Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Prayer

  • The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time [C]

    The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time [C]

    Today’s readings
    The parts in brackets were done at the 5pm Mass which included the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of the Catechumenate.

    Today’s readings remind me of one of my favorite theological facts: we were all created for something.  I think it takes the better part of our lives sometimes to see what that purpose is, but rest assured: God has a purpose.  In our first reading, God says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you…”  Those words are spoken to the prophet Jeremiah, but also to all of us.  God has personal knowledge of every person he has created, and dedicates each one of us to some special purpose.

    It’s an important thing for us to hear in this day and age, I think.  Sometimes I think we take the cynical scientific position that each life is a happy accident.  Molecules have just come together in the right way, and so here we are.  Whatever becomes of us, then, is either fate: something we inevitably take on, or happenstance: we take on the persona of whatever is expedient at any given time.  So if all that is true, then there doesn’t have to be a God, or if there is one, he has set things in motion and stepped back to observe our progress like someone viewing an exhibit at the zoo.

    But our faith teaches us that none of that is true.  Faith tells us that God is really active in the world, that he has personally created each one of us, that he desires our happiness, that he gives us grace to become what he created us to become.  That doesn’t mean that every life will be easy and that there will never be suffering or pain.  Sin is a consequence of free will, and the evils of disease and disaster and sadness all run through the world as a consequence of that.  If God desires our happiness, Satan certainly desires us to be unhappy, even unto eternity.

    So if there is purpose to our lives, and if God desires that we be happy, then that purpose is well expressed in today’s second reading from Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.  This letter is certainly familiar to anyone who has been to any number of church weddings.  It’s easy to see why so many couples would choose that reading: the romantic nature of the love they have for one another wants a reading as sweet and beautiful as this to be proclaimed at their wedding.  But I always tell them that they should be careful of what they’re asking for.  Because the love that St. Paul speaks of is not something that you feel, it’s more something that you do.  Or, even better, something that you are.

    Because, in any relationship, love is a choice.  If it were just a feeling that you automatically had for someone close to you, it would be so much easier.  If love happened automatically like that, there would be no abusive relationships.  Young people would never turn away from their families.  Parents would never neglect their children.  Spouses would never separate.  We wouldn’t need the sixth commandment, because no one would ever think to commit adultery.  Priests would never leave the priesthood because their love for their congregations and the Church, and above all, for God, would stop them from any other thoughts.

    And that’s why St. Paul has to tell the Corinthians – and us too! – that love is patient, kind, not jealous, and all the rest.  In fact, that passage from St. Paul defines love in fifteen different ways.  Because love absolutely has to address pomposity, inflated egos, rudeness, self-indulgence, and much more.  All of us, no matter what our state of life, must make a choice to love every single day.  If you are married, you have to choose to love your spouse; if you are a parent, you have to choose to love your children.  Children must choose to love their parents; priests have to choose to love their congregations, and the list goes on.  Love is the most beautiful thing in the world, but love is also hard work.

    As today’s Liturgy of the Word unfolds, we can see that love – true love – makes demands on us, demands that may in fact make us unpopular.  In the first reading, Jeremiah is told that he was known and loved by God even before he was formed in his mother’s womb.  That love demanded of him that he roll up his sleeves and be a prophet to the nations.  God gives him the rather ominous news that his prophecy won’t be accepted by everybody, that the people would fight against him.  But even so, Jeremiah was to stand up to them and say everything that God commanded him, knowing that God would never let him be crushed, nor would God let the people prevail over Jeremiah.

    For Jesus, it was those closest to him who rejected him.  In the Gospel today, while the people in the synagogue were initially amazed at his gracious words, soon enough they were asking “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” as if to say, “Who is he to be talking to us this way?”  When Jesus tells them that his ministry will make God’s love known to the Gentiles – those whom God had supposedly not chosen – it is then that they rise up and drive him out of the city, presumably to stone him to death.

