Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent

    Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    The chief priests and the elders of the people were always trying to decide who got into heaven. The criteria was strict adherence to the law, and any flaw in one’s obedience left them out of the picture. The problem was, they weren’t so concerned about the spirit of the law, and that spirit was one of true justice and righteousness. The Church teaches us that we are all supposed to become saints; that this earthly journey is at its core a saint-making factory. Tax collectors and sinners were becoming saints ahead of the chief priests and elders, and for that Jesus takes them to task, hoping they will wake up and walk through the door he is opening to them.

    God hears, as the Psalmist says, the cry of the poor. Essentially that means what it sounds like, God hears those who are homeless, poor, marginalized and hungry, and has a special care for them. They aren’t someone we can overlook, as we often do, because God never overlooks them. They may appear to have nothing going for them, but to God they are precious. The poor should be precious to us too, because they put us in touch with our own poverty, the ways that we are lacking or are broken. What we must remember is that when we are desperately poor in whatever way, we are very close to God, who hears everyone who is in need of him.

    In these days of Advent, God is purifying us in whatever way we need it, if we will but let him. We are called upon to get in touch with our own poverty, and to respond to the poverty of others. We are called to turn from our self-absorbed ways, and look toward the light of the door that Jesus has opened for us. And the time is short; the day is almost here. We don’t want to fall behind; we all want to walk through the door of salvation together.

  • Fourth Sunday of Advent: O Oriens

    Fourth Sunday of Advent: O Oriens

    Today’s readings

    I was with some friends the other night and we watched the Patrick Stewart version of “A Christmas Carol.”  When I watched it this time, I was really struck by the themes of light and darkness that Charles Dickens wrote into the story.  At the beginning, the setting is a very dark London, which at that time was certainly polluted with a lot of coal smog.  The opening settings are at night, and so there is a whole lot of darkness as the story begins.  Then, as this particular movie portrayed it, the three haunting spirits showed progressively less light as the story goes along.  The first spirit is so bright that he practically blinds Mr. Scrooge, and at the end of their time together, Scrooge actually snuffs him out with a bucket.  The second spirit is not quite so bright, but does appear with a torch to light the way.  By the end of their time together, the second spirit has grown old and is dying out.  Finally, the third spirit appears and is darkness itself.  All you can even see of him are two haunting, glowing eyes.

    The significance of that light and darkness really struck me, because, who hasn’t noticed that there is a lot more darkness this time of year?  I know a lot of people who get depressed this time of year.  Probably you do too – maybe you’re even one of them.  Many people are missing loved ones who are far away from home, or who have passed away.  Some of my friends have a touch of seasonal affective disorder, and so they are depressed when we don’t see the sun as much on cloudy day, or when it gets dark so early as it does during this time.  Some people also look back on another year almost finished, and they lament what could have been, or what actually has been.  And if there is any reason for being a little depressed at this time of year, it often seems like the joy that other people are experiencing during the Christmas season makes the pain even worse.

    So for whatever reason, many of us experience darkness during this season, when so many seem to be rejoicing in light.  In essence, that’s what Advent is all about; that’s what we have been celebrating these past few weeks.  The season of Advent recognizes the darkness of the world – the physical darkness, sure, but more than that, the darkness of a world steeped in sin, a world marred by war and terrorism, an economy decimated by greed, peacefulness wounded by hatred, crime and dangers of all sorts.  This season of Advent also recognizes the darkness of our own lives – sin that has not been confessed, relationships broken by self-interest, personal growth tabled by laziness and fear.

    Advent says that God meets all that darkness head-on.  The prophet Isaiah prophesies about this Advent of light: “The light of the moon will be like that of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times greater [like the light of seven days].”  Our reading of the Annunciation in today’s Gospel is a celebration of that light breaking through our darkness:  “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”  “Do not be afraid, you have found favor with God!”  “May it be done to me according to your word!”

    Our Church makes the light present in many ways – indeed, it is the whole purpose of the Church to shine a bright beacon of hope into a dark and lonely world.  We do that in symbolic ways: the progressive lighting of the Advent wreath symbolizes the world becoming lighter and lighter as we approach the birthday of our Savior.  But the Church doesn’t leave it simply in the realm of symbol or theory.  We are here at Mass every week to celebrate that the darkness has not overcome the bright light of Christ in our world.  Our God has become one of us, taking our form, healing our brokenness, redeeming our sinfulness and leading us to eternal life in his kingdom of light.

