Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Prayer

  • The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

    The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

    Today’s readings

    One of the great snapshots of Christmas for me has always been the manger scene. These beautiful figurines give us a glimpse as to what God is doing at the Incarnation of Christ – an amazing moment in time!  But I am aware that the idyllic holiness, peace and love the crèche depicts is often quite foreign to the experience of many families, including many families in this assembly. I know there are families where communication is anything but good. There are families who may never have known the kind of love that is shared between Jesus, Mary and Joseph. There are families who struggle with abuse: physical, sexual, or emotional.

    Even in the “best” of families, there is often hardship. I know there are families who struggle to keep up with all the activities that are expected of them. There are families who can’t find time to have a meal together, let alone take a trip together. Families often struggle to make ends meet. There are families who struggle with the changing needs of children as they grow older. Families may be separated by great distance, or may have suffered the sickness or death of one of the members. Other families may find themselves changing roles as a parent, the one who provided for his or her children, grows old and becomes ill and then becomes the one in need of care.

    Families can be and are the source of our greatest joys and our deepest anguish. Sometimes all in the same day. The truth is, and perhaps you find yourself thinking this as you sit there and listen to these readings today, none of our families is perfect. Few of us would rush to describe our families as well-functioning, let alone holy. And so we can sit there and look at the manger and find its serenity meaningless in the hectic anxiety of our day-to-day family lives.

    But maybe we need to look a little deeper or listen a little harder today. “Holy” and “perfect” are perhaps not the same thing. We don’t need to be perfect to be a family. That was true of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as well. Would a perfect family have lost their child on the way home from a trip? I don’t think so, but that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it? Mary says to Jesus when they find him that she and Joseph had been looking for him with “great anxiety.” Those of you who are parents can well imagine the anxiety and can totally identify with what Mary and Joseph had to have been feeling.  

    Not everything was perfect in that family, even from the beginning. Right at the beginning, they had to flee for their safety; they suffered from poverty and violent threats. Like many modern families in various places in the world, they suffered under political and military oppression, had to settle far from their original home and had to start a new life in a foreign place. Two thousand years may separate the modern family from the “Holy Family,” but there are so many similarities.

    So, what we are supposed to see in the Holy Family is something perhaps different from perfection.  I think it is faithfulness.  Faithfulness to God and faithfulness to one another: indeed, it is this faithfulness that leads them to the holiness we celebrate today.  Look at the way the situation in the Gospel reading today was resolved among them.  Even though they were panicked and anxious about the disappearance of their son; even though they did not understand what was going on with him, yet they strove to understand him and loved him beyond measure, and Mary kept all of these memories in her heart, kept them to be sorted out and understood and treasured later.  And even though Jesus was ready to grow into adulthood and ready to begin his mission, yet he understood the concerns of his parents and continued to be obedient to them as he continued to grow in human wisdom and grace. They were faithful to one another.

    I continue to be aware that even as I pull that theme of faithfulness out of today’s Scriptures, that can still seem insurmountable to many of you. Why should you be faithful when the hurts inflicted by other members of your family still linger? That’s a hard one to address, but the call to faithfulness is still there for all of us. And we’re not told to be faithful just when everyone else is faithful. Sometimes we are called to make an almost unilateral decision to love and respect the others in our families, and let God worry about the equity of it all. I know that’s easier to say than to do, but please know that this Church family supports you with prayer and love as you do that.

    Every single one of us is called to be holy, brothers and sisters. And every single one of our families is called to be holy. That doesn’t mean that we will be perfect. Some days we’ll be pretty far from it. But it does mean that we will be faithful in love and respect. It means that we will unite ourselves to God in prayer and worship. It means we will love when loving is hard to do. Mary loved Jesus all the way to the Cross and watched him die. What we see in the model of the Holy Family for us is not perfection, but faithfulness and holiness.