    So we have been created in love, created to love, and created for love.  God is love itself, love in its most perfect form, and out of that love, he set us and the world and everything there is into being.  Out of love for us, God continues to be involved in our lives and in our world, giving us grace, and revealing himself to us when we seek him with all our hearts.  And when we seek him with all our hearts, we do that out of love for God, which is in fact God’s gift to us!  Love is a complex and beautiful thing and love is the purpose of our lives.  Love is a still more excellent way than anything we have in the world!

    [God continues to love so much that he calls people to come close to him every day.  Today we celebrate with Korrin her call to become part of God’s family in our Church.  Today, she has joined the order of catechumens, one of the ancient orders of the Church.  Unlike unbaptized people who are not catechumens, Korrin and other catechumens have rights in the Church.  They have a right to assistance as they grow in faith by learning about the teachings of the Church and participating in works of service in the parish.  They also have a right to be married in the Church and to receive Christian burial, which we hope won’t be necessary any time soon!

    [Korrin’s call is an important one for us to witness.  As we see her grow in her faith, we recognize that God continues to call all of us to grow closer to him as well.  Her journey, which we will observe in the public rituals of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, calls us to continue the journey wherever we find ourselves on it.  God’s love continues to call Korrin and all of us to grow closer to him each and every day.]

    May the call of all of our lives remind us that we are all embraced in God’s love, and that because of God’s love, we all must decide to love in our own way, according to our own vocation and station in life, every single moment of our lives.  May our love for God, our love for others, and our love for ourselves permeate and give new purpose to a world that has forgotten love, and forgotten how to love rightly.

  • The Third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I want to begin my homily by reminding you of the words we heard in our first reading from Nehemiah:

    He read out of the book from daybreak till midday,
    in the presence of the men, the women,
    and those children old enough to understand;
    and all the people listened attentively to the book of the law.

    So if you think my homily is long, just think about that!  We could be going from daybreak to midday!

    Today we’re talking about teaching and the Scriptures, which is very appropriate today as we begin Catholic Schools Week.  This week reminds us that we have the gift of a wonderful school that teaches not just the usual subjects you find in every school, but also helps to teach the faith and gives witness to the joy of the Scriptures being fulfilled.

    But as far as that goes, we are all, always and forever, in the “school” of the faith.  We don’t ever graduate from that school, until, of course, that great day, when we stand before our Lord to be judged, relying on his mercy and on our relationship with him, which is always a gift.  Those who unite themselves to our Lord in faith throughout their lives, those who continue to study the Scriptures and see them fulfilled in our hearing, they have the promise of eternal life in the Kingdom of God.

    Saint Jerome underlined this for us.  He said that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ, because for all of us who did not live in the same time as Jesus, we rely on the Scriptures not just to tell us who Christ was, but also to have a relationship with him, remembering that Jesus is always present in the proclamation of the Word of God.

    There are three Scriptural moments in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  First, the Word is proclaimed.  Second, that Word has an effect on its hearers.  Finally, the Word is fulfilled.  So first, the Word is proclaimed, and we see that twice.  First, in the first reading, Ezra the priest reads from the scroll from daybreak to midday, in the presence of the men, the women, and those children old enough to understand.  It was quite the proclamation, and also included a kind of homily, apparently, since the reading tells us that Ezra provided an interpretation.  The second time we see this is in the Gospel reading.  Jesus takes the scroll of the law, and finds a particular passage from the prophet Isaiah and proclaims it.  He too provides an interpretation, in the form of his very life.

    The second Scriptural moment is the Word’s effect on its hearers.  For Ezra, the Word produced a very emotional response.  The people bowed down in the presence of the Word, and began to weep.  The weeping is presumably because, hearing the Word, they realized how far they were from keeping its commandments.  I think we might have that same reaction sometimes.  Nehemiah then instructs them not to weep, but instead to rejoice and celebrate, because the proclamation of the Word on this holy day was an occasion for great joy.  We don’t get any idea of how the rest of the congregation at the synagogue reacted to Jesus’ proclamation of Isaiah, but one would think that it would have been a pretty tame reaction until he announced that he was the fulfillment of the prophecy.  Then we can imagine they had a lot to say and a perhaps indignant reaction.

