Category: Prayer

  • Monday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time: Respect Life

    Monday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time: Respect Life

    Yesterday was the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that in effect legalized abortion in the United States.  The Church teaches us that abortion is a violation of the fifth commandment, which states: “Thou shall not kill.”  Participation in an abortion – which includes having one, paying for one, encouraging one, performing one, and helping in the performance of one – is a mortal sin.  Because we oppose abortion, we as a Church are committed to making alternatives to abortion more available, including adoption, financial assistance to parents and especially mothers in need, and education about the sanctity of life.

    Since 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, our society has tumbled down the slippery slope of devaluing life and we are seeing the rotten fruits of it all over. War, violence, hatred, lack of concern for the poor and needy, lack of respect for the elderly and terminally ill, all of these things are symptoms of the culture of death that surrounds us. Far from liberating women and giving them choice over the use of their bodies, the legalization of abortion has driven many women to have an abortion simply because they thought that was their only option or because it was more convenient for family or the father.

    And respecting life goes beyond merely opposing abortion.  Our Church teaches us that we cannot claim to be Pro Life if we are in fact only anti-abortion. Our claim to righteousness has to be based on more than never having had the disastrous occasion of having to choose to participate in an abortion, or it’s not really righteousness at all. If we pray to end abortion and then do not attend to our obligation to the poor, or if we choose to support the death penalty, or if we feel like it’s okay to help a person die if they are sick, or if we engage in racial bigotry, then we are not in fact Pro Life. Every single life is sacred, no matter what we may think of it, purely because God created each life after his very own image and likeness.

    And I say this not because I don’t think that abortion is anything short of a disaster: it most certainly is.  Abortion ends the life of a child, it ruins the lives of everyone involved, it damages society in ways we may never fully know.  I say this because it’s way too easy for us to oppose abortion and then call ourselves Pro Life and then go out and violate life in some other circumstance. We must be very careful of doing that, because not being completely Pro Life weakens our witness to the sanctity of life.  The world is watching us closely.  And we absolutely cannot be at all weak in our witness for life: our society needs our strength and passion for life so that there can be conversion and change and unity and peace.

    And so today we pray for the sanctity of life, we pray for all whose lives are in danger, we pray for those who are in the sad position of ending human life.  And most of all, we pray for an end to the culture of death that surrounds us.

  • The Third Sunday of Ordinary Time: No Time Like the Present!

    The Third Sunday of Ordinary Time: No Time Like the Present!

    Today’s readings

    One of the things that I think plagues us modern people is that we tend to have delusions of eternity.  By that I mean, we tend to have a view that we have all the time in the world, and so we put off things that are truly important, because we always think we have plenty of time.  We put off going to confession, because we don’t have time to think about that right now, and besides it takes time to examine our conscience.  We put off being of service, because the kids have sports and we don’t even know where to start.  We put off our prayer life because we’re exhausted and it’s hard to quiet ourselves and let God speak to us.  It’s no wonder someone once said, “One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow.”

    So the readings today really speak to us.  The theme today is that there really is no time like the present.    In our first reading, after some procrastinating of his own, and ending up in the belly of a big fish, God has him disgorged on the shores of Nineveh to do what he was sent to do: preach repentance to the Ninevites.  The Ninevites were unspeakably evil to the Israelites, so it’s no wonder Jonah dragged his feet when it came to preaching to them.  Why would they listen to him?  And who cares if they didn’t?  Let God destroy them, he thought, and be out of our hair forever.  But that was not God’s will.  So he preaches repentance to them, and notice what happens: they immediately put on sackcloth and ashes and take up a fast.  They do penance for their evil deeds right now, and thus God repents of the punishment he had planned to inflict on them.

    In our second reading, Saint Paul is very clear with the Corinthians: time is running out.  And because time is running out, there is no time like the present to cast off the concerns of this earthly existence.  So stop worrying about purely human relationships, stop worrying about weeping, rejoicing, buying and selling and using the world.  Because there’s not going to be a world here for long.

