Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Advent

  • Saturday of the Third Week of Advent: O Wisdom

    Saturday of the Third Week of Advent: O Wisdom

    I know that list of names can be daunting to process.  It might be hard to figure out the reason we even proclaim it.  But I love it!  It always strikes me that this list of characters, which is basically the human family tree of our Lord, is so much like any of our families’ history.  Forty-two generations of the pilgrim people Israel led by people of greatness, and, well, people of something else.  Some of them were heroic like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah and to some extent David and Solomon.  But some of them were pretty wicked, especially Manasseh, whose wickedness in shedding innocent blood incurred God’s wrath such that he allowed the Babylonian captivity that took place during Jeconiah’s reign.  So we have forty-two generations of saints and sinners, great men and flawed men, all leading up to the Incarnation of Christ, who was the only remedy to the cycle of sin that spiraled all through the story.

    Today we begin the more intense period of Advent that extends from December 17th through the morning of Christmas Eve. During this time, the Liturgy leads us to yearn all the more longingly for the presence of Christ.  Just as forty-two generations of a mix of wisdom and foolishness could only be remedied by the presence of Christ, so the foolishness of our time calls for that same remedy.

    And we don’t have to do all that much imagining to see the foolishness of our own time, do we?  All we need to do is turn on the news and see the sad folly of those we have elected.  Or we can log into social media and see the antics of people famous for being famous, or read hateful rants by internet trolls.  We can also bring to mind our own foolishness, the sin in our lives.  We too need the coming of Christ to put an end to our foolishness.

    During these last days of Advent, we pray the “O Antiphons,” from which we derive the verses in the Advent Hymn, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”  The verses are also used during Evening Prayer.  Today’s is “O Wisdom,” and the verse from Evening Prayer is “O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care: Come and show your people the way to salvation.”  We trust the governance of God, the Creator of creation, to satisfy our longing for wisdom with the presence of the Incarnate Christ.

    Come, Lord Jesus and bring us peace. Come, Lord Jesus and put an end to the world’s foolishness. Come, Lord Jesus and bring us your Wisdom. Come quickly and do not delay.

  • The Third Sunday of Advent

    The Third Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.
    Indeed, the Lord is near.

    That quote, from the fourth chapter of Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians, is also the proper entrance antiphon for today’s Mass of the Third Sunday of Advent.  That focus on joy and the nearness of the Lord is the reason for the rose colored vestments and candle that are emblematic of this day of the Church year.  We are reminded that, even in this semi-penitential season of waiting and preparation, there is joy because the object of our hope is arriving soon; our Lord is near and nothing will stop his entrance into our history, into our world, into our lives.

    And that, I think, is very welcome news.  Into a world that has historically and often been marked by sadness, our Lord comes with his Divinity to take on our humanity, and raise it up to glory with him.  Our God who, as the Psalmist says, keeps faith forever, has turned to us in our need and become one of us, giving us a completely new life, where sin and death and disease have no power over us.  Our God remembers his promises: he “gives food to the hungry.  The LORD sets captives free.  The LORD gives sight to the blind; the LORD raises up those who were bowed down.  The LORD loves the just; the LORD protects strangers.”  Our God is not a god who sets events in motion and then steps back to see them all flounder in desperation, but instead, he is a God that cares for every one of us as if we were the only one on earth.  Our God would have come to save us even if we were the only one who needed saving.  Let that sink in for a minute: if we were the only lost one, God would come looking for us!  Indeed we ought to rejoice!

    We know our need for a Savior, for sure.  We could mention all the strife in our world that certainly causes us anxiety, as well as our own personal sadness: sin, family troubles, illness, death of loved ones, employment difficulties, and so much more.  We often get caught up in all that this world brings us, and we forget that we are meant for so much more, that our God created us for reasonable happiness in this world and joy forever with him in the next.

