Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Advent

  • Friday of the Second Week of Advent

    Friday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    One of the great obstacles to the spiritual life is when we come to believe that we ourselves have all the answers.  And there is a lot of that going around these days.  When it happens, we may be holding relative truth, even if we wouldn’t say that we do.   Or perhaps we insist on acting according to our opinions, or the opinions of whatever “expert” we have dredged up on the internet, instead of acting on consciences formed by Truth.  You’ve heard it before, when having a conversation about a moral issue.  People might say, “well I think…” whatever, as if that were the gold standard of morality and truth.

    It’s cold comfort to see, in our gospel reading this morning, that we aren’t alone.  Jesus’ generation was much the same.  John the Baptist came across too strict, and Jesus came across like a drunkard and a partier.  But the real problem was that they both proclaimed the truth, and that was inconvenient. The crowds dismissed them both, because both required them to change their lives and their ways of thinking.  If John and Jesus were right, then they were wrong, and that was unsettling.It’s unsettling for us too, but we have the benefit of centuries of Church teaching to help us.  And so we are called to leave behind our own opinions and think with the grace of Truth.  It’s time that we considered that perhaps our own point of view isn’t the be-all and end-all of wisdom.  Advent is about dispersing the darkness with the light of Christ, and the light of his Truth.  The psalmist said it best: “Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.”

  • The Second Sunday of Advent

    The Second Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths!”

    Today’s Gospel reading is very interesting, I think. The beginning of the passage names important people at that particular time in Israel: Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip and Lysanias, and also the high priests: Annas and Caiaphas. Finally it names John the Baptist, who was then beginning to herald the unveiling of God’s plan for salvation.  Luke does all this to say that, while the Word of the Lord came to John, who was pretty obscure, and many thought was crazy, still that Word came at a particular point in history, a time they could remember and observe.  God was getting real in their midst, and John wasn’t so much crazy as he was on fire.

    His message was a message of change.  I have heard it said that no one likes change except for babies with dirty diapers!  So it’s no wonder they labeled John as crazy and made him take his message to the desert instead of the city and the temple precincts.  Better that than actually listening to his message and changing their lives.  But John’s message is clear.  God wanted to burst into their midst, and if they didn’t make changes, they were going to miss it.  It’s a message as pertinent and poignant now as it was then.

    Because we are a people who could use some time in the desert.  Now, I don’t mean we should go to an actual desert or even take a trip to Las Vegas!  What I mean is, we need to calm down and find some peace in our lives, because with all the craziness and busy-ness of our lives, we stand a pretty good chance of missing the Advent of our Savior as all the people back then did.  We might be just as impatient with a John the Baptist as the people were then.  Who wants to hear the word “repent?”  That means a real change in our lives that we are often not willing to make.

    But we all need to repent of something, friends.  Me included.  Repent means turning around and going in another direction.  We all get off track here and there in our lives.  Repent means turning back to God, our God who is waiting to break into our lives and be born among us this Advent.

    John is really clear about what kind of repenting needs to be done.  If we are going to prepare a way for the Lord, we are going to have to make straight the winding roads: stop meandering all over the place, and walk with purpose to communion with the Lord.  We are going to have to fill in the valleys and level the mountains, because God doesn’t come in fits and spurts, showing up every now and then for a mountain top experience and then taking his leave when times bring you down.  He’s there always and forever.  We are going to have to make those rough ways smooth, because every time we’re jostled around on those rough roads, we stand the chance of getting thrown off the path.  We have to repent, to change, to become vessels in which our Lord can be born so that all flesh can see God’s salvation in us.

    Wherever we are on the journey to Christ, whatever the obstacles we face, God promises to make it right through Jesus Christ – if we will let him.  We may be facing the valley of hurts or resentments.  God will fill in that valley.  Perhaps we are up against a mountain of sinful behavior, addiction, or shame.  God will level that mountain.  We may be lost on the winding roads of procrastination or apathy.  God will straighten out that way.  We may be riding along on the rough and bumpy ways of poor choices, sinful relationships and patterns of sin.  God will make all those ways smooth.  And all flesh – every one of us, brothers and sisters – we will all see the salvation of God.  That’s a promise.  God, who always keeps his promises, will forgive us all of our sins.  But we have to be open to the experience, and that is the challenge in these Advent days.