    Now, I should mention that Saint Paul was certainly writing out of the view that people of his day generally had, which is that the second coming of Christ and the final judgment would happen very soon.  It did not, obviously, happen in their lifetimes, but the message is still valid.  We don’t know how much time we will have, and so ultimately we must always be prepared to go to heaven.  We can’t be putting it off: we have to cast off cares that are purely rooted in this life and hitch our wagons to what will bring us to the life to come.

    And so we see the issue brought out in the call of the first apostles.  Jesus passes by a fishing town and calls to Andrew, Peter, James and John.  They don’t hesitate for a second when he tells them to “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”  They leave behind the boats, their fishing equipment, their family and even the workers who were hired to help them and follow Jesus.

    I always wonder what made them do that.  I mean, here Jesus just passes by, gives them a one-sentence command, and they drop everything and follow him.  There was no plan laid out, he didn’t give them a bunch of reasons why they should do what he asked of them.  He just commanded, and they just followed.  Now, it occurs to me that perhaps they knew about Jesus beforehand.  Maybe they had heard him speak or at least heard people talk about Jesus.  So perhaps they were very eager to meet him.

    And one wonders, too, how good they actually were at fishing.  Other stories in the Gospel seem to suggest they didn’t have much success.  They really never catch anything worth noting unless Jesus is there, telling them to put out into deep water, even though they had been hard at it all night.  Then they bring in hundreds of fish.

    So maybe their quick obedience to the call of discipleship is a combination of things: they have a hard life and maybe aren’t making much of a living; they probably heard Jesus talk or heard about the miracles he had been performing; he spoke of a better life and the promise of eternity.  Maybe all of this made them very eager to jump at the chance to follow Jesus.  But whatever the reason is, we need to see that when they are called they follow immediately.  They don’t put it off; they don’t say, hey, let us bring in fish for today and send the hired men home.  They don’t ask for time to say goodbye to their family, they don’t hesitate even for a moment.  There is no time like the present: come, follow me.

    We disciples also are called to be fishers of men.  And there is no time like the present.  We may not have tomorrow, so we have to preach the Good News to those God puts in our path, through our words and most importantly through our actions.  We don’t know when Jesus will return in glory and demand – as he is most worthy to demand – an accounting of our life and our blessings, so we have to reach out and be of service to every person in need, no matter who they are, even if they are as unspeakably evil as the Ninevites.  And on this day of prayer for the Sanctity of Human Life, in remembrance of the sad decision of Roe v Wade in 1973, we have to be a people who pray and write our legislators and take a stand for life in any way we can.  Thousands of babies die from abortion every year, the sick elderly are ignored, racism and discrimination continue even in this day and age, and so much more.  We know, we have been taught that life is precious from conception to natural death.  We need to tell the world how urgent that is so that no more lives would be wasted or suppressed for convenience.

    The work of discipleship is of the utmost importance and is extremely urgent, souls need to be saved, hearts need to be won for the kingdom, lives need to be changed – and so we have to be willing to do it right now, not just when we’re good and ready, not when we have a few moments, not when things settle down a bit.

    The Kingdom of God is that important, brothers and sisters.  When will we respond?  When will we give everything to follow God’s call in our own lives?  It better be now, because the world as we know it is passing away.

  • Friday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time: Christian Unity

    Friday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time: Christian Unity

    Today’s readings (Mass for the school children)

    In today’s Gospel, Jesus calls his Apostles.  These are the men who will be closest to him and will follow after him throughout his ministry on earth.  Even though these men weren’t the most popular people in the area, even though they weren’t wealthy, even though they may not even have been the smartest, he called them to do something very special.  During the time they followed him, they learned from Jesus how to live the Gospel, how to bring God’s love to others.  After Jesus died and rose and ascended into heaven, it was up to them, then, to continue to bring that Gospel message to every person on earth.  These men became the Church.