    The incarnation of Christ, which we’ll celebrate in just a few short days, is perhaps the central mystery of our faith.  If we don’t have the incarnation – God taking flesh and dwelling among us – then we never have the Cross, we never have the Resurrection, and we never have eternal life.  Indeed the incarnation is such a beacon of hope, such a beautiful, central mystery, that the mere mention of us calls us to bow in adoration and gratitude for the grace we have been given.

    Whenever we do something in the Mass, there’s a reason for it, and it often tells us something about what we believe.  That is why we bow when, during the Creed, we pray: “by the power of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”  In fact, on Christmas, we’re actually supposed to genuflect at those words.

    And so, without denying that there is darkness, we boldly proclaim that there’s a little more light today.  The dark injustices of our world are evident; wars rage, terrorism breaks our peacefulness, greed brings recession, crime proliferates.  But it does not overcome: there’s a little more light today.  The darkness of our sin cannot be denied: lack of prayer leads us further away from God, self-interest clouds our relationships and weakens our discipleship.  But it does not overcome: there’s a little more light today.

    The light comes from one and only one place: Jesus Christ.  He is the one who banishes our darkness and bathes the world in the glory of his wonderful light.  His coming two thousand years ago changed the course of our history.  His coming again will bring all of creation to completion in the light of God’s everlasting kingdom.

    Each of the days from December 17th through the 23rd has a specific antiphon assigned to it; these are called the “O Antiphons” and they speak of a special title of Jesus.  Today’s “O Antiphon” is “O Oriens” which is translated “O Radiant Dawn” or “O Morning Star” or “O Dayspring.” Corresponding to the day’s “O Antiphon” is the antiphon for evening prayer, and that antiphon today 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.”

    In addition, a verse of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” corresponds to the daily “O Antiphon.” Today’s verse speaks of the light that is to come to us:

    O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
    Our spirits by Thine advent here
    Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
    And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
    Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
    Shall come to thee, O Israel.

    And the Liturgy for Christmas states emphatically that there is more light because of the birth of Jesus.  The preface to the Eucharistic prayer says, “In the wonder of the incarnation, your eternal Word has brought to the eyes of faith a new and radiant vision of your glory.  In him we see our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see.”

    In these final days of Advent, we need to be proclaiming that there is more light today.  We need to show all the world that new and radiant vision of God’s glory.  The Gospel of John wraps this up for us very nicely: “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

    At the end of the story, Mr. Scrooge is a changed man.  And the setting has changed too: he realizes that all of the spirits visited him in that one very dark night, and as he throws open the shutters, he is awakened by the bright light of Christmas morning.  He then sets about making things right with Bob Cratchit, his nephew Fred, and anyone he can find.  There is a lot more light for Scrooge on that wonderful Christmas morning.  As his nephew says at the end of the story: “and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”

  • Thursday of the Second Week of Advent

    Thursday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    I was with some of the fourth grade classes from our Religious Education Program yesterday afternoon.  I reflected with them that God could have become incarnate in any way he chose.  But what he chose is almost incomprehensible: the Lord of all came into the world as a tiny baby, born to a poor family, to an unwed mother.  He grew through childhood and young adulthood, working with his hands in the trade of his earthly father.  He knew the frustrations we have, and he knew our sadness and disappointment.  He was well-acquainted with our infirmities, and even grieved at the death of those he loved.  Why?

    There is a theological principle that says something like “whatever was not assumed was not redeemed.”  He had to assume, take on all of our weaknesses, so that he would be able to redeem all its brokenness.  What great comfort it is that our Advent leads to the Birth of a Savior so wonderful in glory that the whole earth could not contain him, but also so intimately one of us that he bore all our sorrows and grief.  It is amazing that God’s plan to save the world took shape by assuming our own form, even to the point of dying our death.

    That’s what I thought about as I reflected on today’s first reading.  Israel was pretty low and lacking in power, in the grand scheme of things.  Almost every nation was more powerful than them.  Yet they were not unnoticed by God – indeed they were actually favored.  God’s plan for salvation takes place among the weakness of all of us.  God notices that weakness, takes it on and redeems it in glory.