    And so, in the spirit of encouraging that openness, I want to make a very personal invitation.  Our parish is embarking on a time of renewal this week.  We will begin our Year of the Eucharist to remind ourselves of why we need to be here, and of the absolute necessity of strengthening our relationship with Jesus through Mary.  This week is also our parish’s patronal feast day: The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Wednesday the 8th.  In order to prepare for that, at the end of the 12:15 Mass this Sunday, we will have a Eucharistic procession through the hallways of our campus, then return here to church to begin 40 Hours Devotion.  If you have not signed up for an hour or two or three yet, you still can; the sign up book is in the narthex and online.  We particularly need people during the night hours.  Our Lord, who is always here for you, has asked me to keep the light on so that you can be here with him.  Please don’t let him down.

    I also want to encourage you in the strongest possible terms to begin this year of the Eucharist and to prepare the manger of your hearts by going to Confession.  We have confessions today at 7pm during 40 Hours, during a holy hour of praise and worship.  We will have four priests here to hear confessions, please be sure to keep us busy!  We also have a special time of confession on Sunday the 19th, immediately following the 12:15 Mass.  There will be 8 or more priests here to hear confessions in English, Spanish and Polish.  Please plan to make a good confession before Christmas; it will be the greatest present of your season to receive the gift of God’s mercy!

    The Sacrament of Penance is where we Catholics level those mountains, straighten those winding roads, and fill in the potholes that have derailed us along the way.  If you haven’t been to confession in years and you don’t remember what to do, come anyway.  The priest will help you to make a good confession.  That’s what we’re there for!  Feel free to ask for help and don’t be embarrassed about having been away.  It is always a joy for us to help a person return to the sacraments.  That’s what we are here for!

    The truth is, brothers and sisters in Christ, we come to this holy place to this sacred Liturgy, each of us at different places in the spiritual road. Our goal – all of us – is to advance on that road, tackling the obstacles that face us, and defeating our sin by the power of God’s forgiveness and mercy. There may only be one unforgivable sin: the sin of thinking that we don’t need a Savior. When we rationalize that we’re basically good people and we’re okay and that there is nothing wrong with our lives or our relationships, then we’re lost. It’s not that God doesn’t want to forgive us this sin, it’s more that we refuse to have it forgiven. If Advent teaches us anything, it’s got to be that we all need that baptism of repentance that John the Baptist preached, that we all need to prepare the way of the Lord in our hearts, making straight the paths for his coming in our lives.

    Come, Lord Jesus.  Come quickly, and do not delay!

  • Thursday of the First Week of Advent

    Thursday of the First Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    There’s an old saying that if you want to hear God laugh, just tell him your plans for the day.  And we know how true that is, don’t we?  How many times have we had a plan for the day, only to have it derailed by whatever circumstances come our way during the day.  But I think the real problem with our plans sometimes is that we don’t always factor God’s will into our plans.  We want God to come to our rescue when things go awry, as they always do when we depend only on ourselves.  But if things are going well, we sometimes feel like we can do without God’s direction, thanks anyway.

    This is the meaning of the song they’re singing about Judah in today’s first reading from Isaiah.  The people who are in lofty high places don’t think they need God, or don’t even give God a second, or even a first, thought.  And won’t they be surprised when God allows them to be caught up in their own folly and go tumbling to the ground?

    This Advent time is a time for us to examine our lives and see if we might have thought ourselves to be lofty recently.  How much do we depend on God?  Do we rely on his help day after day?  Do we consider his will in our daily plans?  Are we open to the movement of his Spirit?  If not, we might find ourselves tumbling and falling.  But if we choose to be aware of God and our need for him, nothing will ever make us stumble.  As the Psalmist sings today:

    It is better to take refuge in the LORD
    than to trust in man.
    It is better to take refuge in the LORD
    than to trust in princes.

    And so we forge onward in Advent, aware of the coming of Christ, building our houses on his rock-solid foundation.

  • The First Sunday of Advent

    The First Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Happy New Year!

    I know, as I say that, that we are still more than a month away from the end of the year.  But I also know that you know that I’m speaking of the new year of the Church.  Our Church Year begins anew on the First Sunday of Advent, that season that prepares us for Christmas, the coming of our Lord as one of us.  This time of year, we remember on the new year that God renewed the covenant with us, his people, his creation, and that in this new covenant, he is creating the world anew.

    And that might just be alright with us, I think.  For many people, a year gone past can have brought more than enough of the “anxieties of daily life” that our Lord speaks of in today’s Gospel.  Maybe, for many of us, we’re more than happy to usher the current year of grace out the door, and look for more grace in the year to come.