    That holiness will make demands of us. It did for Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Holiness demands that we seek it; it doesn’t just descend from above. If we want holy families, and we certainly should, we will have to make decisions and even sacrifices to pursue it. We will have to make an honest priority of worship; attending Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation as a minimum without fail. We will have to surround our families in prayer, praying at meals, teaching and reviewing prayers, praying together at night, reciting the rosary together, reading the Scriptures together. Holy families are not going to be perfect in these things, but they will not fail to pursue that holiness every single day. It takes a daily decision to do that; but that is the vocation of the family in the world.

    Jesus, emerging from childhood to adulthood, reminds us that in his name, we must be ready to live faithful and holy lives, regardless of whether others are doing the same, and no matter what the personal cost. Because the cost of rejecting holiness in our lives is just too great, and the loss of an earthly family is nothing compared to losing our place in the family of God.

  • The Nativity of the Lord: Mass During the Day

    The Nativity of the Lord: Mass During the Day

    Today’s readings

    What came to be through him was life,
            and this life was the light of the human race;
        the light shines in the darkness,
            and the darkness has not overcome it.

    Sometimes, when I am preaching at a reconciliation service for children, I will ask how many of them are, or ever have been, afraid of the dark.  I ask the parents too.  Lots of us raise our hands.  Because darkness is a fearsome thing.  In those homilies, I liken the darkness to sin, which is fearsome as well, because it takes us out of relationship with God, out of relationship with the people in our lives, and out of relationship with the Church. 

    None of us likes darkness.  One of the things I like to do this time of year is to drive around the neighborhoods I pass through and look at the Christmas lights.  Some of them are very elaborate, some are almost what I like to call “Griswoldian,” after the characters in the movie “Christmas Vacation.”  I know that I look forward to putting up the lights for Christmas, and I always love to see the creativity of others who have lit their houses.  As the days get shorter and the nights get longer, as darkness comes earlier and earlier, having brightly lit trees and houses seems to be a way of ordering the darkness to get lost and not to terrify us any longer.  We are a people who crave the light, who need it at the very core of our beings.  We were not made for darkness, but for light.

    All during Advent, we have been yearning for the light.  Advent reminds us that the world can sometimes be a very dark place, that war and terrorism and crime and disease and sin and death can really give us a beating, that very often we experience life much differently than God intended us to, and that all of this darkness has kept us from union with our God.  But Advent also has reminded us that it’s not supposed to be that way, and that God has always intervened for love of the people he has created.  And so in Advent, we came to see that God promises salvation for the people that are his own, and that he would do everything to make that promised salvation unfold for us.

    The Old Testament unfolds for us the many ways that God has intervened in history to save his people.  He placed man and woman in the Garden of Eden, safe from all harm, should they choose to accept it (which, of course, they did not!).  He brought eight people through the deluge of the great flood on Noah’s Ark.  He promised Abraham his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of the sky.  He led his people out of slavery in Egypt, through the desert and into the Promised Land, protecting them and guiding them through the hand of Moses all along the way.  His love for his people, his desire that they be one with him, and his efforts to save them from their own folly have been abundant all through human history.  But as numerous as his efforts have been, so have humankind’s failures to follow him been numerous as well.

    Which brings us to the event we celebrate today.  Let’s be clear: this is not some last-ditch effort before God throws up his hands and leaves us to our own devices.  This is the saving event.  This is the way to salvation that has always been intended and has been promised through the ages, from the very days of the creation of the world, when the Word, as Saint John tells us today, was with God, and with God, was the Word through which everything in heaven and on earth came to be.

    This awesome event is the Incarnation: Jesus, the Word through which all were created, comes to be one of the created ones.  This is the primordial mystery of our faith: without the Incarnation, there could be no cross, no resurrection, no ascension, no salvation.  None of the savings events of the Old Testament could be as wonderful as the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery: in fact, those previous acts of salvation led up to the salvation we have in Christ Jesus, and paved the way for that saving act.  In today’s feast, the great light of Christ has taken hold of the darkness this world brings us and shatters it forever, shining great light into every corner of our dark world, and into our sometimes very dark lives as well.