    But as much as we know our need for joy, it’s so difficult for us to truly experience it.  We look for it in all sorts of ways: social media, binge watching television, overindulging in food and drink, and so much more.  When we can’t find joy we get depressed and think we’ve been abandoned by God.  But, friends, joy isn’t a feeling, it’s a decision.  Our entrance antiphon doesn’t tell us to feel joyful, but to be joyful: rejoice! 

    So how do we do that?  Well, as I said, joy is largely a decision.  We rejoice because the Lord is near.  He is with us in our sadness, he is with us in our joy, indeed he brings the joy of his loving presence to all that we are going through.  He does not abandon us in our anxieties but instead listens as we pray to him.  Our Lord is as near to us as our next quiet moment, our next embrace of someone we love, our next act of kindness. In a very real way, joy comes from bringing joy to others, or even just spending time with them.

    I had a glimpse of this the day before Thanksgiving this year.  We were having my aunts and uncles over to the house for the big feast, and I was doing a bunch of cooking.  My Aunt Marilyn volunteered to come over and help me get ready, and Mom was sitting in her wheelchair at the table, peeling potatoes.  As I stood there working with them, I was just taken by the joy of being with them.  I’ll always remember that.

    In these later days of Advent, people of faith light a candle of hope and rejoice in the light of Christ!  People of faith can rejoice because even in times of sadness and despair, the presence of our God is palpable, realized in stories of heroism and seen in acts of charity and grace in good times and in bad.

    And so today we rejoice because our Lord is near.  We light that third, rose-colored candle on our Advent wreath.  We look forward to celebrating the Incarnation, perhaps the greatest and best of the mysteries of faith.  That God himself, who is higher than the heavens and greater than all the stars of the universe, would humble himself to be born among us, robing himself with our frail flesh, in order to save us from our sins and make his home among us for all eternity – that is a mystery so great it cannot fail to cause us to rejoice!  Indeed that very presence of God gives hope even in the worst of times – THE LORD IS NEAR!

    These final days of Advent call us to prepare more intensely for the Lord’s birth.  They call us to clamor for his Incarnation, waiting with hope and expectation in a dark and scary world.  These days call us to be people of hope, courageously rejoicing that the Lord is near!  Come, Lord Jesus!  Come quickly and do not delay!

    In our silent time after the homily today, I invite you to pray with me.  I want you to picture Jesus coming to you, approaching you, and extending his hand to you.  He wants to give you a message of hope and encouragement.  He wants to tell you that you are important to him, that he came to save you.  What is he saying to you as he approaches? What is hopeless in you right now that he offers to sustain you through?  What is he saying to you on this day of rejoicing?

  • The Second Sunday of Advent

    The Second Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever had the feeling hat things were just not right? I don’t mean not right like you got the wrong order at Portillo’s, or your postal delivery person gave you the neighbor’s mail. I mean, really, really not right, in a fundamental sense, like the world was off its axis in some way. I think these days we’ve gotten a sense of that after having been through a particularly contentious election season, still coming out of the pandemic, the hateful rhetoric directed toward those who revere life from conception through natural death, and in view of the violence in our cities and all around the world. It seems in some way that we are more adrift than ever.

    And perhaps even a bit closer to home, we could all probably think of times in our lives when things just haven’t been right: times of transition, times dealing with the illness of a loved one, or family difficulty, times when we have been looking for new work or trying to discern a path in life. These are unsettling times that we all have to experience every now and then.

    So in view of the craziness in our world, and the sadness that sometimes happens in our own life, it’s easy to get to feeling like things are just not right.

    And God knows it isn’t right. The whole Old Testament is filled with God’s lament of how things went wrong, and his attempts to bring it back. The fourth Eucharistic Prayer sums it up by saying to God, “Again and again you offered a covenant to man, and through the prophets taught him to hope for salvation.” But, as we well know from our studies of the Scriptures and its proclamation in the Liturgy, again and again humankind turned away from the covenant and away from the God of our salvation. Ever since the fall, things just haven’t been right.

