Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Prayer

  • 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!”

  • First Sunday of Advent

    First Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    “To you, my God, I lift my soul,
    I trust in you; let me never come to shame.
    Do not let my enemies laugh at me.
    No one who waits for you is ever put to shame.”

    With these words of the proper entrance antiphon today, the Church begins the new Church year.  We stand here on the precipice of something new, a new creation, lifting up souls full of hope and expectation.  We come to this place and time of worship to take refuge from the laughing enemies that pursue us into our corner of the world.  And yet we wait for God on this first day of the year, keenly aware that our waiting will not be unrewarded.  This is Advent, the season whose name means “coming” and stands before us as a metaphor of hope for a darkened world, and a people darkened by sin.

    I sure think Isaiah had it right in today’s first reading, didn’t he?  “Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways,” he cries, “and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?”  What a wonderful question for all of us – it’s a question that anyone who has struggled with a pattern of sin has inevitably asked the Lord at one time or another.  He goes on to pray “Would that you might meet us doing right, and that we were mindful of you in our ways!”  Almost as if to say, “Yeah, that’ll happen!”

    Whether it’s our own personal sin, which is certainly cause enough for sadness, or the sin in which we participate as a society, there’s a lot of darkness out there.  Wars raging all over the world, abortions happening every day of the year, the poor going unfed and dying of starvation here and abroad.  Why does God let all of this happen?

    On Thanksgiving, one of the topics of conversation at the dinner table was who was going to get up at what unheard of hour to go shopping on Black Friday.  I had absolutely no desire to join thousands of my closest friends at the crack of dawn to participate in a frenzy of consumerism.  But many did (and don’t worry; I won’t take a show of hands!).  But it seems like this traditional shopping day gets worse all the time.  This year, the news spoke of a Wal-Mart employee in New York who was trampled to death by people trying to get into the store.  A gunfight broke out at a Toys R Us in southern California and two people were killed.  What kind of people have we become?  Is this the way we should be preparing for Christmas – the celebration of the Incarnation of our Lord?  Why does God let us wander so far from his ways?  Why doesn’t he just rend the heavens and come down and put a stop to all this nonsense?  It’s no wonder the Psalmist sings today, “Lord, make us turn to you; show us your face and we shall be saved.”

    There is only one answer to this quandary, and that’s what we celebrate in this season of anticipation.  There has only ever been one answer.  And that answer wasn’t just a band-aid God came up with on the fly because things had gone so far wrong.  Salvation never was an afterthought.  Jesus Christ’s coming into the world was always the plan.

    I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite Advent hymns this week.  One of my favorites is “O Come, Divine Messiah,” a seventeenth-century French carol translated into English in the late nineteenth century.  It sings of a world in silent anticipation for the breaking of the bondage of sin that could only come in one possible way, and that is in the person of Jesus Christ:

    O Christ, whom nations sigh for,
    Whom priest and prophet long foretold,
    Come break the captive fetters;
    Redeem the long-lost fold.

    Dear Savior haste;
    Come, come to earth,
    Dispel the night and show your face,
    And bid us hail the dawn of grace.

    O come, divine Messiah!
    The world in silence waits the day
    When hope shall sing its triumph,
    And sadness flee away.

    As we prepare to remember the first coming of our Savior into our world, we look forward with hope and eagerness for his second coming too.  You’ll be able to hear that expressed in the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer today.  That second coming, for which we live in breathless anticipation, will finally break the captive fetters and put an end to sin and death forever.  That is our only hope, our only salvation, really the only hope and salvation that we could ever possibly need.

    We want our God to meet us doing right.  And so our task now is to wait, and to watch.  Waiting requires patience: patience to enjoy the little God-moments that become incarnate to us in the everyday-ness of our lives.  Patience to accept this sinful world as it is and not as we would have it, patience to know that, as Isaiah says, we are clay and God is the potter, and he’s not done creating, or re-creating the world just yet.  And so we watch for signs of God’s goodness, for opportunities to grow in grace, for faith lived by people who are the work of God’s hands.

    We wait and we watch knowing – convinced – that God will rend the heavens and come down to us again; that Christ will return in all his glory and gather us back to himself, perfecting us and allowing hope to sing its triumph at the top of our lungs, dispelling the night and putting sadness to flight once and for all.