    That’s all very theological and theoretical, I know, and maybe it goes over our heads most of the time.  So let me put this all another way.  For this illustration, I have to thank one of my seminary professors, who beat this image into our heads over and over again.  Here’s the way it works:  God always intended for us to be with him.  But, that became impossible, because over time we developed this great, dark chasm of sin and death.  That chasm separated us from God, and we could not reach across it to get to God.  So, on December the 25th, in the year Zero, if you will, God sent his only Son to be our salvation.  He was born into our midst and became one of us: he walked our walk, he lived our life, and he also died our death.  But that death did not last forever: instead he rose to new life that lasts forever, canceling out that great chasm of sin and death, and forever uniting us to God, allowing us to live the life God always intended us to have.  Now, I should mention, he used to call that chasm the “deep dark yogurt of sin and death,” and he once explained that he used that image because he didn’t like yogurt!

    You get the idea.  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 genuflect, not just bow.  So we will genuflect when we say the words, “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”  And we genuflect 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.  Praise God for this great gift today!

    And so as we continue our prayer today, we offer God the darkness in our lives: our sins, our frustrations, our disappointments, our pain, our grief – and we hold up all of this to the great Light that is God’s Word, the one who became one like us, who pitched his tent among us, and who dwells with us now.  We pray that the Light of the world would banish our darkness, and help us to see the way to God from wherever it is that we find ourselves on the spiritual path today.  We celebrate that, today and every day, Jesus Christ is the Light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

  • The Nativity of the Lord: Mass During the Night

    The Nativity of the Lord: Mass During the Night

    Today’s readings

    The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
    upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
          a light has shone.

    Sometimes, when I am preaching at a reconciliation service for children, I will ask how many of them are, or ever have been, afraid of the dark.  I ask the parents too.  Lots of us raise our hands.  Because darkness is a fearsome thing.  In those homilies, I liken the darkness to sin, which is fearsome as well, because it takes us out of relationship with God, out of relationship with the people in our lives, and out of relationship with the Church. 

    None of us likes darkness.  One of the things I like to do this time of year is to drive around the neighborhoods I pass through and look at the Christmas lights.  Some of them are very elaborate, some are almost what I like to call “Griswoldian,” after the characters in the movie “Christmas Vacation.”  I know that I look forward to putting up the lights for Christmas, and I always love to see the creativity of others who have lit their houses.  As the days get shorter and the nights get longer, as darkness comes earlier and earlier, having brightly lit trees and houses seems to be a way of ordering the darkness to get lost and not to terrify us any longer.  We are a people who crave the light, who need it at the very core of our beings.  We were not made for darkness, but for light.

    Some of us this Advent were reading and discussing a little book called, “The Heart that Grew Three Sizes.”  The book was based on the popular Dr. Seuss classic, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”  If you were part of that study, you know there were a lot of gems in that book and it gave us a wonderful new perspective to look at Advent and our faith.  One of my favorite parts of the book was when author Matt Rawle took on the theme of light and darkness.  Here is what he noticed in the story:

    “When the Grinch begins shoving the Who family’s Christmas tree into the chimney at night, he notices young Cindy Lou Who standing and watching him.  She asks why the Grinch is taking the tree away.  Without so much as a blink, the Grinch says that the lights on one side of the tree aren’t working, and he’s taking the tree to his workshop where he will fix it up and bring it back.”  He goes on to say that a tree without lights is fine for holding ornaments or putting gifts under, but without the lights, it’s definitely missing something.  In the same way, the Grinch certainly had a heart, but it was three sizes too small: it was missing something.

    The darkness is like that.  When a room is dark, like when we are walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night, there is stuff between us and the bathroom, and if we are not careful, we will walk into it or on it, or trip over it.  It’s the same room during the day, but in the night, it is missing something, namely the light, which helps us to interact with the room the way we should. 