    I think it’s pretty easy to see why this is so needed.  I like to watch the news in the morning, but lately it doesn’t take too long before I have to turn it off.  The bad news can be oppressive sometimes.  And we could even look to our own lives.  As we come to the end of the year, maybe this was a year filled with blessing or maybe it’s one we won’t miss. Most likely, it was a little bit of both. Perhaps this last year might have seen the death of a loved one, the ending of a relationship, or some other significant event.  As we end another year, some of us might be doing that with some regret, looking back on patterns of sin or the plague of addiction.  And so, for many of us, maybe even most of us, it doesn’t take too much imagination to know that there is a lot of room for renewed hope in our lives.

    But it’s hard to wait for the fulfillment of that hope, isn’t it? If we can’t wait for Thanksgiving to be over before we go Christmas shopping, it’s going to be hard to wait to see what God is doing in our lives. There’s a scene in the movie “Christmas Vacation” that I thought of when I was getting this homily ready. Clark Griswold is in his boss’s office, bringing him a Christmas gift. There’s an awkward silence and then the boss tells Clark that he’s very busy. He picks up the phone and says, presumably to his secretary, “Get me somebody. Anybody.  And get me somebody while I’m waiting!” None of us likes to wait.

    So we have to find the grace in the waiting. Maybe that’s why I love Advent so much.  I’m so generally impatient, that Advent has me slow down and re-create that space so that it can be filled with our Lord’s most merciful presence. So what do we do while we are waiting?  How do we live among the chaos?  How do we keep going when every fiber of our being wants to pack it in and hope for it all to be over real soon?  Today’s Gospel warns us that people will die in fright when they see what is going to happen, but it cannot be so for people of faith.  Even in the midst of life’s darkest moments, even when it seems like we can’t withstand one more bout of hopeless worry, we are still called to be a hopeful people.  “Stand erect,” Jesus tells us, “and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”  God is unfolding his promise among us and even though we still must suffer the sadness that life can sometimes bring us, we have hope for something greater from the one whose promises never go unfulfilled.

    Then what does a hopeful people do while we are waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promises?  How is it that we anticipate and look for the coming of our Savior in glory?  Our consumerist society would have us cast aside our Thanksgiving dinners to get an early jump on Black Friday, and battle it out with a few thousand of our closest friends for the latest gadget or bauble or toy.  And to that kind of thinking, Jesus says, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life.”  Getting caught up in the things of this world does us no good.  It does not bring us closer to salvation or to our God, and all it does is increase our anxiety.  Who needs that?

    Instead, we people of faith are called to wait by being “vigilant at all times.”  We are called to forgive those who have wronged us, to reach out to the poor and the vulnerable, to advocate for just laws, laws that protect religious freedom and the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, to challenge world powers to pursue true justice and real peace, to give of ourselves so that those in need might have Christmas too, and even to love those who drive us nuts sometimes.  When we do that, we might just be surprised how often we see Jesus among us in our lives, in our families and schools and workplaces and communities.  It might just seem like Jesus isn’t that far from returning after all, that God’s promises are absolutely unfolding before our eyes.

    We are a people who like instant gratification and hate to wait for something good to come along.  Maybe that’s why the Christmas shopping season starts about two weeks before Halloween.  But if we would wait with faith and vigilance, if we would truly pursue the reign of God instead of just assuming it will be served up to us on a silver platter, if we spend our time encouraging others with the hope we have in Jesus, we might not be so weary of waiting after all.  That’s the call God gives us people of faith on this New Year’s day.

  • The Fourth Sunday of Advent

    The Fourth Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Do you remember the best gift you ever got?  What was it?  Who gave it to you?  How long did it last?  Do you still have it? 

    Every gift is a little different: some are big, some are small, some make a lasting impact, some are used up and soon forgotten.  The best gifts, I think, are those that create a memory of good times; perhaps the best gifts are those that can be shared.

    God gives us gifts too.  And some are big, and some are small, but all of them are important to us and to others.  In this season of giving, I’d like to take a moment to talk about God’s gifts, and how they are to be enjoyed.  There are four points I want to make.

    First, God’s gifts are given to be used.  They’re not supposed to be like an action figure that is to be kept in its package and preserved so it can be sold in ten years for a lot of money on eBay!  They aren’t like the “good china” some of us have and almost never use.  They’re supposed to be used for our happiness and God’s glory.  So if it’s a talent for sports, we ought to play.  If it’s intelligence, we ought to study and research and invent.  If it’s creativity, we ought to paint or act or sing.  Keeping it in a box and denying it is an insult to the Giver.