    This week is the annual week of prayer for Christian Unity.  During this week we remember that Christ came to found one and only one Church – Jesus didn’t send the apostles out with different messages, it was just one message and just one Gospel, so just one Church.  But sadly, over time, people have messed that up through our sin and pride.  Now there are many kinds of Churches.  There are Catholics and Methodists and Episcopalians and so many more.  You may have friends or family members who are not Catholic, but Christians of other denominations like this.  These are all good people, all our brothers and sisters, but Jesus never meant for us to be apart.

    The good news that we celebrate this week is that some of that is changing.  Slowly, but surely.  Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists are beginning to come to agreement on an essential teaching about how we are saved.  Orthodox and Catholics are beginning to talk about Eucharist and the role of the pope.  Even Catholics and Evangelicals are coming together in many ways to promote the sanctity of life from conception to natural death.

    We still have a long way to go, but these steps are signs of progress.  We focus on what we all believe in: a loving God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; the hope of eternal life because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the gift of the Holy Spirit, our common Baptism and the promise of everlasting life in heaven.  From these we can begin our prayer for unity, that, as Jesus always intended, we may all be one.  Just as he called those Twelve Apostles, he now calls us to reach out to those who are not one with us and to tell them how much God loves them.  And he calls us always to pray that we would be one Church, one Body in Christ.

  • The Baptism of the Lord

    The Baptism of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    Today is the last day of the Christmas Season. What a wonderful gift we have as Catholics to celebrate the birth of our Lord for an extended period of time! Yesterday was the Epiphany of the Lord, a time to celebrate Christ manifested in the flesh, the greatest gift of God to his creation. On the occasion of the Epiphany, we have three traditional readings. The first is the reading about the magi visiting the Christ Child. The second is the wedding feast at Cana, where Christ turned water into wine, the first of his miracles. And the third is the Gospel we have today, of Christ being baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan.

    As we heard yesterday, Epiphany means “manifestation.” In each of these Gospels, Christ is manifest in our world in a different way. The magi celebrated that this baby was truly the manifestation of God in our world, because no other birth would have been occasioned by such great astrological signs. The wedding feast at Cana celebrates that Jesus is no ordinary man, that he had come to change the world by the shedding of his blood, just as he changed the water into wine. And today his baptism celebrates that Christ is manifest in the weakness of human flesh to identify himself with sinners through baptism.

    So if Jesus Christ identified himself with us sinners through baptism, then we who have been baptized must also identify ourselves with him. We must manifest him in the world through living the Gospel and following in his ways. Today we hear in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles that Jesus, having been anointed with the Holy Spirit, “went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil.” That’s the model he set for all who would be baptized as he was. So we baptized ones must do the same.

    It is easy to see how we can go about doing good. There are thousands of opportunities to do that in our lives. Every day there is an opportunity to do good in ordinary and extraordinary ways. All we have to do is decide to live our baptismal call and do it.  Healing those oppressed by the devil might seem harder to do. But there are lots of ways to cast out demons. Teaching something to another person is a way to cast out the demons of ignorance. Reaching out to an elderly neighbor is a way to cast out the demons of loneliness. Educating ourselves on the evils of racism is a way to cast out the demons of hatred. We have opportunities to heal those oppressed by the devil all the time. All we have to do is decide to do it.

    On this Epiphany Day, on this Christmas day, Christ, born among us, enters the waters of baptism to sanctify them through his body. Our own baptism is a share in this great baptism and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We who have been baptized then are literally INSPIRED – given the Holy Spirit – in order to continue to make Christ manifest in our world. All we have to do is decide to do it.

  • The Epiphany of the Lord

    The Epiphany of the Lord

    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?”

    The journey of the magi was undoubtedly long and arduous.  T.S. Eliot hints at this in his poem, “Journey of the Magi:”

    A cold coming we had of it,
    Just the worst time of the year
    For a journey, and such a long journey:
    The ways deep and the weather sharp,
    The very dead of winter.