    Finally, the Word is fulfilled.  Jesus’ instruction in the Gospel that the words of Isaiah have been fulfilled in the synagogue-goers hearing tells us that Word is never intended to be a static thing.  We do not just passively sit through the proclamation of the Word, nod our heads, and move on to the Eucharist.  The Word is a living thing and it is intended to have an effect on its hearers.  Indeed, the Word is always proclaimed with the intent that it be fulfilled, and that fulfillment began with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  In his person, all of the promises of the Old Testament are brought into being, and the real hope of the world begins.

    We continue to celebrate the Word in those three moments.  We come now come to this holy place to hear the Word proclaimed, and have it interpreted in the homily.  Our Liturgy of the Word, then, goes back to ancient times, and looks much the way Ezra proclaimed the Scriptures.  Except, of course, it’s a lot shorter now!  We continue to be affected by the Word’s proclamation.  Of the stories we hear, we have our favorites, and there are stories that move us within, emotionally and spiritually.  We too may be moved to tears as we hear of God’s goodness, and think of the way we have fallen short.  We too need to hear Nehemiah proclaim that the preaching of the Word is a time for great joy.  Finally, the Word continues to be fulfilled among us.  Having sent his Holy Spirit, Jesus continues to be the fulfillment of Scripture, every time someone hears the Word and acts on it.

    I want to try a bit of an object lesson.  Jesus, quoting from Isaiah, said that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him.  That is true too for all of us who have been Baptized and Confirmed, because we receive the Holy Spirit in both Sacraments. So I would ask all of you to close your eyes for a minute and listen to these words from Isaiah spoken not just to Jesus, but also to all of us:

    The Spirit of the Lord is upon you,
    because he has anointed you
    to bring glad tidings to the poor.
    He has sent you to proclaim liberty to captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
    to let the oppressed go free,
    and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

    You may find yourself ill-equipped to break people out of prison.  But I know that you know at least one person who is in some kind of prison.  Maybe they are imprisoned by illness or old age.  Maybe they are imprisoned by fear of acting to better their lives.  These people need you to journey with them and be present to them, thereby setting those captives free.  You may not be too sure about how you can proclaim recovery of sight to the blind.  Maybe you don’t even know anyone who is physically blind.  But you probably know somebody who is blind to the fact that they are in an unhealthy or abusive relationship.  Or maybe you know somebody who is blind to the fact that they are suffering from an addiction of some sort.  Maybe you know somebody who is blind to the fact that someone they are close to needs them in a special way.  You can be present to these who are blind and to gently but firmly lead them to recovery of sight.  You probably have no idea how to let the oppressed go free.  But you may have an hour or two to serve a hot meal to those oppressed by homelessness at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen.  You may be able to spend some time occasionally with those who are oppressed by not knowing how to read.  By giving of yourself, you can let these oppressed go free.

    We have been anointed with the Holy Spirit in order to bring glad tidings to the poor.  By acting selflessly, we can turn things around in our own little corner of the world.  By hearing and acting on the Word, we can proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.  May the Words of this Holy Book be fulfilled today – and every day – in your hearing.

  • The Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So we’ve taken down the Christmas decorations, and we won’t see the lights and poinsettias and manger until next year.  Yet we’re not quite done with the Christmas season in the Church.  Traditionally, some aspects of Christmas joy remain in our Liturgy through February 2nd, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  Today is an example of that.  I almost think this should be called the Third Sunday of Epiphany.  I say that because the Church has traditionally held that there are three traditional Epiphanies.

    We’ll back up just a bit here.  The word Epiphany, as we discussed two weeks ago on that feast, means a “manifestation;” we often think of it as a kind of “aha!” moment.  It is basically God doing a “God thing” so that we will sit up and take notice.  And so on the Feast of the Epiphany, we traditionally think of the first Scriptural Epiphany: the visit of the Magi to the Christ child.  The other two traditional Epiphanies are, first, what we celebrated last week: the baptism of the Lord in the Jordan River by his cousin, Saint John the Baptist.  And then what we have in the Gospel this week: the miracle of changing water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana.