    “To you, my God, I lift my soul,
    I trust in you; let me never come to shame.
    Do not let my enemies laugh at me.
    No one who waits for you is ever put to shame.”

  • Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Our readings have been reminding us that the night is far spent and the day is drawing near.  We are called upon today to remain vigilant so that we do not miss the second coming of the Lord.  And it is well that we receive that warning today, on the cusp as we are of the new Church year.  This is the last day of the Church year and tomorrow, well even tonight, we will begin the year of grace 2009 with the season of Advent.  The day draws ever nearer for us.

    As the day draws nearer, we will need less and less of the light that has been given to us in this world.  The first reading says, “Night will be no more, nor will they need light from lamp or sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever.”  St. Augustine says of that great day: “When, therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ comes and, as the apostle Paul says, brings to light things hidden in darkness and makes plain the secrets of the heart, so that everyone may receive his commendation from God, then lamps will no longer be needed. When that day is at hand, the prophet will not be read to us, the book of the Apostle will not be opened, we shall not require the testimony of John, we shall have no need of the Gospel itself. Therefore all Scriptures will be taken away from us, those Scriptures which in the night of this world burned like lamps so that we might not remain in darkness.
    When all these things are removed as no longer necessary for our illumination, and when the men of God by whom they were ministered to us shall themselves together with us behold the true and dear light without such aids, what shall we see? With what shall our minds be nourished? What will give joy to our gaze? Where will that gladness come from, which eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, which has not even been conceived by the heart of man?” (Tract. 35, 8-9)

    And of course, the answer to that, is we shall get our light looking on the face of Christ himself.  As Advent approaches, we pray earnestly for that day: Come quickly Lord, and do not delay!

  • Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    You have to wonder what Jesus meant when he said, “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”  Certainly the then-current generation had come and gone, and it doesn’t seem like we’ve come to the end of the world.  But the Church would pose two very important questions about the coming and going of that generation.

    First, what constitutes that generation?  Did Jesus mean just the people that were alive at that time?  We tend to think not.  All of us who believe in Jesus are the members of his generation.  Jesus came to create the world anew, and we are all creatures of that wonderful new creation.  We will all live, in some way, to see the end of days, either here on earth, or from the joy of heaven.

    Secondly, what was it that generation was supposed to see?  They were to see the signs of a new creation.  Just like the first buds of the fig tree and other trees that Jesus spoke about, all of which signaled the beginning of summer, so the signs of the new creation are evident among us.  Sins are forgiven, people return to God, miracles happen.  Granted, all these are imperfect in some ways now, given that they happen to us fallen creatures, but one day they shall be brought to perfection in the kingdom of God.  Then, we will see “the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

  • Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I really don’t like that over-used phrase “at the end of the day.”  You hear it all the time, and it’s one of my top-five least favorite corporate-speak phrases.  But I can’t help but think about this tired old phrase when I read the Scriptures for the Liturgy in these last days of the Church year.  Because the Liturgy is calling our attention to the fact that the end of the year is near, and asking us to reflect on our experience in the year gone by.  Have we been changed?  Are we responding to the Gospel?  Is our relationship with God any different?

    God is always ready for the harvest, with the sickle at the ready.  But our Scriptures today take care to point out that we must not be overly-anxious to jump the gun.  We may hear of Nostradamus prophecies, or revelations from some very obscure mystic that lead us to fear the end is upon us.  Lots of people will read the newspaper with dark glasses to misinterpret all of the things that are happening in the world.  But God wants us to know that he is still at work, redeeming the lost, calling those who have strayed, binding up those who are broken.  So much has to happen before the end of days, so many still need to be redeemed.

    But at the end of the day, are we any different?  Have we been changed?  Are we responding to the Gospel?  Is our relationship with God any different?  If not, we have a new opportunity next week as we being a new Church year.  We can allow Christ to be the ruler of our lives.  We can be intimately connected with God through prayer and acts of peace and justice.  Seeking the Lord, we need not fear the great winepress of God’s fury.  We can instead cling anew to our Lord who, as the Psalmist says, “shall rule the world with justice and the peoples with his constancy.”