    It is well for us to pay heed to this poem.  Because we too make a journey to the Epiphany of the Lord.  We too are seeking the newborn king.  It is the goal of our lives to be seekers, to find Christ in our world: to meet him in the poor and marginalized, to feed him in the hungry, to minister to his needs as we give of ourselves to others.  Some days, the journey might be joy-filled and glorious, other days it may be long and difficult.

    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?

  • Mary, the Mother of God

    Mary, the Mother of God

    Today’s readings

    Today, on the Octave day of Christmas, we have an opportunity on this Christmas Day to pause and celebrate Mary, the mother of God. This solemnity is a special one for us as Catholics because people for a long time argued over whether Mary, a human being, could possibly be the mother of God. Eventually, the Holy Spirit led the Church to realize that downplaying Mary’s role in all of this really downplays Jesus’ divinity, so denying that Mary was the Mother of God was a substantial part of the heresy of Nestorianism. To say that Mary is not the Mother of God is, in some way, to say that Jesus is not God, and that of course, is not what we believe. So, for centuries the Church has taught that “Mary is the Mother of God the Word according to his human nature.”

    Sister Sarah made me memorize that line in my second year of seminary, and I’ll never forget it. Basically, there are two parts. Mary is the Mother of God the Word: Mary, chosen from all eternity to be a virgin inviolate and a fit Mother for God, is blessed by conceiving the only Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Calling Jesus “God the Word” in this definition takes us to the opening verses of the Gospel of John which tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Word is traditionally believed to be the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

    The second part of the definition asserts that Mary is his mother according to his human nature. We know that Jesus was both human and divine, and both natures coexisted in Jesus Christ without any diminishment of either nature at the expense of the other. We also know that only God himself could beget God the Word, but it would have to take a human woman, a very special human woman, to be the mother of his human nature. Jesus is consubstantial, of the same substance, with the Father, as we pray in the Creed, but in a very real sense, he is also consubstantial with us through Mary, in his human nature.

    St. Paul tells us today that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters.” Today we rejoice in Mary’s faith that God’s promises to the human race would be fulfilled through her. It is because of her faithfulness that God was born into our world in the person of Jesus Christ and became one of us, walking our walk, living our life, dying our death, and leading us to new life that lasts forever. If not for Mary’s fiat – her “yes” to God’s will for her – salvation history might have gone rather poorly. Thankfully, because of her great faith, we have adoption as sons and daughters of God.

    Did Mary understand all of this when she said yes to God’s will when Gabriel came to announce the birth of Christ in her? I don’t know; maybe, maybe not. But she, as our Gospel tells us today, “kept all these things and reflected on them in her heart.” She was able to study the Gospel before it had ever been written, by reflecting on all the events surrounding the birth and life and death of her Son. And because of Mary, we can reflect on it all too, and rejoice that we are sons and daughters of God.

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

  • The Nativity of the Lord: Mass During the Night and Mass of Christmas Day

    The Nativity of the Lord: Mass During the Night and Mass of Christmas Day

    Readings: Mass During the Night | Mass of Christmas Day

    A few years ago, I saw a musical called “Children of Eden.”  It was composed by Steven Schwartz, who is probably more famous for composing “Godspell” and “Wicked.”  The premise of the musical is interesting: it’s the story taken from the first nineteen chapters of the book of Genesis, which basically takes us from the creation of everything up to the story of Noah and the great flood.  From a musical standpoint, it was beautiful, but from a theological standpoint, it was fraught with problems.

    The first problem, I think, is that the story only captures the first nineteen books of Genesis.  That brings me to page twenty in my Bible, and my Bible is fifteen hundred pages long!  As the saying goes, we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet: God has not yet promised anything to Abraham, we don’t yet know about Moses and the Law, we’ve yet to hear from any of the prophets.  David has yet to sing the Psalms, and we certainly haven’t heard the miraculous story that brings us here tonight (today).

    And with that very limited subset of the story of salvation, Steven Schwartz portrays an image of God that is, as anyone might expect, rather stunted.  The story ends with a frustrated God seeing that even the great flood can’t scare humanity back into obedience.  And in his frustration, Schwartz’s God throws up his hands and essentially says, “I’m done.”  God backs out of the picture, and the remnants of humanity realize that, alone now, if anything good is going to happen, it’s up to them.