    That’s the good news today for all of us who suffer in whatever way.  God notices our suffering, in the person of Jesus he bore that same suffering, and in the glory of the Paschal Mystery, he redeemed it.  God may not wave a magic wand and make all of our problems go away, but he will never leave us alone in them.

    And it all started with the Incarnation.  The birth of one tiny child to a poor family, in the tiniest region of the lowliest nation on earth.  God can do amazing things when we are incredibly weak.

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    Today, we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Mary, mother of Jesus, which celebrates the dogmatic 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 finally coming to fruition.

    The first reading paints the picture for us.  The man 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.  He found they had discovered the forbidden tree because otherwise they would not have the idea that their natural state was shameful.  Sin had entered the world, and God wanted to know who gave the man the forbidden fruit.

    This leads to the first instance of passing the buck, as the man blames not just the woman, but also God, for the situation: “The woman whom you put here with me
    she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”  In other words, if God hadn’t put the woman there with him in the first place, he never would have received the fruit to eat.  The woman, too, blames someone else: the serpent.  As if neither of them had been created with a brain to think for themselves, they begin that blame game that we all participate in from time to time.

    But at its core, this is a pattern we will see all throughout Scripture: God gives a road to salvation, human beings turn away, and so on and so on and so on.  And we still do it today, don’t we?  We have the Scriptures to show us the way, but we don’t take time to read and reflect on them.  We have the Church to lead us in the right way, but we choose to do whatever we think is right.  We have the Sacraments to fill us with grace, but some hardly ever partake of them.  As the Psalmist says, “The LORD has made his salvation known: in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.” How will we respond to that grace?  God is always pouring out his generous gifts, and we so often reject them and in doing so, reject the Divine Giver.

    This cyclic state of sin and rejection was never intended to be the case.  We are not defined as a people by our sins.  We cannot mess up and say, “hey, I’m only human,” because being perfectly human does not include sin.  The perfectly human one – Jesus Christ – came to show us the way out of the cycle of sin and rejection.  This grace was always intended.  As St. Paul says to the Ephesians 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 ready 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 one of us.  Mary’s lived faith – possible because of her Immaculate Conception – makes possible our own lives of faith and our journeys to God.  There’s a wonderful Marian prayer that we pray at the conclusion of Night Prayer during Advent that sums it all up so beautifully:

    Loving Mother of the Redeemer,
    Gate of heaven, star of the sea,
    Assist your people
    who have fallen yet strive to rise again.
    To the wonderment of nature you bore your Creator,
    yet remained a virgin after as before.
    You who received Gabriel’s joyful greeting,
    have pity on us, poor sinners.

    Our celebration today has special meaning for us.  Because Mary was conceived without sin, we can see that sin was never intended to rule us.  We can see that sin is not what defines us as human beings.  So God selected Mary from the beginning and gave her a taste in salvific grace so that we could all see the light of what is to come for all of us one day.

    I love the hymn “Immaculate Mary.”  Sr. Merita taught it to us in fourth grade when I was in CCD class.  What better way to turn away from sin and look with faithfulness on our God than with this hymn.  So let us together ask her to pray for us by singing together the refrain one more time:

    “Ave, ave, ave, Maria! Ave, ave, Maria!”

  • Second Sunday of Advent

    Second Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.”

    So the prophet Isaiah begins our Liturgy of the Word today.  Those words made me think back to a time many years ago when I sang in a “Do It Yourself Messiah.”  Such “Do It Yourself Messiahs” are Christmas traditions in many places.  This particular program was being put on at my voice teacher’s church, and I had been practicing the first song of it, which is called “Comfort Ye My People,” for months.  I was to sing it as a solo.  Now understand, the prospect of a voice student singing in a church he’d never been to for people he’d never met, and being the fist voice they’d hear that afternoon – well that experience was just a little daunting.  I was feeling anything but comfort!

    But the text of that particular song is taken directly from the first three verses we get from Isaiah today.  This text is easily one of the most beautiful in all of Scripture, and I have to admit it’s always been one of my favorite parts of the Bible.  But as I reflected on it this week, the words almost seem to ring a bit hollow.  The headlines in the newspaper spoke of 533,000 jobs lost in just the month of November – the worst unemployment statistic in 34 years; a $14 billion bailout of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler; the deepening of foreclosures in the housing market, fueled this time by job losses – and we can’t forget the recent bombings in India, and the wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, to say nothing of unrest in other areas.