    So what is it going to take for all of this to turn around? What is going to get things whipped back into shape? Well, frankly, nothing ever changes if nothing ever changes. Things don’t suddenly become right by continuing to do the wrong thing. I really think the only way things will ever change is by starting over. And that’s what I believe God is doing, in our time, throughout all time, and particularly in this Advent time.

    Today’s first reading speaks of this new creation: a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse. It’s quite a visual: The bud that blossoms from God’s new creation is something completely different, something incredibly wonderful, something that would never be possible in the old order: “The wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.” None of those species would ever get along in the old creation, of course; none of them would ever have been safe. But in the new creation, all of them will know the Lord, and that knowledge will give them new life, a new direction, new hope and a new salvation.

    In today’s gospel reading, Saint John the Baptist is front and center.  He is the forerunner, paving the way for the coming Savior, his cousin, by calling people to repent and by baptizing them for the forgiveness of sins.  In the midst of that, he proclaims the coming of Christ who will do things in a new way: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” The all-consuming fire of the Holy Spirit will burn away all that is not right and heat up all that has been frozen in listless despair for far too long. That fire will force a division between what is old and just not right, and what is of the new creation: “He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  John’s message is one of complete annihilation of the old order so that a new, beautiful creation could take root.

    Now, all of these are nice words, and the idea of a new creation is one for which I think we all inwardly yearn. But what does it really mean? What does it look like? How will we know that we are moving toward new creation and new life? I think Saint Paul gives us a hint in the second reading today: “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to think in harmony with one another, in keeping with Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are to be people who think and act in harmony with one another and with Christ. We have to be people of unity.

    Which is, as most things are, so much easier to say than to actually do. For one thing, if we are really to be created anew, that means that some of the old stuff has to die: the death chambers have to be closed, the chaff has to be burnt up in the fire. Our old, stinkin’ attitudes have to be abandoned: resentments have to be put aside, rivalries have to be ended, forgiveness has to be offered and accepted, jealousies have to be thrown away. All of that festering, disease-ridden thinking has to be put to death if we are ever to experience new life.  It has to be annihilated so that the new creation can take root.

    We have to be a people marked by new attitudes, new grace, new love. We have to strive for peace and justice – real peace and real justice available to everyone God has created. We have to be a community who worships God not just here in Church, but also out there in our daily lives: a community that insists on integrity, a community that genuinely cares for those who are sick, in need, or lost, regardless of who they are, what they look like, or how it is they got lost. We have to be a people who worship God first every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, who confess our sins with hope of God’s mercy, who give priority to prayer in the midst of our crazy lives.

    Most of all, we have to be a people who are open to being re-created. If we are not willing to put to death our old stinkin’ selves and embrace new attitudes and ways of living, if we are not in fact willing to take up our crosses and follow Christ, then we will never annihilate the old mess so that the new creation can take root. We have to cooperate with God’s new creation, we have to be eager to let God do something new. We have to be willing to live out of boxes for a while, so that the transition can take place. We have to have unwavering hope that giving ourselves to God’s re-creation will be worth it, if not immediately, then certainly in the long run. We have to truly believe our Psalmist’s song: “Justice will flower in his days, and profound peace, till the moon be no more.”

  • The First Sunday of Advent

    The First Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    I don’t know about you, but I always find this weekend after Thanksgiving to be a little strange.  Here is a weekend when we can barely clear the plates at the Thanksgiving dinner table before we have to make room for Christmas.  And I’m not talking about the religious observance of the Incarnation of our Lord, but rather all the secular trappings of that holy day.  It begins about Halloween, or maybe a little earlier, when you start to see the stores slowly make room for the Christmas stuff.  They sneak in some “holiday” signs here and there, and start to weave the garland into the end of the aisles, just past the Halloween costumes.  On Thanksgiving day, you get about a thousand emails from every store or business from whom you’ve ever purchased anything.