    When I visited the Holy Land a couple of years ago, I had an experience in Bethlehem that allowed me to reflect on what missing the light meant for the shepherds.  I got to visit what is called the “Shepherds’ Field,” which may or may not have been where the shepherds met the angels, but even if it’s not the exact place, one could certainly imagine it happening in there or a place an awful lot like it.  It was quiet and peaceful when we visited during the day.  It was about 90 degrees out, and so the shade from the numerous trees in the field and the slight breeze was certainly welcome.  As I sat on a bench in the field, I tried to imagine what it might have been like at night, when the shepherds were there.  Now they were used to the darkness, and probably were able to see most hazards from the ambient light of the moon and stars.  And I’m sure they kept a watchful eye through the night for the gleam of light reflecting off the eyes of any predators that might be nearby.  They were used to the darkness.

    Sometimes we get used to the darkness too, perhaps a little too used to it.  We become used to what we see: the shadows, the darkness, even the sadness around us.  Bad news doesn’t surprise us anymore.  More crime in the streets, another school shooting, people doing smash and grab robberies in stores, the latest COVID variant filling up the hospitals.  There’s a whole lot of darkness out there, and sometimes I think the way we deal with all that darkness is to let it desensitize us.  The real surprise on the evening news is the occasional human-interest story about something positive happening somewhere in our world.  We get very used to our day-to-day lives, filled as they are with long to-do lists, running from one errand or event to the next, managing the stress, frustration, and anxiety that come from falling behind in one area or the other.  This is the dim light we become used to.

    For the shepherds, the bright light of the angels’ presence was startling.  They weren’t used to the light, and in the darkness of the night, they were probably blinded by it, in much the same way as the light of the Griswolds’ house blinded his neighbor and caused him to fall down the stairs.  It’s no wonder they were afraid: they could hardly see, and what they could see was the surprising appearance of an angel into their mundane nightly watch.  But as their eyes adjust to the light, they experience the glory of God and the reassurance of an infant lying in a manger, an infant who is Christ and Lord and Savior of all.

    Into our dimly lit lives, our God wants to shine the splendor of his glory.  The birth of his only begotten Son into our world isn’t just a nice event depicted on Christmas cards or Nativity scenes.  The birth of his only begotten Son is meant to change the world, including the dimly-lit recesses of our daily existence.  This is amazing grace.  This is an indwelling of God that changes the world and changes our lives.

    It’s incredible, because when you think about it, God doesn’t have to care about our welfare or our salvation.  He’s God, he’s not in need of anyone or anything, because he is all-sufficient.  He doesn’t need our love, he doesn’t need our praise, he doesn’t need our contrition … honestly, he doesn’t need us period.  But he wants us.  Love wants the beloved.  Grace wants the penitent.  Goodness and truth and beauty want the worn and weary.  And so our God pursues us, and pursues us with great zeal.  Isaiah tells us that the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this.  Indeed that zeal won’t rest until it reaches its perfection in the lives of all of us.

    He created us in love, and even though he doesn’t need us, he loves us beyond all imagining, and can’t do anything but that.  Throughout time, yes, we’ve disappointed him, and when he forgave us – which he didn’t have to do – we disappointed him again.  That’s been the story of us as a people, and also our own personal stories, if we’re honest.  How many times have we all sinned, and after being forgiven, go back and sin again?  Honestly, if we were God, we’d throw up our hands and walk away.  But, thank God, we’re not God, and our God isn’t like that.  As often as we turn away and come back, he reaches out to us with the love of the father for his prodigal son.  Our God pursues us, and pursues us with great zeal.