    So in each of these Epiphanies, we learn something about our Lord.  In the first Epiphany, the Magi bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, which reveals that this is no ordinary child.  No, this is the Child come from God who is to be anointed priest, prophet and king.  The myrrh in particular foreshadows Jesus’ suffering and death on the Cross, all to pay the price for our sins and bring in the joy of God’s mercy and redemption.  In this Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the One who has come to manifest God’s love in an incredibly generous way.

    In the second Epiphany, Jesus is baptized.  John’s baptism was for the forgiveness of sins, which clearly was not necessary for Jesus.  Instead, his baptism consecrates the waters of baptism, so that every person ever to be baptized is washed with the same water that touched our Lord.  In our own baptisms now, we can inherit divinity because the Divine man, Jesus Christ, was washed in that same water.  Because Jesus humbled himself to be baptized, because he humbled himself to share in our humanity, we can be exalted to share in his divinity.  In this Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the One who claims all of broken humanity to be made new by God’s mercy.

    In the third Epiphany, Jesus changes water into wine.  But we know the symbolism of these things.  Whenever we see water in the Scriptures, the Church thinks of Baptism, and whenever we see wine in the Scriptures, the Church thinks of the Eucharist, the blood of Christ.  Here gallons of water, set aside for washing – another baptismal image – are miraculously turned into the best wine ever, poured out in superabundance to quench the thirst of those who gather for a feast.  Clearly these are Eucharistic images for us.  In this Epiphany, Jesus is revealed as the One who provides life-giving blood, the best wine ever, for all those who are baptized, all those who follow him in faith.

    Over these three weeks, we have come to see who Jesus is in some very particular ways.  If we had never heard of him before, but came to Mass these three weeks, we would have learned of a God who cares enough for us, his creatures, to provide a way for them to be healed from their sinfulness, cured of their brokenness, and changed from profanity to divinity, from death to eternity.  If we had never before heard the Gospel, these three weeks would reveal very good news indeed!

    But, of course, we have heard the Gospel and been raised in the faith.  And so these three weeks are an opportunity for us to look once again at our precious Lord, in the great outpouring of God’s love that the Incarnation truly is, and see that he continues to reveal himself and his grace in so many ways among us every day.  Have you had an experience of Epiphany this week?  Has God given you what you need – probably through someone else – in just the way you needed it at some time recently?  Have you seen God’s love active in a new way this Christmas season?  If so, now is the time to give thanks for that experience.

    And we have to remember that Jesus wants us to be Epiphany as well.  God wants to use us in some way to reveal his love and grace to others.  It doesn’t have to be a bit and incredible experience.  It might just be doing, as Saint Therese of Liseaux used to say, little things with great love.  Then others can see Christ at work in you and me.  Then we can be Epiphany and shine the bright light of Christ’s love in a world that is sometimes dark and weary.  How do we do that?  Mary’s instruction is all that we need to hear: “Do whatever he tells you.”

  • Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It seems like just yesterday that John the Baptist was baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River.  Oh wait, it was just yesterday!  But today’s reading fast forwards a bit and takes us to a time after John has been arrested.  John isn’t dead yet, not yet out of the picture, but clearly he is decreasing, as he said in Saturday’s Gospel reading, so that Jesus can increase.

    And Jesus is certainly increasing.  His ministry is kicking into full swing, and he begins by preaching that the kingdom is at , and he begins to call his followers.  Simon and Andrew, James and John, two sets of brothers, two groups of fishermen, give up their nets and their boats and their fathers and turn instead to casting nets to catch men and women for God’s kingdom.