    And then there’s Black Friday itself, which now starts bright and early on Thursday morning – Thursday, you know, Thanksgiving Day.  We then get to be treated to Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.  What a commercial mess this has all become, what a sad commentary on what makes our society tick.  We barely have time to gather up the pumpkins and corn stalks and autumn leaves before we have to set out the Christmas stockings and brightly-lit trees and candy canes.

    Now, I will say this.  There are times in my life, this year included, when the joy of Christmas is definitely welcome, and I’ll celebrate it as long as I possibly can.  So I’ve been listening to Christmas music, and have watched more than my share of Hallmark Christmas movies with Mom over the past several weeks.  I like to celebrate Christmas all the way until February 2nd, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So I’m in it too.

    But I find that this rampant consumerism is really just part of the ambient noise of our society.  From television to social media to email spam to Christmas jingles on the store loud-speakers, the noise never seems to stop.  Whether it’s political bantering and bureaucratic infighting, or the latest pop culture scandal, it seems like there’s always a lot of noise going on.  And we could add to that our own noise: sin in our lives, unaddressed family strife, and so much more.  It’s no wonder we often have the television on as background noise, we seem to clamor for it.

    But all that noise comes at the peril of our spiritual lives.  The noise fills up the space that God wants to use to speak words of encouragement, solace, or challenge.  When we are constantly listening to other things, we can’t hear the voice of God who wants to be part of our lives, who wants to give us himself.

    The emotions we feel at this time of year are palpable and often conflicted.  The Church knows this, and in Her great wisdom, gives us the season of Advent every year.  It’s a season that recognizes that there is this hole in our hearts that needs to be filled up with something, and can be filled up if we will just be quiet and make space.  That something isn’t going to be an item you can pick up on Black Friday, or a trite holiday jingle, or even a peppermint mocha latte.  Those things can’t possibly fill up our personal sadness, or the lack of peace in the world, or the cynicism and apathy that plague our world and confront us day after day.

    And so in our readings today, rather boldly, the Church is telling us to cut out all of this nonsense and get serious about our eternity.  Because if we’re only living from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, we are going to be left behind with our cheap electronics and gaudy trinkets, and have none of the real riches of the Kingdom of God.

    And so our first reading, from the second chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, has us taking a step back to look at our lives: “Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.”  We need to go a little higher and look down on what we’ve become in order to see how we fit into the bigger picture.  Do we see ourselves as concerned about peace and justice in the world, looking out for the needs of the needy and the marginalized, blanketing our world in holiness and calling it to become bright and beautiful as it walks in the light of the Lord?

    Or do we take part in those deeds of darkness that Saint Paul writes about in his letter to the Romans today?  Do we participate in these dark deeds to the point of giving scandal to those who carefully watch the activities of people of faith?  If we do, then Saint Paul clearly commands us to get our act together: “Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.  Let us conduct ourselves properly…”

    So this Advent season is clearly about something more than hanging up pretty decorations for a birthday party.  It’s about something more than perpetuating rampant consumerism and secularism.  And it’s definitely about more than participating in the same old noise we encounter all the time.  The stakes are too high for that.  Because while we are distracted by all of that ambient noise, we are in danger of missing the joy for which we were created.  Just as in the days of Noah, as Jesus points out in our Gospel today, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, so it will be in the coming Day of the Lord.  Just as those oblivious ones were surprised by the flood, we too are in danger of being surprised by the second coming.  God forbid that two men are hanging lights on the house when one is taken and the other is left.  Or that two women are getting some crazy deals at Kohls and one is taken and the other is left.  Or that two people are having a Twitter feud and one is taken and another is left.  We have to be prepared, because at an hour we do not expect, our Lord will certainly return.