    And if Schwartz were right, we wouldn’t be here tonight (today).  Happily, we don’t believe in Schwartz’s God.  Because the God he casts in his musical is a God who is impotent and disinterested and completely uninvolved in his creation.  Kind of like a child who has made something out of Legos, and then become bored with them.  He has set the world in motion and then backed off, leaving his creatures to their own devices.  That’s not our God.

    Our God can’t be wrapped up in nineteen chapters and just twenty pages.  Our God takes fifteen hundred more pages to describe and even that just scratches the surface.  Our God is committed and loving and completely good and holy and transcendent and immanent.  Our God is higher than the heavens, holier than the holiest we can imagine, goodness itself, love itself.  But our God is also here among us, Emmanuel, closer to us than we are to ourselves.  Far from backing off and leaving us to our own devices, our God walks with us and shares our joys and sorrows; he sees us through pain and celebrates our healing.  Our God is beyond everything we can imagine and more wonderful than anything we can hope for.

    Our God is so invested in his creation that he made many interventions in human history to provide for our salvation.  Those interventions turned humanity’s hearts back to the Lord in moments of darkness.  Then, when the time was right, God brought salvation to the culmination of perfection.  One day in time, God sent his only Begotten Son to be our Savior.  He was born of the Virgin Mary, born a man like us in all things but sin.  The Second Person of the Holy Trinity, God the Word, put on flesh and became one of us, perfectly human and perfectly divine.  That’s what we celebrate tonight (today).

    As a man, he lived life as we do.  He grew and learned and made friends and became what he was meant to be.  He lived our life and died our death – literally dying the death we deserved for our many sins.  But his death was not the end; his death was shattered by his Resurrection and Ascension into heaven.  Because of his saving sacrifice, because of his Incarnation and Paschal Mystery, the Holy One redeemed our brokenness and made eternal life possible for all those who believe in him and live the Gospel.  That’s our God.

    All of this is made possible because of the gift we receive on this most holy night (day).  That gift we call the Incarnation of the Lord: the glorious mystery of God taking on human flesh to save his people.  This gift of the Incarnation is the best Christmas present we will receive – it is the best gift of any kind that we will ever receive, because in the Incarnation we have what’s necessary for us to be saved.   This is so important a mystery and so great a gift, that at the words of the Incarnation in the Creed today, we are instructed to kneel, not just bow, as we usually do.  So we will kneel when we say the words, “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”  And we kneel because we remember with great gratitude that if the Word didn’t become flesh, if he wasn’t born of the Virgin Mary, if he didn’t become one like us, if he didn’t pay the price for our sins, we would never have salvation, or hope of life with God.

    God didn’t take on our form so that he could become less, he took on our form so that we could become more.  Tonight (Today), God becomes one of us and takes on all of our infirmities and weaknesses.  But in doing that, we ourselves become more than we could ever be on our own.  Our lowliness is filled with grace, our sadness is filled with rejoicing.

    So as we gaze upon and adore our Lord in the manger, maybe we can take some of the items in that beautiful snapshot and see what will come for him as he grows older.  We see the shepherds, lowly men despised often by society, the marginalized ones who are the first to receive the message.  We see the wise men, those who in the wisdom they have received from God, are ready to give everything to follow Christ.  We see the angels, the messengers who urge us to take a second look at an innocent child who might not otherwise attract our attention.  We see his father Joseph, who will teach him the law, as a good father would, and help him to grow in the ways of humanity, which he so completely assumed.  We see his mother, who nurtured him in childhood and followed him in adulthood, becoming the first of his disciples.  We see the wood of the manger, a foreshadowing of the wood of the Cross, which will be the means of our salvation.  And we see and adore Christ himself, the Way, the wonder-counselor, our father forever, and prince of peace.