    And I know that as I say all that, there are some of you here who probably didn’t need to read it in a newspaper.  Either you have had to suffer from some of this, or someone you know did.  And so I can’t help but think that Isaiah’s promise of comfort seems to ring a bit hollow today.  So this comfort of which Isaiah speaks, when’s that going to start?

    Advent certainly has snuck up on us this year, I think.  We’re all in different places now than we were just a year ago.  Even if the recession and the danger in foreign lands hasn’t affected us, we might have experienced the loss of a loved one, a serious illness or injury of someone we know or even ourselves, maybe even a broken relationship.  Maybe these times find us needing the peace that Isaiah proclaims now more than ever.

    So I think the comfort that Advent finds us hoping for this year is not some kind of placid, easy comfort.  It’s not going to be found in hot chocolate or mashed potatoes, or even being wrapped in a warm blanket next to the fire.  It’s not the kind of comfort that prohibits us from trying something new, or taking a risk – God has no great love for that kind of comfort, to be quite honest.  And it’s not going to be the kind of comfort that waves a magic wand and makes all our troubles go away.

    I think the kind of comfort that Isaiah wants us to know about is the kind of comfort that comes from being in a hard place and having someone walk through it with you.  There is a real comfort that comes from that.  And that, I think, is the authentic kind of comfort that God brings us in our daily struggles.  We all know that our frustrations don’t disappear as quickly as we’d like them to.  We all know that we would certainly prefer not to have to walk through those low points at all.  But our faith teaches us that when we do walk through those valleys, we are never ever alone.  God is there, bringing us his comfort.

    And truly, this is the kind of comfort Isaiah is speaking about.  This reading is from the second part of the book of Isaiah.  In the first part, Isaiah was crying out to the people, warning them that God was not happy with the way they had turned away from him, that God was angry about the way they treated the poor and broke the commandments and didn’t trust in him.  But the second part – from which today’s first reading is taken – speaks to a people who were suffering the consequences of those sins.  They had been taken into exile; their homes and everything they knew were destroyed and now they lived as slaves, bitterly oppressed in a foreign land.  They too had no love for someone proclaiming a false comfort.  But Isaiah wasn’t proclaiming that kind of comfort or peace.  He was proclaiming a comfort and peace that could only come from God.

    And so it’s the great Saint John the Baptist who has the fulfillment of the promise in today’s Gospel reading.  These are the opening words of the Gospel of Mark, of which we will be reading a lot in this coming Liturgical year.  Mark has preliminaries: no genealogy like Matthew, no story about Elizabeth or the Annunciation like Luke.  He seems to rush breathlessly in and get right to the point, beginning with John’s Baptism.  He takes up the message of Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”  The old promises are being fulfilled and we are being offered a new way of life, one that finds us filling in the valleys and straightening out all those rough and winding roads.

    I find myself in these Advent days reflecting on some of my favorite Advent hymns.  The one that really expresses the Scriptures we have today is called “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People.”  It was written for the feast of the Birth of St. John the Baptist by German composer Johannes Olearius in 1671.  It was translated into English in the nineteenth century.

    Comfort, comfort ye My people,
    Speak ye peace, thus saith our God;
    Comfort those who sit in darkness,
    Mourning ’neath their sorrow’s load;
    Speak ye to Jerusalem
    Of the peace that waits for them;
    Tell her that her sins I cover,
    And her warfare now is over.

    For the herald’s voice is crying
    In the desert far and near,
    Bidding all men to repentance,
    Since the kingdom now is here.
    O that warning cry obey!
    Now prepare for God a way!
    Let the valleys rise to meet Him,
    And the hills bow down to greet Him.

    So Advent this year finds us waiting for two things.  First, we hear the call to repentance and await our own wholehearted return to God.  We are probably not going to get any part of the $700 billion government bailout.  We are going to have to depend instead on God in ways different and much deeper than we ever have before.  And that’s certainly not bad news, because nothing is more dependable than God.  Which brings us to the second thing for which we wait, and that is God’s comfort, a comfort that walks with us through good times and bad, a comfort that never lets us down, a comfort that makes us completely new.  We pray for that comfort along with our Psalmist today: “Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation.”