    Don’t get me wrong: the return of our Lord is not something to be feared.  Indeed, we eagerly await that coming in these Advent days.  I’m just saying that if we aren’t attentive to our spiritual lives, if we don’t create a space for silence and reflection, if we aren’t zealous about living the Gospel, if we aren’t intentional about making time for worship and deepening our relationship with the Lord, then we are going to miss out on something pretty wonderful.  And that pretty wonderful thing isn’t in the far-off, distant future.  If we quiet ourselves and open our eyes, He’s right in front of us, walking with us, calling us to become more than we are, to become the glory for which we were created.  We have to stay awake, we have to turn off the noise, we have to live in the Lord’s daylight and not prefer the world’s darkness.  We have to eagerly expect our Lord’s birth into our hearts and souls, right here and now, and not in some distant day.

    Or we’ll miss it.  God forbid, we’ll miss it.

    So I am going to give you some quiet time right now, and also after Communion.  I want to give you an opportunity to pray in that silence. 

    So, in these moments of silence, I invite you to take a moment to call to mind something positive you’ve been meaning to do.  Maybe it’s a practice of prayer, or getting up on time, or exercising regularly, or reaching out to a friend or family member you haven’t talked to in a while.  If you’re like me, you could come up with a whole list of those things, but I want you to call to mind the one that is most tugging on your heart right now.  In these moments of silence, I invite you to talk to Jesus about that thing.  Offer it to him, and ask him for the grace to accomplish it, or at least begin it, in these Advent days.  And then listen for his support of you in that endeavor.

  • Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Radiant Dawn

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Radiant Dawn

    Today’s readings

    There’s a little more light today.  As we get toward these last days of Advent, we find ourselves in a time when more light is beginning to shine.  All of the candles on our Advent wreath are lit, and the only thing that can make it brighter is the coming of our God in all his glory, dawning brightly on the earth.

    Today’s “O Antiphon” tells us as much.  Today we hear “O Radiant Dawn,” and the antiphon for Evening prayer is this: “O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.”

    This light is the source of the joy of which Zephaniah the prophet speaks today.  He tells the broken people Israel that God has forgiven their sins, and that he continues to walk among them, which should be cause enough to remove their fear.  That enduring presence among the people Israel, of course, is a foretaste of the enduring presence that we experience in the Incarnation of Christ.

    Mary and Elizabeth celebrate that light in today’s Gospel.  Mary’s greeting of Elizabeth is an act of hospitality, and Elizabeth’s welcome, along with the Baptist’s reaction in his mother’s womb, is an act of faith.  That faith incredibly affected the salvation of the whole world.

    And all of this light continues to shine on our sometimes-dark world.  A world grown dark and cold in sin is visited by its creator, and that world is changed forever.  The darkness can never now be permanent.  Sin and death no longer have the last word for us, because that was never God’s will for us.  We have hope for eternal life because our God eagerly desires us to return to him and be one with him.

    And so we pray, Come, O Radiant Dawn, shatter the darkness that sometimes reigns in our cynical world.  Give us the warmth of your light to warm our hearts grown cold with sin.  Shine on all who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.  Come, Lord Jesus.  Come quickly and do not delay!

  • Fourth Sunday of Advent: O Root of Jesse

    Fourth Sunday of Advent: O Root of Jesse

    For the Simbang Gabi Mass for the Filipino Community
    Today’s Readings

    Hopelessly insignificant.  That’s what they are.  Bethlehem-Ephratha; the tiniest region of a tiny nation – almost too small to be among the clans of Judah.  Elizabeth: an old, childless woman, whose hope of progeny has all but dried up, and whose aged husband left her for days at a time to minister as priest in the temple.  Mary: a young virgin who has not yet known relationship with a man.  Hopelessly insignificant.  And yet, all of these play a major part in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  God can do mighty things when we are humble, when we feel insignificant.

    We are in the closing days of the year.  For so many, this has been a horrible year.  The pandemic and resulting economic downturn has led to so much sadness and disappointment that many have questioned whether they are worthy of God’s attention.  For others, the typical disappointments may have added to the problem:  relationships that have soured or are ending, sin that has gone unconfessed and unforgiven, patterns of addiction that have not been treated, illness that has caused pain and grief and fear, death of a loved one that has left the survivors questioning God’s will.  How insignificant we seem; how hopeless the situation appears for us in these dark Advent days.