    Second, God’s gifts are never just for us.  God gifts us in ways that we can build up our community and our world and help people to come to know God’s love for them.  Always.  Mary never could have kept Jesus to herself, and we’re not supposed to keep our gifts to ourselves either.

    Third, we will never know how wonderful our gifts are until we share them with others.  Our gifts are supposed to create memories and bring people together and help people to know God.  When that happens, the full wonder of those gifts will be revealed to us and in us, and we will enjoy them in ways we never could have before we shared them.

    Finally, we don’t lose our gifts when we share them.  They don’t get used up when we give them away.  Just as Mary didn’t lose her Son when she gave him to the world, so we won’t lose what God has given us when we share it with others.  That’s just how God’s gifts are.

    In today’s Gospel, Mary received a gift.  I don’t know how any of us would feel about that kind of gift, but Mary received it in faith, because Mary was full of grace.  She received the gift of a Savior before anyone else did; her fiat meant that she received salvation before it was ever played out on earth.  It was the best gift ever, and she got to watch it all unfold before her.  Some of it was difficult and painful, but so much of had to be amazing.

    Because of Mary’s faith, God was able to send the best gift possible to be shared with all of us: the gift of his only-begotten Son.  Jesus took on our flesh as a little baby, and grew to become a man like us in all things but sin.  He walked among the people of his time and helped them to know of God’s kingdom.  Though he was without sin, he eventually took on our sins and went to the cross for all of us, dying to pay the price for our sins, and canceling out the power that sin and death had to keep us from God.  Because of Mary’s faith, we received the gift of salvation, if we are open to accept it.

    And just like all our other gifts from God, those same four principles apply: we have to use, or live our salvation; we have to share the gift of salvation with others; salvation becomes more wonderful every time someone else is saved, and salvation is not something that ever gets used up – it’s meant for everyone.

    So this is a bit of a “pep talk” for the coming feast of Christmas and how we should receive and live that gift of salvation.  Let’s be clear: we always need a Savior.  We are sinful, and in our sinfulness we could never enter into relationship with God.  And in this year, our need for a Savior seems to be even greater: the darkness of a pandemic and the sadness of racial unrest and all the other societal unrest we have endured this past year.  This year has been hard on families and workers and schools and just about everybody.  We need to be people of faith and follow our Savior more than ever. And we have to be people who share that gift with others, pointing them to the love and salvation we have in Jesus. 

    Our salvation, our relationship with God, is a gift, and it’s up to us to spread it around.  It’s a shame if someone doesn’t know about God and his love for them.  But if they don’t know because we didn’t use our gifts to tell them, then it’s a sin.  This is the season for giving gifts.  The very best gift you can give to anyone is a relationship with God.  Whether it’s your children, or coworkers, or people in the neighborhood, your gift will do so much to make the world a better place.  All we have to do is respond like Mary: “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word.”

  • O Wisdom

    O Wisdom

    Today’s readings Mass for the school children.

    Did you hear that? That was quite a list of names, wasn’t 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. 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.

    We’re just about to start the last week of Advent, and 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.

  • Tuesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the television shows that I like to watch sometimes is called “Chopped” on the Food Network.  If you’ve ever watched the Food Network, you’ve probably seen it because they seem to run it about 18 hours out of the day.  On this show, they start with four chefs, and they give them a basket of really different, and sometimes strange, ingredients, all of which they have to use, to make either an appetizer, main dish, or dessert, depending on the round.  The dishes are then presented to a panel of three judges who are chefs and restaurateurs.  These judges critique each dish and, of course, pass judgment.  As each course goes by, one of the contestant chefs gets “chopped” or eliminated, while the others continue to compete.  At the end of the show, the winner gets ten thousand dollars.

    On one particular episode, one of the chef contestants had a real problem with arrogance.  He couldn’t see how anyone could possibly make a dish better than his, even though his always came out looking ragtag, and from what the judges said, tasting the same.  He would not listen to any of the critiques, because, well how did these people know anything?  He survived the first round, but was quickly eliminated in the second round, mostly because the judges got tired of his arrogance.

    That came back to mind when I read today’s gospel reading.  Jesus tells the chief priests and elders, “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you.”  That had to be terrible news.  Because those chief priests and elders were living what they thought was a good life.  They were the “decent people” of society.  Nobody could be noticed by God before they were, surely.  But Jesus says they certainly are.  Why? Arrogance – again.