    When our need for a Savior was great, when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world, when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, after Abraham, Moses, David and Daniel had made God’s desire for reconciliation known, our Lord Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desired to consecrate the world by his most loving presence.  Being conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, he was born in Bethlehem of Judah and was made man.  As a man, he walked among the people of his time and lived as one of us, in all things but sin.  At the appointed hour, he took on our sins and was nailed to a cross.  He died to pay the price for all of us, in order to redeem us and bring us back to friendship with the Father.  Because of this, the power of death and sin to keep us from God has been canceled out, and we have the possibility of eternal life.  Our God pursues us, and pursues us with great zeal.

    It’s no wonder the angels sang that night: they knew what the world had yet to behold.  They knew that God’s zeal had obliterated the chasm between the world and its Maker.  They knew that the sadness of death was coming to an end.  They knew that the power of sin had been smashed to bits.  They knew the light of God’s Radiant Dawn had burst forth upon the earth and Emmanuel, God-with-us, became incarnate in our midst.  They knew that in this moment, the sad melody of sin had given way to a chorus of God’s glory.  They knew that the dirge of death had dwindled to the peace that God pours forth on those whom he favors.

    That moment, all those years ago, changed everything.  Light shone in the darkness.  The glory of the Lord enveloped the earth.  Nothing would be the same.  The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this!

  • Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Radiant Dawn

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent: O Radiant Dawn

    Today’s readings

    There’s a little more light today.  As we get toward these last days of Advent, we find ourselves in a time when more light is beginning to shine.  All of the candles on our Advent wreath are lit, and the only thing that can make it brighter is the coming of our God in all his glory, dawning brightly on the earth.

    Today’s “O Antiphon” tells us as much.  Today we hear “O Radiant Dawn,” and the antiphon for Evening prayer is this: “O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.”

    This light is the source of the joy of which Zephaniah the prophet speaks today.  He tells the broken people Israel that God has forgiven their sins, and that he continues to walk among them, which should be cause enough to remove their fear.  That enduring presence among the people Israel, of course, is a foretaste of the enduring presence that we experience in the Incarnation of Christ.

    Mary and Elizabeth celebrate that light in today’s Gospel.  Mary’s greeting of Elizabeth is an act of hospitality, and Elizabeth’s welcome, along with the Baptist’s reaction in his mother’s womb, is an act of faith.  That faith incredibly affected the salvation of the whole world.

    And all of this light continues to shine on our sometimes-dark world.  A world grown dark and cold in sin is visited by its creator, and that world is changed forever.  The darkness can never now be permanent.  Sin and death no longer have the last word for us, because that was never God’s will for us.  We have hope for eternal life because our God eagerly desires us to return to him and be one with him.

    And so we pray, Come, O Radiant Dawn, shatter the darkness that sometimes reigns in our cynical world.  Give us the warmth of your light to warm our hearts grown cold with sin.  Shine on all who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.  Come, Lord Jesus.  Come quickly and do not delay!

  • Fourth Sunday of Advent: O Root of Jesse

    Fourth Sunday of Advent: O Root of Jesse

    For the Simbang Gabi Mass for the Filipino Community
    Today’s Readings

    Hopelessly insignificant.  That’s what they are.  Bethlehem-Ephratha; the tiniest region of a tiny nation – almost too small to be among the clans of Judah.  Elizabeth: an old, childless woman, whose hope of progeny has all but dried up, and whose aged husband left her for days at a time to minister as priest in the temple.  Mary: a young virgin who has not yet known relationship with a man.  Hopelessly insignificant.  And yet, all of these play a major part in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  God can do mighty things when we are humble, when we feel insignificant.

    We are in the closing days of the year.  For so many, this has been a horrible year.  The pandemic and resulting economic downturn has led to so much sadness and disappointment that many have questioned whether they are worthy of God’s attention.  For others, the typical disappointments may have added to the problem:  relationships that have soured or are ending, sin that has gone unconfessed and unforgiven, patterns of addiction that have not been treated, illness that has caused pain and grief and fear, death of a loved one that has left the survivors questioning God’s will.  How insignificant we seem; how hopeless the situation appears for us in these dark Advent days.