    But, in these last days of Advent, the Church gushes forth hope that cannot be contained.  These last days find us praying the “O Antiphons” – antiphons that are sung before and after the Magnificat in Vespers, the Church’s Evening Prayer.  These antiphons call on Christ to come to us under his many beautiful titles. Today’s antiphon is “O Root of Jesse” and it says this: “O Flower of Jesse’s stem, you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you. Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.”  It’s a message of hope to a seemingly-insignificant people!

    I have no idea what that hope is going to look like for you.  And I surely don’t know when it’s going to come.  But as I have prayed about these readings during Advent, I know that is the message that God wants us to take away.  The hope that comes from God is enough to break forth upon the earth and take away darkness, disappointment, sin, death and pain.  It wasn’t just something that happened in tiny little Benjamin-Ephratha two thousand years ago, but instead it is something that absolutely lies in store for all of us who give ourselves over to God’s hope.

    And I don’t mean the kind of false hope that says, “hey, hang in there, things will get better.”  That just doesn’t work when you’ve lost your job, or your house, or a loved one, or even the thought that God cares for you.  I would never tell you that things will get better when your significant other is abusing you, or your family is close to living on the street, or your loved one is dying.  And I know how hard it is to hang in there when your family is overscheduled, and you desperately want to get the kids out the door to be at Church on time, and little Annie was up sick last night, and Jimmy can’t find his left shoe for the fourteenth time in the last two days, and despite your heroic efforts, you walk through the doors of the Church late.   “Hang in there” is a horrible thing to say to someone who’s at the end of their rope.

    And so I think the hope that Jesus brings us and that the Church would have us receive today is a much different hope.  This is a hope that opens the way to freedom for all of us who have become imprisoned by sin and sadness and disappointment.  It is a hope that says that whatever present anxiety we are currently experiencing is not God’s will for us, and that while that anxiety may not magically go away tomorrow, that there is no way our God will let us walk through it alone.  That was true enough for the young virgin in today’s Gospel who had no idea where this pregnancy would take her, but said yes to God’s plan anyway.  Mary’s journey led her through fear and sadness and pain to glory, and the Church courageously believes that her journey is ours too, if we would just say yes to the hope God offers us.

    So today we pray, O Come, O Key of David, come.  Open wide the doors that have held us captive to hopelessness, break down the walls that keep us from accepting you, and free us all from sin and death.  Come, Lord Jesus, come.  Come quickly and do not delay!

  • Friday of the Third Week of Advent: O Wisdom

    Friday of the Third Week of Advent: O Wisdom

    Today’s readings

    I can’t believe it but Christmas is only just eight days away now! I know everyone is so busy writing letters to Santa, being good so they don’t get on the “naughty” list, wrapping Christmas presents for their parents, and baking cookies for Father Pat!  But before we do all that, our Church asks us to take a minute and remember what it is that we’re about to celebrate.

    And what we’re about to celebrate is pretty special.  God loved the world so very much that he sent his own Son to live among us and bring us closer to him, and to take upon himself the punishment for all our many sins.  God would rather die than live without us, and so he did.  But death doesn’t have any power over us because Jesus rose from the dead.  And all of this wonderful mystery begins in just eight days, or at least it began on that day, a couple of thousand years ago.

    And we know the story: An angel came to Mary to tell her that she would give birth to a son by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Because she was faithful and full of grace, she said “yes” to God’s plan for her, and because she said “yes,” our world and our lives have been different – better, more hopeful – ever since!  Jesus grew to be a man who was both mighty in his power to save us, and a wise prophet who helped us to learn about God and his kingdom.