  • Advent Conspiracy

    Advent Conspiracy

  • St. Nicholas, Bishop

    St. Nicholas, Bishop

    Today’s readings | Today’s saint [more]

    The general rule of thumb is that the saints are always supposed to point us to God.  The stories of the saints aren’t always real factual, and we cannot rely on them for actual historical records.  That’s not their purpose.  The stories of the saints are designed to illuminate the saints’ lives in a colorful way and to get us thinking about strengthening our relationship with God.

    I was thinking about that as I was reading the stories of St. Nicholas.  He died probably around the year 350 or so, so we don’t really know a lot about him.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t stories!  One of the best known is that St. Nicholas came from a very well-to-do family.  He became aware of a family in his village that had three daughters who were close to marrying age.  The father was very poor and could not provide a dowry for his daughters, so that meant in that time, they would generally have to resort to prostitution.  St. Nicholas had no intention of seeing that happen.

    So one night, he walked by the man’s house and tossed a bunch of gold coins wrapped up in a cloth through the window.  The man rejoiced the next morning on finding it, and so he gave thanks to God.  He was able to provide a dowry for his oldest daughter.  A while later, the second daughter was to be married, and St. Nicholas repeated the same action.  The man again woke up to find the gold, and what did he do?  He gave thanks to God!  And then he was able to provide for his second daughter’s dowry.  A short time after that, St. Nicholas did the same so that the youngest daughter could have a dowry, and this time the man woke up when he heard the gold hit the floor in his house.  So he ran out the door and began to follow Nicholas, and eventually realized who it was he was following.  He knelt down and wanted to kiss the saint’s feet, but Nicholas would not let him, and made him promise not to tell of it as long as he lived.

    And so this was the story that led to the giving of gifts on St. Nicholas’s feast day.  And it’s just a little twist of the tongue in English that turned St. Nicholas into Santa Claus.  I think the celebration of St. Nicholas shines an interesting light on our gift giving.  St. Nicholas did not want to be known for his generosity.  He wanted to keep it quiet and was content to have the man give the glory and praise to God for the generous gift.  How willing are we to do the same?  Or does our gift giving have a sort of one-upsmanship to it?  The giving of gifts is not bad or good; it is the intent of the giver and the heart of the receiver that really matters.  When we wrap up our gifts in these Advent days, and when we unwrap them on Christmas, I wonder if we can tuck some prayer in it somewhere.  Maybe we can find a way to give glory to God among all the hectic-ness of our Christmas season.

  • 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.

  • CREEDS Retreat Conference I: Advent and the Incarnation of Christ

    CREEDS Retreat Conference I: Advent and the Incarnation of Christ

    Readings:  Matthew 1:18-25; Matthew 3:1-7

    Godspell:  “Prepare Ye” and “Save the People”

    One of the single greatest mysteries of our faith is the Incarnation of Christ.  When you stop to think about it, who are we that the Author of all Life should take on our own corrupt and broken form and become one of us?  It has been called the “marvelous exchange:” God became human so that humans could become more like God.  When I was in seminary, it was explained to us by a simple, yet divinely complex rule: Whatever was not assumed was not redeemed.  So God assumed our human nature, taking on all of our frailty and weakness, all of our sorrows and frustrations, all of the things that make being human difficult at times.  As the fourth Eucharistic Prayer puts it, he became “one like us in all things but sin.”

    This belief in the doctrine of the Incarnation is essential for our Catholic faith, even our Christian religion.  One cannot not believe in the Incarnation and call oneself Christian.  It’s part of our Creed: “By the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man.”  This doctrine is so important, so holy to us, that at the mention of it in the creed, we are instructed to bow during those words, and on Christmas, we are called to genuflect at that time.  There is always a reason for any movement in the Liturgy, and the reason for our bowing or genuflecting is that the taking on of our flesh by our God is an occasion of extreme grace, unparalleled in any religion in the world.  If the Incarnation had not taken place, there never would have been a Cross and Resurrection.  First things are always first!

    And so it seems that it’s appropriate as we being our reflections on Matthew’s Gospel to begin with the Incarnation.  It’s even more appropriate that we do that during this season of Advent, whose very name means “coming.”  During Advent, we begin this wonderful period of waiting with the cry of St. John the Baptist,

    “A voice of one crying out in the desert,
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight his paths.’”