    But, in these last days of Advent, the Church gushes forth hope that cannot be contained.  These last days find us praying the “O Antiphons” – antiphons that are sung before and after the Magnificat in Vespers, the Church’s Evening Prayer.  These antiphons call on Christ to come to us under his many beautiful titles. Today’s antiphon is “O Root of Jesse” and it says this: “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.”  It’s a message of hope to a seemingly-insignificant people!

    I have no idea what that hope is going to look like for you.  And I surely don’t know when it’s going to come.  But as I have prayed about these readings during Advent, I know that is the message that God wants us to take away.  The hope that comes from God is enough to break forth upon the earth and take away darkness, disappointment, sin, death and pain.  It wasn’t just something that happened in tiny little Benjamin-Ephratha two thousand years ago, but instead it is something that absolutely lies in store for all of us who give ourselves over to God’s hope.

    And I don’t mean the kind of false hope that says, “hey, hang in there, things will get better.”  That just doesn’t work when you’ve lost your job, or your house, or a loved one, or even the thought that God cares for you.  I would never tell you that things will get better when your significant other is abusing you, or your family is close to living on the street, or your loved one is dying.  And I know how hard it is to hang in there when your family is overscheduled, and you desperately want to get the kids out the door to be at Church on time, and little Annie was up sick last night, and Jimmy can’t find his left shoe for the fourteenth time in the last two days, and despite your heroic efforts, you walk through the doors of the Church late.   “Hang in there” is a horrible thing to say to someone who’s at the end of their rope.

    And so I think the hope that Jesus brings us and that the Church would have us receive today is a much different hope.  This is a hope that opens the way to freedom for all of us who have become imprisoned by sin and sadness and disappointment.  It is a hope that says that whatever present anxiety we are currently experiencing is not God’s will for us, and that while that anxiety may not magically go away tomorrow, that there is no way our God will let us walk through it alone.  That was true enough for the young virgin in today’s Gospel who had no idea where this pregnancy would take her, but said yes to God’s plan anyway.  Mary’s journey led her through fear and sadness and pain to glory, and the Church courageously believes that her journey is ours too, if we would just say yes to the hope God offers us.

    So today we pray, O Come, O Key of David, come.  Open wide the doors that have held us captive to hopelessness, break down the walls that keep us from accepting you, and free us all from sin and death.  Come, Lord Jesus, come.  Come quickly and do not delay!

  • Friday of the Third Week of Advent: O Wisdom

    Friday of the Third Week of Advent: O Wisdom

    Today’s readings

    I can’t believe it but Christmas is only just eight days away now! I know everyone is so busy writing letters to Santa, being good so they don’t get on the “naughty” list, wrapping Christmas presents for their parents, and baking cookies for Father Pat!  But before we do all that, our Church asks us to take a minute and remember what it is that we’re about to celebrate.

    And what we’re about to celebrate is pretty special.  God loved the world so very much that he sent his own Son to live among us and bring us closer to him, and to take upon himself the punishment for all our many sins.  God would rather die than live without us, and so he did.  But death doesn’t have any power over us because Jesus rose from the dead.  And all of this wonderful mystery begins in just eight days, or at least it began on that day, a couple of thousand years ago.

    And we know the story: An angel came to Mary to tell her that she would give birth to a son by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Because she was faithful and full of grace, she said “yes” to God’s plan for her, and because she said “yes,” our world and our lives have been different – better, more hopeful – ever since!  Jesus grew to be a man who was both mighty in his power to save us, and a wise prophet who helped us to learn about God and his kingdom.