    When we look at that manger scene with eyes of faith, we become different, knowing that Jesus paid an incredible price to bring us back to him, not just on the Cross, but even at his birth.  Human eyes can look at that manger and see with cynicism that he’s just like us, nothing special.  But eyes of faith look at the same event and see our God, wholly worthy of adoration.

    And so, as we gaze on the manger, we know that Steven Schwartz was wrong about our God, and not only that, he is wrong about us.  We are not, as one of his songs says “lost in the wilderness;” instead our lives are bound up in the very life of our God, and his in ours, and we are precious to him as he is everything to us.  The grace of our God made visible will glory with us in our joys and sustain us in our sorrows.  The Lord who is born among us today gives us peace in our most gut-wrenching moments.  May our hearts be open to accepting the grace of his Incarnation, the grace of his most wonderful presence among us.

  • The Nativity of the Lord: Vigil Mass (Joseph’s Story)

    The Nativity of the Lord: Vigil Mass (Joseph’s Story)

    Today’s readings

    Once, a very long time ago, there was a man named Joseph.  He was a well-respected and hard-working man, from the family of the great king David.  But since Israel hadn’t been a great nation in a long time, he wasn’t respected for being a great king himself.  Instead, people respected him for his carpentry work and for the fact that he was faithful and just.

    He was to be married to a young woman named Mary – their marriage was probably arranged by their families.  They would come together to be man and wife when the time was right.  One day, she came to him with an unbelievable story about being pregnant, with a child given to her by the Holy Spirit.  Joseph didn’t know what to think.  He clearly knew he was not the father of the baby, and so he decided not to marry the young woman, but instead to let her go quietly, so she would not be embarrassed.

    The night he decided to do this, Joseph had a dream.  In the dream, an angel appeared to him and told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, and that God wanted him to do just that.  The angel told him that the baby was very special, that he would come to save all God’s people from their sins and would be called Emmanuel – a name that means that God is here among us.

    So Joseph did what the angel told him.  He took Mary as his wife.  And about that time, a proclamation came from the government that said that everyone had to go and be registered as a citizen.  They had to go to the city where they were from to do that.  So Joseph made plans to travel with Mary from Galilee where they were living, to Nazareth, which was where Joseph was from.  The way was long and dangerous and, along the way, the time came for Mary to have her baby.

    They looked desperately for some inn or any house to take them in, but every place was full because so many people were traveling.  Eventually, they at least found a shelter: a rickety little shack for farm animals, and they went in there.  That’s when Mary had her baby.  She was scared, and Joseph had never delivered a baby before.  But the child was beautiful, and Joseph held him while Mary slept, exhausted from travelling and giving birth.  They placed the baby in the manger, a feed-trough for the animals, and they named him Jesus.

    Later, they had visits from shepherds and from astrologers from the east, who came to worship the child, because they had seen visions too.  Mary and Joseph were amazed at all that was happening, and the wonderful visits they were receiving.

    One night, Joseph had another visit from an angel in his dreams.  The angel told him that people were planning to harm the new baby.  So, at the angel’s instruction, Joseph got up from bed, took Mary and Jesus, and fled to the land of Egypt so that they would be out of harm’s way.  They stayed there until the angel told Joseph that those who wanted to harm Jesus were dead, and it was okay to go back to their own town now.

    Joseph watched the child grow up, and was so proud to be his foster-father.  He taught Jesus how to live and how to respect others, and all about the religious law, just like any father would do for his children.  In his private moments, Joseph always wondered what would become of Jesus, wondered what God had in store for him.  All he knew was that something wonderful was happening, and as hard as it was sometimes, he had been called to help it happen.

    And God wants to continue to do wonderful things for us.  Jesus didn’t just get born two thousand years ago; Jesus is born right here, right now for us, if we would just make a little space, a little shelter for him in our hearts.  Just as Joseph didn’t know exactly what God had in store for Jesus, we don’t know what God has in store for any of us in the year ahead.  But we do know this: God sent Jesus so that God could be here among us, and he is here among us now, leading us back to him, telling us that we are his special children, and loving us all with love beyond anything we can imagine.