    And the movie and play Godspell famously does this with the wonderful refrain “Prepare ye the way of the Lord…”  You notice in the movie that this song accompanied the liturgical action of the players being baptized by the Baptist.  Their dancing after pledging repentance of the sins of their past life signifies the joy that we all share being on the precipice of something new this Advent.  They received the forerunner of our sacramental Baptism by the one who was the forerunner of Christ.  This baptism was a baptism for the forgiveness of sins like ours, but unlike ours, did not convey the Holy Spirit.  That would come later, after the death and Resurrection of Christ.  He had to return to the Father in order to send the Holy Spirit.

    But, as the song suggests, that baptism was essential to prepare the way for Christ.  The Benedictus, the Gospel canticle from the Church’s Morning Prayer, which is based on a passage from the Gospel of Luke, speaks of that baptism and the significance of the Baptist’s ministry:  “You my child will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before him to prepare his way.  To give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.”  Indeed, if our sins had never been forgiven, we would know nothing of salvation, indeed there really would be no salvation.  But that baptism of St. John literally prepared the way of the Lord by helping the people to know that God was doing something significant among them.  That was the reason for them dancing and splashing around in all that water: they too were on the precipice of something new, something incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully new.

    Now in Matthew’s Gospel, we have an infancy narrative – a story of the birth of Christ.  “Now this is how the birth of Jesus came about,” the Gospel begins.  Mary is found with child through the Holy Spirit, and Joseph doesn’t know what to believe.  But in Matthew, Joseph is the one who gets a visit from an angel, not Mary.  And he is the first one to hear a key phrase in Matthew’s Gospel: “do not be afraid” – “do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.”  Fear, for Matthew, is the cardinal sin, because it is fear that keeps us from responding in love to the movement of the Holy Spirit.  Apparently Mary had no such fear, because the beginning of the Gospel “finds” her already with child through the Holy Spirit.  The child is born to the couple and at the instruction of the angel, he is named Jesus, he is Emmanuel, God-with-us.

    In the movie, there is no infancy.  Christ comes at the end of John’s baptism sequence, and instructs John to baptize him because, as Jesus tells him, “it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”  As he is baptized, Jesus sings, “God save the people,” a prayer that is of course already being accomplished as he speaks.  The play seems to be a bit more pessimistic than the actual Gospel, because Jesus practically pleads for God’s mercy on his people, implying a relationship that was not nearly as close as the Gospels proclaim and our faith believes.  This is one of the little grains of salt we need to take from the movie; in fact it does seem to be an expression of the author’s take on the Jesus event.  So I’d just say don’t take Godspell as Gospel, if you know what I mean!

    And so the advent and Incarnation narratives give us some pause in these Advent days.  We have the opportunity to think about our own birth, or rebirth, in faith.  We get to make the paths straight and the way smooth for the coming of our Lord yet again.  Maybe these days find us struggling to come to a new place in our faith, a higher stage, a bold move.  We might tremble a bit at where God seems to be leading us through our study of Scripture.  But Matthew begs us to hear those all-important words – “be not afraid” – be not afraid to go where God and Scripture lead you.  Be not afraid to take the next step.  Be not afraid to ascend to that higher place God longs for you to be in right now.

  • Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent

    Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    I love the ending lines of today’s Gospel reading, because they call me to conversion all the time.  Listen again:

    “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.
    For I say to you,
    many prophets and kings desired to see what you see,
    but did not see it,
    and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

    It’s a call to conversion, because I think sometimes we get so caught up in ourselves and the things that make our life hectic, and we tend to see a lot of the events of our lives as nuisances.  People can try our patience, events can frustrate us.

    This is Advent, a time for new beginnings.  And so maybe this Gospel reading is calling all of us today to do something new, to hear something different, and to know the real blessings that come to us in our lives.

    So today, maybe we can make an effort to see our interactions with people not as nuisances, but as blessings.  What is the gift that God is giving us in this present moment?  What is the new thing that God is doing in our lives?  Is this frustrating circumstance a call for us to change our lives in some way?

    When people or events seem frustrating in these Advent days, maybe we can hear that wonderful invitation: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!”