    That list in the Gospel reading was quite a list of names, wasn’t it?  I’m not supposed to say anything, but Mr. Hueg said there was going to be a pop quiz on those names before your Christmas party today, so good luck!  It always strikes me that this list of characters, which is basically the human family tree of our Lord, is so much like any of our families’ history.  This is a list of forty-two generations of the nation of the people of Israel led by people of greatness, and, well, people of something else.  Some of them were heroic like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah and to some extent David and Solomon.  But some of them were pretty wicked, especially Manasseh, whose wickedness in shedding innocent blood made God so angry that he allowed the Israelites to be taken into captivity by the Babylonians during the reign of king Jeconiah.  So we have forty-two generations of people, some of whom were saints and some who were sinners, great men and flawed men, all leading up to the Incarnation of Christ, who was the only way to end the cycle of sin that spiraled all through the story.

    Today we begin the more intense period of Advent that extends from December 17th through the morning of Christmas Eve.  During this time, the Church’s Liturgy makes us yearn all the more longingly for the birth of Jesus and his presence in our lives.  Just as forty-two generations of a mix of wisdom and foolishness could only be fixed by the presence of Christ, so the foolishness of our time calls for Jesus too.

    During these last days of Advent, we pray the “O Antiphons.”  We hear those antiphons famously in the song “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”  The verses are also used during Evening Prayer.  Today’s is “O Wisdom,” and the verse from “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is, “O come, O Wisdom from on high, and cheer us by your drawing nigh.  Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadow put to flight…”  We trust God to come near, to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, to satisfy our longing for wisdom, to make sense of all the craziness in the world, with the loving presence of Jesus.

    And so we pray: Come, Lord Jesus and bring us peace.  Come, Lord Jesus and put an end to the world’s foolishness.  Come, Lord Jesus and bring us your Wisdom.  We need you!  Come quickly and do not delay.

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Advent

    Thursday of the Third Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    There’s a parenthetical sentence that comes right at the end of today’s Gospel reading that really ought to give us pause.  Once again, it says this:

    (All the people who listened, including the tax collectors,
    who were baptized with the baptism of John,
    acknowledged the righteousness of God;
    but the Pharisees and scholars of the law,
    who were not baptized by him,
    rejected the plan of God for themselves.)

    That tells us something about John’s baptism and something about God.  The baptism that Saint John the Baptist preached was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  John’s baptism was slightly different than what we have received, in that his baptism was given after a person accepted the need of repentance in their lives.  What it tells us about God is that his mercy calls us to repentance.  Because when we repent, we literally turn around and go back in the right direction: the direction that leads us to him.

    In our first reading, the prophet Isaiah also speaks of the change that God desires to make in the people of Israel, and, actually, us too.  He wants to completely renew them, bringing them back to their first love and making a new marriage covenant with them.  We know that the person who does that is our Lord, the one whose coming we long for in these Advent days.  Of that promise, Isaiah says:

    My love shall never leave you
            nor my covenant of peace be shaken,
            says the LORD, who has mercy on you.

    If we want to know what love and mercy look like, all we need to do is to look at the manger and look at the cross.  Our Lord comes to give us what we need to be renewed in his mercy.  May he come quickly and not delay!  Come, Lord Jesus!

  • The Third Sunday of Advent

    The Third Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Today’s readings and liturgy call us to rejoice.  That’s the reason for the rose-colored vestments and the more joyful tone of today’s readings.  This is called Gaudete Sunday: Gaudete being Latin for “rejoice,” the first word of today’s introit or proper entrance antiphon which says: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.  Indeed the Lord is near.”  The Church takes that antiphon from the words of the second reading today.

    And there is reason to rejoice.  The prophet Zephaniah tells the people Israel that, even though their sins had displeased the LORD to the point that he gave them over to the hands of their enemies, he has relented in his judgment against them and will deliver them from their misfortune.  Their deliverance is so complete that the LORD will even rejoice over them with gladness! 