    Like the arrogant chef, those chief priests and elders refused to listen to any kind of criticism.  John the Baptist had preached repentance, and the tax collectors and prostitutes, the riff-raff of society, had listened, and were gaining entrance to the kingdom of God.  Meanwhile, those so-called decent folks, the ones who should have known better, were in for an eternity of wailing and grinding their teeth.

    The arrogant chef merely lost out on ten thousand dollars.  The arrogant chief priests and elders had lost out on quite a bit more: eternal life.  Today, we all pray for the grace to overcome any arrogance in us and accept correction for the sake of our salvation.

  • Tuesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the television shows that I like to watch sometimes is called “Chopped” on the Food Network.  If you’ve ever watched the Food Network, you’ve probably seen it because they seem to run it about 18 hours out of the day.  On this show, they start with four chefs, and they give them a basket of really different, and sometimes strange, ingredients, all of which they have to use, to make either an appetizer, main dish, or dessert, depending on the round.  The dishes are then presented to a panel of three judges who are chefs and restaurateurs.  These judges critique each dish and, of course, pass judgment.  As each course goes by, one of the contestant chefs gets “chopped” or eliminated, while the others continue to compete.  At the end of the show, the winner gets ten thousand dollars.

    On one particular episode, one of the chef contestants had a real problem with arrogance.  He couldn’t see how anyone could possibly make a dish better than his, even though his always came out looking ragtag, and from what the judges said, tasting the same.  He would not listen to any of the critiques, because, well how did these people know anything?  He survived the first round, but was quickly eliminated in the second round, mostly because the judges got tired of his arrogance.

    That came back to mind when I read today’s gospel reading.  Jesus tells the chief priests and elders, “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you.”  That had to be terrible news.  Because those chief priests and elders were living what they thought was a good life.  They were the “decent people” of society.  Nobody could be noticed by God before they were, surely.  But Jesus says they certainly are.  Why? Arrogance – again.

    Like the arrogant chef, those chief priests and elders refused to listen to any kind of criticism.  John the Baptist had preached repentance, and the tax collectors and prostitutes, the riff-raff of society, had listened, and were gaining entrance to the kingdom of God.  Meanwhile, those so-called decent folks, the ones who should have known better, were in for an eternity of wailing and grinding their teeth.

    The arrogant chef merely lost out on ten thousand dollars.  The arrogant chief priests and elders had lost out on quite a bit more: eternal life.  Today, we all pray for the grace to overcome any arrogance in us and accept correction for the sake of our salvation.

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Prevenient Grace

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Prevenient Grace

    Today’s readings

    I love that the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is celebrated during the season of Advent.  Advent is a season of anticipation: God’s promises echo through the Old Testament, and in these Advent days, we see those promises coming to fruition in exciting and world-changing ways.  Today’s feast is a glorious glimpse of that reality.

    We are honored today to celebrate this, the patronal feast day of our parish and of our nation.  This, of course, celebrates Mary’s conception, not that of Jesus, which we celebrate on the feast of the Annunciation.  Blessed Pope Pius IX instituted the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8, 1854, when he proclaimed as truth the dogma that our Lady was conceived free from the stain of original sin.

    This feast celebrates the belief that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to be our Savior, and gave to him a human mother who was chosen before the world began to be holy and blameless in his sight.  This feast is a sign for us of the nearness of our salvation; that the plan God had for us before the world ever took shape was coming to fruition.

    The prayer over the offerings today uses a very technical theological term to describe how Mary was born, conceived actually, without sin, and that term is “prevenient grace.”  The prayer specifically says, “…Grant that, as we profess her, on account of your prevenient grace, to be untouched by any stain of sin…”  Prevenient grace is the same as other kinds of grace in that it relies on the saving action of Jesus on the Cross at Calvary, dying for our sins.  But prevenient grace refers to grace applied before that happened, as would have been in the case for Mary who was obviously conceived before her son was put to death.  This prevenient grace relies on the fact that God loved us so much that he foresaw the sacrifice of the Cross and applied the grace of it to Mary at her conception.  As the Collect prayer today said, “…as you preserved her from every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw…”  All of this is a very technical discussion that boils down to the fact that God will not let the constraints of time limit the outpouring of his grace.  And that’s the really good news we celebrate today.