    That list in the Gospel reading was quite a list of names, wasn’t it?  I’m not supposed to say anything, but Mr. Hueg said there was going to be a pop quiz on those names before your Christmas party today, so good luck!  It always strikes me that this list of characters, which is basically the human family tree of our Lord, is so much like any of our families’ history.  This is a list of forty-two generations of the nation of the people of Israel led by people of greatness, and, well, people of something else.  Some of them were heroic like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah and to some extent David and Solomon.  But some of them were pretty wicked, especially Manasseh, whose wickedness in shedding innocent blood made God so angry that he allowed the Israelites to be taken into captivity by the Babylonians during the reign of king Jeconiah.  So we have forty-two generations of people, some of whom were saints and some who were sinners, great men and flawed men, all leading up to the Incarnation of Christ, who was the only way to end the cycle of sin that spiraled all through the story.

    Today we begin the more intense period of Advent that extends from December 17th through the morning of Christmas Eve.  During this time, the Church’s Liturgy makes us yearn all the more longingly for the birth of Jesus and his presence in our lives.  Just as forty-two generations of a mix of wisdom and foolishness could only be fixed by the presence of Christ, so the foolishness of our time calls for Jesus too.

    During these last days of Advent, we pray the “O Antiphons.”  We hear those antiphons famously in the song “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”  The verses are also used during Evening Prayer.  Today’s is “O Wisdom,” and the verse from “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is, “O come, O Wisdom from on high, and cheer us by your drawing nigh.  Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadow put to flight…”  We trust God to come near, to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, to satisfy our longing for wisdom, to make sense of all the craziness in the world, with the loving presence of Jesus.

    And so we pray: Come, Lord Jesus and bring us peace.  Come, Lord Jesus and put an end to the world’s foolishness.  Come, Lord Jesus and bring us your Wisdom.  We need you!  Come quickly and do not delay.

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Advent

    Thursday of the Third Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    There’s a parenthetical sentence that comes right at the end of today’s Gospel reading that really ought to give us pause.  Once again, it says this:

    (All the people who listened, including the tax collectors,
    who were baptized with the baptism of John,
    acknowledged the righteousness of God;
    but the Pharisees and scholars of the law,
    who were not baptized by him,
    rejected the plan of God for themselves.)

    That tells us something about John’s baptism and something about God.  The baptism that Saint John the Baptist preached was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  John’s baptism was slightly different than what we have received, in that his baptism was given after a person accepted the need of repentance in their lives.  What it tells us about God is that his mercy calls us to repentance.  Because when we repent, we literally turn around and go back in the right direction: the direction that leads us to him.

    In our first reading, the prophet Isaiah also speaks of the change that God desires to make in the people of Israel, and, actually, us too.  He wants to completely renew them, bringing them back to their first love and making a new marriage covenant with them.  We know that the person who does that is our Lord, the one whose coming we long for in these Advent days.  Of that promise, Isaiah says:

    My love shall never leave you
            nor my covenant of peace be shaken,
            says the LORD, who has mercy on you.

    If we want to know what love and mercy look like, all we need to do is to look at the manger and look at the cross.  Our Lord comes to give us what we need to be renewed in his mercy.  May he come quickly and not delay!  Come, Lord Jesus!

  • The Third Sunday of Advent

    The Third Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Today’s readings and liturgy call us to rejoice.  That’s the reason for the rose-colored vestments and the more joyful tone of today’s readings.  This is called Gaudete Sunday: Gaudete being Latin for “rejoice,” the first word of today’s introit or proper entrance antiphon which says: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.  Indeed the Lord is near.”  The Church takes that antiphon from the words of the second reading today.

    And there is reason to rejoice.  The prophet Zephaniah tells the people Israel that, even though their sins had displeased the LORD to the point that he gave them over to the hands of their enemies, he has relented in his judgment against them and will deliver them from their misfortune.  Their deliverance is so complete that the LORD will even rejoice over them with gladness! 

