrate at Christmas.

The first of these presents is the gift of the Holy Spirit, which empowers all of us to live our Christian lives and to accomplish things we could never do on our own. Notice that the “signs and wonders” mentioned in the reading were not done by the apostles, they were done through the apostles by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The second present is the gift of the Church, which supports our growth in faith and enables us to accomplish things together that we could never hope to do individually.

Reflecting on these great gifts, we should all consider the idea of “paying it forward,” an expression which describes the beneficiary of a good deed repaying it to others instead of to the original benefactor. We can never repay Jesus for all we have received from Him, so we need to pay it forward by loving Jesus and serving others, as our mission statement says.