    So, I think we know why this prevenient grace, this Immaculate Conception, was necessary: the readings chosen for this day paint the picture.  In the reading from Genesis, we have the story of the fall.  The man and the woman had eaten of the fruit of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat.  Because of this, they were ashamed and covered over their nakedness.  God noticed that, and asked about it.  Of course, he already knew what was going on: they had discovered the forbidden tree and eaten its fruit.  They had given in to temptation and had grasped at something that was not God, in an effort to control their own destiny.

    Thus begins the pattern of sin and deliverance that cycles all through the scriptures.  God extends a way to salvation to his people, the people reject it and go their own way.  God forgives, and extends a new way to salvation.  Thank God he never gets tired of pursuing humankind and offering salvation, or we would be in dire straits.  It all comes to perfection in the event we celebrate today.  Salvation was always God’s plan for us and he won’t rest until that plan comes to perfection.  That is why Saint Paul tells the Ephesians, and us, today: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.  In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ…”

    And so, in these Advent days, we await the unfolding of the plan for salvation that began at the very dawn of the world in all its wonder.  God always intended to provide an incredible way for his people to return to them, and that was by taking flesh and walking among us as a man.  He began this by preparing for his birth through the Immaculate Virgin Mary – never stained by sin, because the one who conquered sin and death had already delivered her from sin.  He was then to be born into our midst and to take on our form.  With Mary’s fiat in today’s Gospel, God enters our world in the most intimate way possible, by becoming vulnerable, taking our flesh as one like us.  Mary’s lived faith – possible because of her Immaculate Conception – makes possible our own lives of faith and our journeys to God. 

    Our celebration today is a foreshadowing of God’s plan for us.  Because Mary was conceived without sin, we can see that sin was never intended to rule us.  Because God selected Mary from the beginning, we can see that we were chosen before we were ever in our mother’s womb.  Because Mary received salvific grace from the moment of her conception, we can catch a glimpse of what is to come for all of us one day.  Mary’s deliverance from sin and death was made possible by the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus, who deeply desires that we all be delivered in that way too.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings
    School Mass

    I think we’re so blessed that we get to come to church and celebrate so many of Mary’s feasts.  Today is a very special feast because Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, is the patroness of the United States of America, and also the patroness of our parish, and so she is very special to us.

    I think today’s readings can be a little confusing.  The Gospel makes it sound like this day is about the conception of Jesus, but it isn’t.  We celebrate the conception of Jesus nine months before he was born, so that would be March 25th.  We call that day the Annunciation, because that was the day the Angel Gabriel came to announce to Mary that she would have a baby, but we’ll talk more about that in a minute.  Today we celebrate the conception of Mary, nine months before her birthday, so if you do the math on that one, her birthday is September 8th, just a few months ago.  This day celebrates that Mary was free from sin from the very beginning, the only person other than Jesus to be born without sin.

    The other confusing reading is the first one.  Why do we go all the way to the beginning of creation when we’re talking about Mary today?  Well, I think the reason is that Mary’s life and her faith in God solved a problem that began all the way at the beginning.  And that problem is sin.  From the very beginning, we human beings have been tempted to sin.  Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and people have been committing sin ever since.  Again and again, God broke in to history, leading people back to him, giving them prophets to show them the way, and again and again, people turned away from God.  And we continue that today.  Again and again, we are tempted and we sin and we turn away from God.  Eve represented our fall into sin.

    But God didn’t want that to be the way things ended up for us.  So he sent his Son to become one of us.  God knew that in order for Jesus to be born among us, his mother was going to have to be pretty special.  So before Mary was ever in her mother’s womb, God chose her to be his Son’s mother.  He made her free from sin so that no stain of sin would ever touch his Son. 

    Because Mary was so special, she loved God very much.  So when the angel came and told her she would have a baby by the power of the Holy Spirit, she said yes to God’s plan.  She might not have known at that moment all the detail about how it was going to take place or what would happen to Jesus in his life, but she said yes anyway.  We call that her fiat, her “yes” to God’s plan for her.  Fiat is Latin for “let it be done.”  She took a big leap of faith that day, thanks be to God, because with her leap of faith, we have been blessed ever since.

    This is all very good news.  But there is even more good news: because Mary was so special to God, she shows us how special we are to God.  As we celebrate God’s love for Mary today, we also celebrate his love for us.  Mary got to hold her Savior – the One God promised us – in her own arms.  When those of us who are old enough come to Communion, we are able to hold our Savior – the One God promised us – in the palm of our hand.  Mary’s life was brightened when Jesus was born.  Our lives will be brightened too, this coming Christmas, and every time we make room in our hearts for Jesus.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.