    You know, even though today is the first day of Ordinary Time, we continue some aspects of Christmas and the Epiphany right up until February second, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So today’s Gospel fits right in with that.  Today’s Gospel gives us a little more light to see what Jesus is up to.  He calls us all to repentance and to accept the Gospel and the Kingdom of God.  He says to us just as he said to Simon, Andrew, James and John: “Come follow me.”  The year ahead can be an exciting spiritual journey for us.  Who knows what Jesus will do in us and through us and with us to further the kingdom of God?  We just have to answer that wonderful invitation – “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

  • Saturday after Epiphany

    Saturday after Epiphany

    Today’s readings

    “He must increase; I must decrease.”

    By these words, St. John the Baptist indicates that the Epiphany, the manifestation of our Lord in the flesh, is complete.  John’s disciples have got it wrong; they took offense at Jesus baptizing when he himself had been baptized by John.  They assumed that because John had baptized Jesus, that Jesus must in some way be inferior to John.  But John knows his mission as the Forerunner.  He knows that his ministry was one of paving the way for Jesus and the Gospel.  He knows that his own baptism was a mere precursor of the baptism that Jesus would bring, a baptism that imparts the fullness of the Holy Spirit to all believers.

    “He must increase; I must decrease.”

    St. John the Evangelist tells us in his letters that we are to be on guard against those who come in the name of Jesus but are not of him.  We must be wary of pretenders and totally turn away from false idols.  He has spent this past week in our first readings giving us the standards of discernment that help us to know the Truth.  Anyone of the Truth will testify to the Incarnation of Jesus in the flesh.  Anyone of the Truth will love deeply, and will love neighbors as well as God.  Anyone of the Truth, he tells us today, will cast out sin, from himself and from others.  Even though he may not be perfect, still he will battle sin and turn to Christ incarnate in the flesh for the indwelling of the Spirit, for the grace of his baptism.

    “He must increase; I must decrease.”

    Christ came in the flesh because, as the Psalmist tells us today, the Lord takes delight in his people.  As his people then, must also delight in him.  We must remember that we are all in the service of the one who came to set us free.  We must remember that our own thoughts, our own desires, all of these are not the be-all and end-all of existence, and quite often, we must die to them in order that God be manifested among us.  As we offer and prepare our gifts for the Eucharist today, may we also offer the decreasing of ourselves in order to pave the way for the increasing of Jesus Christ.

  • Thursday after Epiphany

    Thursday after Epiphany

    Today’s readings

    The feast of Epiphany is a celebration of the fact that Christian life looks like something.  Because Jesus has appeared on the earth and taken our own human form, because he has walked among us and lived our life and died our death, we know what the Christian Way looks like.  We know that the Christian life consists of embracing our humanity, with all its weaknesses and imperfections.  We know that it consists of living our own lives well, mindful of the needs of others, forgiving as we have been forgiven, and spreading the light of the Gospel wherever it is that God puts us.  The Galileans in the synagogue in today’s Gospel were amazed at Jesus’ speaking words of grace.  We too are called to do this so that all will recognize in us the presence of Christ.

    Because Christ is still manifest among us.  Every encounter with someone else is an opportunity for Epiphany.  It is an opportunity for us to look for the presence of Christ in that other person, and for them to see Christ at work in us.  How we do that depends on the situation, certainly, but it must always be our top priority if we are eager to be called Christians.  John’s words in the first reading are clear, and are words of indictment on those times we forget to be the Epiphany to others: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

    Christ is made manifest in all of us and among all of us.  In the ordinariness of our lives, we can find Christ’s grace abundantly blessing us, or we can reject it.  If we make it our priority to be Christ’s presence in the world in every encounter with a brother or sister, we may find that we are blessed with epiphany upon epiphany, constantly growing in God’s grace.  This is all part of our faith, of course, and it is this faith, as John tells us, that conquers the world.

  • Monday after Epiphany

    Monday after Epiphany

    Today’s readings

    “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

    Perhaps our devotion for this Epiphany week should be to pray the Mysteries of Light of the Rosary.  Epiphany is a time of manifestation, of light coming into the dark place that our world can be at times.  We long to see, and more than that we long to see Christ, the one who comes with peace and justice to make all things right.