    In his letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul calls us to rejoice too.  The reason he calls for rejoicing is that “The Lord is near.”  He was referring to Jesus’ return in glory, of course, which they thought would be relatively soon in those days.  While he never saw that in his lifetime, we may.  Or perhaps our children will, or their children.  One thing we definitely know is that the Lord is near.  He does not abandon us in our anxieties but instead listens as we pray to him and make our petitions with thanksgiving.  Our Lord is as near to us as our next quiet moment, our next embrace of someone we love, our next act of kindness.  Rejoice indeed!

    Maybe this call to rejoice rings a little hollow today, based on the continued presence of terror and mass-shootings and civil unrest in our society. And even perhaps a bit closer to home, maybe we ourselves are experiencing the illness of a loved one, a broken relationship, job or financial insecurities, or any other kind of sadness.  The world can be a very bleak place, our lives can be in turmoil, and rejoicing can be the furthest thing from our hearts and minds.  But our faith tells us we can rejoice anyway.  The Psalmist sings today about the kind of hope our world needs right now:

    God indeed is my savior;
        I am confident and unafraid.
    My strength and my courage is the LORD,
        and he has been my savior.

    And it is up to us to bring this kind of hope to a world that has almost become accustomed to horror and shock and terror and sadness.  Sometimes it seems that the world may almost prefer to sit in this kind of darkness, even find some kind of weird comfort in it, but not people of faith.  People of faith instead light a candle of hope and rejoice in the light of Christ!  People of faith can rejoice because even in times of sadness and despair, the presence of our God is palpable, realized in stories of heroism and seen in acts of charity and grace in good times and in bad.

    And so today we rejoice because our Lord is near.  We light that third, rose-colored candle on our Advent wreath.  We look forward to celebrating the Incarnation, perhaps the greatest and best of the mysteries of faith.  That God himself, who is higher than the heavens and greater than all the stars of the universe, would humble himself to be born among us, robing himself with our frail flesh, in order to save us from our sins and make his home among us for all eternity – that is a mystery so great it cannot fail to cause us to rejoice!  Indeed that very presence of God gives hope even in the worst of times – THE LORD IS NEAR!

    These final days of Advent call us to prepare more intensely for the Lord’s birth.  They call us to clamor for his Incarnation, waiting with hope and expectation in a dark and scary world.  These days call us to be people of hope, courageously rejoicing that the Lord is near!  Come, Lord Jesus!  Come quickly and do not delay!

  • Saturday of the Second Week of Advent

    Saturday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    One of my favorite things about the season of Advent is the people we meet along the way.  In the early days of Advent we have celebrated the Immaculate Conception of Mary and we remember St. Juan Diego, St. John of the Cross, St. Lucy and St. Nicholas. We’ve been hearing from Isaiah all along in our first readings, and he has more to say to us still before we hear of his words’ fulfillment on Christmas Day.

    Then there’s the prophet Elijah, about whom we hear in today’s first reading.  Tradition and Scripture tell us that Elijah didn’t die; he was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot on a whirlwind as his successor, Elisha, looked on.  It was expected that one day he would return.  And so ever since, even to this day, the Jewish people have left an empty place at the table for Elijah at every major celebration.

    Jesus makes it clear, however, that Elijah has already returned.  In today’s Gospel reading, we meet Jesus and the disciples coming down the mountain from the Transfiguration.  They have just seen Elijah on the mountaintop along with Jesus and Moses.  And so they ask Jesus, as they make their way down, about the return of Elijah.  When he tells them that Elijah has already returned, but nobody recognized him, they realize that he is speaking of Saint John the Baptist, that other Advent character that we have been privileged to meet.

    And it’s a bit of a foreshadowing.  Just as the people missed Elijah’s return, so they will miss Jesus’ return too.  The Resurrection is a sure sign of God’s love and presence in the world, but how many didn’t believe then, and how many still don’t believe!  For people to come to know that Christ has come and lived and died and risen for us, Isaiah’s voice must still be heard.  John the Baptist did that by crying out in the desert.  Now it’s our turn.