    Just like things were hard for Mary and Joseph as they travelled along, trying to find a place to stay, sometimes things for us will be hard too.  But all along the way, there are angels, guiding us to where God wants us, watching over us, and helping us to find the Good News.  Today, God brings us here to worship, so that like those shepherds and astrologers, we can find Jesus again, and we can see Jesus in those who love us, and in our own hearts.

  • Friday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Emmanuel

    Friday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Emmanuel

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Liturgy has us on the edge of our seats: “Lift up your heads and see; your redemption is near at hand.”  So says the psalmist today and all indications are that that psalmist is absolutely right!  Even the last-minute shoppers are starting to panic, there’s only one door left on the Advent calendar, and our Advent wreath is fully ablaze with all four candles lit… at least it would be if we hadn’t already taken it down to get ready for tomorrow.  But more than that, the psalmist is right about our redemption.  God has chosen to be near us, he has chosen to become flesh and dwell among us, he is Emmanuel, God with us.

    That’s our “O Antiphon” for today – “O Emmanuel” – and we sing it in the very first verse of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” Israel may mourn in lowly exile, indeed we might all be mourning the incompleteness of our lives, or the pain we experience, or the sadness that this world can bring us.  But none of that is able to overcome the joy of our God, our Emmanuel, being one with us and leading us through the Cross to the Resurrection and eternal life.  The Son of God has indeed appeared and will appear again.

    And so we rejoice at the nearness of our God, we rejoice that grace and peace have come to us, we rejoice that we are not what are sins may appear to make us, we rejoice that there is eternal life, that there is grace, and peace for all men and women of the earth.

    In these last hours before Christmas, it would be well for us to take a few minutes to stop all the preparations: to put aside the cookie-making and gift-wrapping and all of the other preparations just for a while.  We need to make that quiet space within us so that Christ can be born in us again, so that we can be filled up with the love he wants us to share, so that the peace on earth we desire can be born within our hearts.

    O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver,
    desire of the nations, Savior of all people:
    Come and set us free, Lord our God.

  • Monday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Root of Jesse

    Monday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Root of Jesse

    Today’s readings

    In these late days of Advent, we pray the “O Antiphons.”  These antiphons are the various titles of Jesus as found in Scripture.  Today’s antiphon is “O Root of Jesse” and it is found as the antiphon for the Canticle of Mary in Vespers: “O Flower of Jesse’s stem, you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you.  Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.”

    Zechariah in today’s Gospel certainly knew what it was like to stand silent in the presence of the Root of Jesse.  Having been promised a son by an angel of the Lord – what one might consider a very trustworthy source – his disbelief moved him to silence in God’s presence.  Here is a man who, one would think, should know better.  But maybe his years of childlessness have led him to accept a life that was not God’s will.  Certainly we could not blame him if the angel’s message was a bit unbelievable; we who have the benefit of so much science would probably be a little harder on the angel than Zechariah was.

    When you’re accustomed to living without hope, any sign of hope can be met with an awful lot of skepticism.  Would Elizabeth and Zechariah ever give birth to a child?  How would that even be possible?  Would God save the world from the darkness of sin and death?  Why would he even want to?  Can God be born here among us, giving us rootedness and a solid foundation for our lives?  Why would he even care?

    Better to be silent than to voice our lack of faith and hope.  Then, in the stillness of our hearts and souls, maybe God can give rootedness to our scattered lives, bring hope to a world grown dark in sin and economic decline and war and too much death.  Today’s Gospel has God bringing hope to a elderly, childless couple.  God forbid that we would doubt that he could bring hope to us too.

    We pray today: Come, Lord Jesus, come root of Jesse, give rootedness to our lives that are sometimes adrift in despair or apathy, give hope to a world grown cold in darkness and disappointment, give life to a people burdened by sin and death.  Come, let us stand silent as we await the dawning of your hope in our lives, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.  Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly and do not delay!