    Today’s Mystery of Light, then would be “Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God with its call to repentance,” the third Mystery of Light.  Those, in fact, are his very words this morning.  This preaching is accompanied by the great and mighty acts of healing, which have the crowds flocking to him in droves.  They definitely see in Jesus a light that shines into the darkness of their lives, marked as they are by illness both physical and mental, but also perhaps overwhelmingly spiritual.

    But there were all sorts of people who didn’t flock to Jesus.  Many saw him as a charlatan and thought his healings were smoke and mirrors.  They preferred the darkness.  The same is true today.  Many hear the word and turn away from it.  Many hear of the kingdom with its call to repentance and choose to reject it.  But we cannot be that way.  We have the Light, and we are called to live in the Light.  Living in that Light, as the Psalmist tells us, gives us the nations for our inheritance.

  • The Epiphany of the Lord: Journey and Vocation

    The Epiphany of the Lord: Journey and Vocation

    Today’s readings

    “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?”  This was the question those magi asked after their long and harrowing journey.  They had observed the star at its rising and were proceeding to pay tribute to the newborn king.  They brought with them gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  We know the story well enough; we’ve heard it so many times.  But maybe this time, we can make a resolution not to lose sight of this wonderful event in the year to come.

    We celebrate Epiphany today, and Epiphany is a revelation, a manifestation of God here among us earthly creatures.  Epiphany is God doing a God-thing so that we will sit up and take notice.  But it takes some awareness to perceive such an Epiphany, such a wonderful event.  We, like the magi, have to ask the question, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?”

    To answer that question, we well might look toward our manger scenes, or assume we’ll only find him in church or in our prayer books, or in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.  And, of course, we will find the Lord there – those are wonderful places to start.  But the event of the Epiphany of the Lord reminds us that God wants to do a God thing in us in all sorts of circumstances.  So now we have to find God at work, at school, in our homes, in our community.

    Can we see the Lord in the demanding customer, the needy co-worker, the sulky teenager, the hovering parent, the snippy public servant?  We have to.  We dare not ever miss the opportunity to seek out the newborn King in every situation!  How could we ever turn up our nose at an opportunity for grace?  Why would we ever knowingly miss a situation that could help us grow in holiness?

    Finding the Lord is a journey that we all must make, at every stage of our lives.  God wants to do God-things in us all the time, leading us this way and that, helping us to know him in more profound ways and more relevant ways at all the stops and starts of our life-long journey of faith.

    For all of us, as we pursue the question of where is Christ in our lives, and as we make the journey with him, we are called also to discern our vocation.  Everyone has a vocation: some as parents, some as single people, some as ordained priests or consecrated religious.  God has a plan for all of our lives, and it is up to us on this Epiphany day, as well as every other day, to continue to seek clarity of that plan and to be certain we are following it as best we can.

    Where is the newborn king for us?  Are we ready to make the journey?

  • Christmas Weekday: The Most Holy Name of Jesus

    Christmas Weekday: The Most Holy Name of Jesus

    Today’s readings

    Not everyone has St. John the Baptist around to point out the Messiah to them.  Lots of us, I think, at one point or another, would have loved to have been in the sandals of those apostles when Jesus was passing by.  As much as we believe that Christ is present in every person, place and time, I’m sure lots of us would love to have St. John the Baptist point out when we’re missing Christ’s presence in some person or situation.  It’s harder when you don’t have the Forerunner showing you the way.

    But not everyone even recognized Christ – or at least who he was – in that time and place either.  St. John tells us in our first reading that people don’t recognize that we are children of God because they didn’t recognize God in Christ in the first place.  So if we miss Jesus in some situation or person, well, our mistake is not unique to us.