    In his letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul calls us to rejoice too.  The reason he calls for rejoicing is that “The Lord is near.”  He was referring to Jesus’ return in glory, of course, which they thought would be relatively soon in those days.  While he never saw that in his lifetime, we may.  Or perhaps our children will, or their children.  One thing we definitely know is that the Lord is near.  He does not abandon us in our anxieties but instead listens as we pray to him and make our petitions with thanksgiving.  Our Lord is as near to us as our next quiet moment, our next embrace of someone we love, our next act of kindness.  Rejoice indeed!

    Maybe this call to rejoice rings a little hollow today, based on the continued presence of terror and mass-shootings and civil unrest in our society. And even perhaps a bit closer to home, maybe we ourselves are experiencing the illness of a loved one, a broken relationship, job or financial insecurities, or any other kind of sadness.  The world can be a very bleak place, our lives can be in turmoil, and rejoicing can be the furthest thing from our hearts and minds.  But our faith tells us we can rejoice anyway.  The Psalmist sings today about the kind of hope our world needs right now:

    God indeed is my savior;
        I am confident and unafraid.
    My strength and my courage is the LORD,
        and he has been my savior.

    And it is up to us to bring this kind of hope to a world that has almost become accustomed to horror and shock and terror and sadness.  Sometimes it seems that the world may almost prefer to sit in this kind of darkness, even find some kind of weird comfort in it, but not people of faith.  People of faith instead light a candle of hope and rejoice in the light of Christ!  People of faith can rejoice because even in times of sadness and despair, the presence of our God is palpable, realized in stories of heroism and seen in acts of charity and grace in good times and in bad.

    And so today we rejoice because our Lord is near.  We light that third, rose-colored candle on our Advent wreath.  We look forward to celebrating the Incarnation, perhaps the greatest and best of the mysteries of faith.  That God himself, who is higher than the heavens and greater than all the stars of the universe, would humble himself to be born among us, robing himself with our frail flesh, in order to save us from our sins and make his home among us for all eternity – that is a mystery so great it cannot fail to cause us to rejoice!  Indeed that very presence of God gives hope even in the worst of times – THE LORD IS NEAR!

    These final days of Advent call us to prepare more intensely for the Lord’s birth.  They call us to clamor for his Incarnation, waiting with hope and expectation in a dark and scary world.  These days call us to be people of hope, courageously rejoicing that the Lord is near!  Come, Lord Jesus!  Come quickly and do not delay!

  • Saturday of the Second Week of Advent

    Saturday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    One of my favorite things about the season of Advent is the people we meet along the way.  In the early days of Advent we have celebrated the Immaculate Conception of Mary and we remember St. Juan Diego, St. John of the Cross, St. Lucy and St. Nicholas. We’ve been hearing from Isaiah all along in our first readings, and he has more to say to us still before we hear of his words’ fulfillment on Christmas Day.

    Then there’s the prophet Elijah, about whom we hear in today’s first reading.  Tradition and Scripture tell us that Elijah didn’t die; he was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot on a whirlwind as his successor, Elisha, looked on.  It was expected that one day he would return.  And so ever since, even to this day, the Jewish people have left an empty place at the table for Elijah at every major celebration.

    Jesus makes it clear, however, that Elijah has already returned.  In today’s Gospel reading, we meet Jesus and the disciples coming down the mountain from the Transfiguration.  They have just seen Elijah on the mountaintop along with Jesus and Moses.  And so they ask Jesus, as they make their way down, about the return of Elijah.  When he tells them that Elijah has already returned, but nobody recognized him, they realize that he is speaking of Saint John the Baptist, that other Advent character that we have been privileged to meet.

    And it’s a bit of a foreshadowing.  Just as the people missed Elijah’s return, so they will miss Jesus’ return too.  The Resurrection is a sure sign of God’s love and presence in the world, but how many didn’t believe then, and how many still don’t believe!  For people to come to know that Christ has come and lived and died and risen for us, Isaiah’s voice must still be heard.  John the Baptist did that by crying out in the desert.  Now it’s our turn.

  • Friday of the Second Week of Advent

    Friday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

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

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