    During the Christmas season, we are celebrating the Incarnation: the presence of God among us.  Of course, this isn’t just about the presence of God among us two thousand years ago, but his real presence among us in every person, in every place and blessing, and especially in the Eucharist.  During this time, we might gaze on the manger and long to have been there gazing into the face of Christ.  We can gaze into the face of Christ today by taking time for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament or time to reach out to someone in need.  During this time, we might imagine ourselves next to the Manger on that night long ago, and long to have been there, holding the Christ Child in our arms.  In a few minutes, we can come to the Altar and receive our Jesus and hold him in our hands in the Eucharist, receiving him body and blood, soul and divinity.  Jesus is just as incarnate, just as Emmanuel, God-with-us, now as he was back then.

    We will be strengthened by the Word and the Eucharist today to go forward and see Christ all around us.  Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!

  • The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God

    The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God

    Today’s readings

    One of the ways that I think we come to know about ourselves and our families, is the shared memories and stories that our parents and senior members of our families share with us over time.  I always enjoyed hearing stories from my grandparents about Mom and Dad, and my aunts and uncles, when they were growing up.  Now, we get to hear stories about me and my sisters.  Those are sometimes a little harder to enjoy!

    I wonder if Jesus felt the same way about the stories about him that Mary must have told.  Luke tells us of all the amazing things that were observed and said about Jesus, even in his infancy, and all these things are what Mary kept and reflected on in her heart.  I think it’s fair to say that she may not have understood all of them at the time, or at least she didn’t know where they were leading, although she certainly knew that her son was someone very special, the Son of God.  And so she keeps all these things and reflects on them in her heart.  She is the first, really, to receive the Gospel – observing it, as it were, while it was happening and unfolding.  And so she is the model for all of us hearers of the Word; we too catch little phrases or episodes that we later reflect on in our hearts.  When we first hear them, it might well be that we don’t understand them.  But we know that we can later reflect on them in our hearts, and the Holy Spirit will reveal their meaning.

    The Church gives us this wonderful feast of Mary on this, the octave day of Christmas.  In a very real way, the Church still celebrates this day as Christmas Day – that’s one of the wonderful things about being Catholic.  We get to celebrate this glorious event for many days.  But to celebrate the eighth day of Christmas as the feast of Mary, the Holy Mother of God is a wonderful and appropriate thing to do.  We all know that we are indebted to Mary’s faith, a faith which made possible the salvation of the whole world and everyone ever to live in it.

    More than that, Mary’s faith is a model for us.  Much like Mary, we often do not know where God is leading us, but in faith we are called to say “yes” anyway.  How willing are we to do that?  We are often called upon to take a leap of faith, make a fiat, and cooperate with God’s saving plan for us and for others.  Just like Mary, we have no way of knowing where that might lead us; just like Mary, that might lead to heartache and sorrow; but just like Mary, it will lead to redemption beyond belief, beyond anything we can imagine.

    And so, yes, Mary is the Mother of God.  And let me tell you, this was a doctrine that came without its price.  People fought over whether a human woman could ever be the mother of God.  How would that be possible?  But the alternative, really, would be to say that Jesus was not God, because we clearly know that Mary was his mother.  So to say that Mary was not the Mother of God is to say in a very precarious way that Jesus was not God, and we know just as surely that that would be incorrect.  Jesus was fully human but also fully divine, his human and divine natures intertwined in his person without any separation or division or degradation of one nature at the expense of another.  And so, as theologians teach us, Mary is the Mother of God the Word according to his human nature.  Every once in a while, when I’m feeling particularly theologically courageous, I reflect on that statement and marvel at its beauty.

    So, Mary is the Mother of God, but Mary is also the Mother of the Church, leading its members to her Son Jesus and to faith in God.  She is mother of priests, caring for us in a special way and interceding for the faithful completion of our mission.  She is the mother of mothers, interceding for them and showing them how to nurture faith in their children.  She is the mother of the faithful, showing us how to cooperate fully with God’s plan.  She is mother of scripture scholars and those who just love the scriptures, having seen the Word unfold before her and treasuring it in her heart.  She is the mother of disciples, having been the first of the disciples and the most dedicated of them all.  She is the Mother of God, and our mother, and we cannot sing our Christmas carols without singing her praises too.  We honor her faith and example today, and we ask for her intercession for our lives, for our families, for our Church and our world.

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