Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Homilies

  • Thursday of the Second Week of Advent

    Thursday of the Second Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    It’s amazing, I think, that our God would choose to become one of us, frail and weak creatures that we are.  And he could have come and become incarnate in any way he chose.  But what he chose is almost incomprehensible: the Lord of all came into the world as a tiny baby, born to a poor family, to an unwed mother.  He grew through childhood and young adulthood, working with his hands in the trade of his earthly father.  He knew the frustrations we have, and he knew our sadness and disappointment.  He was well-acquainted with our infirmities, and even grieved at the death of those he loved.  He could have done this in many easier ways, in much more splendor.  So why this way?

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

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

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

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

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary II

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary II

    Mass for the school children.

    Today’s readings

    I think we’re so blessed that we get to come to church and celebrate so many of Mary’s feasts.  Today is a very special feast because Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, is the patroness of the United States of America, and so she is very special to us.  This is so special a feast for us that this day is a Holy Day of Obligation every single year; the only other holy day that is always a Holy Day of Obligation is Christmas.  So this is a very special day!

    I think today’s readings can be a little confusing.  The Gospel makes it sound like this day is about the conception of Jesus, but it isn’t.  We celebrate the conception of Jesus nine months before he was born, so somebody do the math … that would be March 25th, right?  We call that day the Annunciation, because that was the day the Angel Gabriel came to announce to Mary that she would have a baby, but we’ll talk more about that in a minute.  Today we celebrate the conception of Mary, nine months before her birthday, so if you do the math on that one, her birthday is September 8th, and that was one of our first Masses of the school year.  This day celebrates that Mary was conceived free from sin, the only person other than Jesus not to have sin.

    The other confusing reading is the first one.  Why do we go all the way to the beginning of creation when we’re talking about Mary today?  Well, I think the reason is that Mary’s conception solved a problem that began all the way at the beginning.  And that problem was just what we have been talking about: sin.  From the very beginning, we human beings have been tempted to sin.  Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and people have been committing sin ever since.  Again and again, God intervened in history, leading people back to him, giving them prophets to show them the way, and again and again, people turned away from God.  And we continue that today.  Again and again, we are tempted and we sin and we turn away from God.

    But God didn’t want that to be the way things ended up for us.  So he sent his Son to become one of us, and we are preparing to celebrate his birth during this Advent season.  God knew that in order for Jesus to be born among us, his mother was going to have to be pretty special.  So before Mary was ever in her mother’s womb, God chose her to be his Son’s mother.  He made her free from sin so that no stain of sin would ever touch his Son while he was in his mother’s womb.

    Because Mary was so special, she loved God very much.  So when the angel came and told her she would have a baby by the power of the Holy Spirit, she said yes to God’s plan.  I’m not sure she really understood what was going to happen, I’m not sure she really knew how this wonderful event would take place, and I don’t think she fully understood what would happen to Jesus in his life, but she said yes anyway.  We call that her fiat, her “yes” to God’s plan for her.  She took a big leap of faith that day, and we have been blessed ever since.

    This is all very good news.  But there is even more good news: because Mary was so special to God, she shows us how special we are to God.  As we celebrate God’s love for Mary today, we can also celebrate his love for us.  Mary got to hold her Savior – the One God promised us – in her own arms.  When those of us who are old enough come to Communion today, we will be able to hold our Savior – the One God promised us – in the palm of our hand.  Mary’s life was brightened when Jesus was born.  Our lives will be brightened too, this coming Christmas, and every time when we make room in our hearts for Jesus.

    Winter can be a dark and cold time – these days it seems colder than it should be!  But we can also see darkness in the world through crime and hate, and sometimes we can even feel coldness in our own hearts.  But Advent reminds us, with the help of special people like Mary, that God will keep his promises and send us a Savior to brighten our world and warm up our hearts.  Just as Mary was chosen and special before she was even in her mother’s womb, so we are chosen and special to God from the beginning too.  God loves us so much that he sent his Son to free us from our sins and lead us home one day to him.  Praise God for his great love and for the ways he comes into our hearts!

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

  • The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    Blessed Pope Pius IX instituted the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8, 1854, when he proclaimed as truth the dogma that our Lady was conceived free from the stain of original sin.  This had been a traditional belief since about the eighth century, and had been celebrated as a feast first in the East, and later in the West.  So let us be clear that this celebration pertains to the conception of Mary, and not that of Jesus, whose conception we celebrate on the feast of the Annunciation on March 25.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, is the patroness of the United States of America, and so this feast is always a Holy Day of Obligation, every single year.

    This feast celebrates the dogmatic belief that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to be our Savior, and gave to him a human mother who was chosen before the world began to be holy and blameless in his sight.  This feast is a sign for us of the nearness of our salvation; that the plan God had for us before the world ever took shape was finally coming to fruition.

    The first reading paints the picture for us.  The man had eaten of the fruit of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat.  Because of this, they were ashamed and covered over their nakedness.  God noticed that, and asked about it – obviously he knew what happened, but he wanted to hear them say it.  He knew they had discovered the forbidden tree because otherwise they would not have the idea that their natural state was shameful.  Sin had entered the world, and God asks who gave the man the forbidden fruit.

    This leads to the first instance of passing the buck, as the man blames not just the woman, but also God, for the situation: “The woman whom you put here with me;

    she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”  In other words, if God hadn’t put the woman there with him in the first place, he never would have received the fruit to eat.  The woman, too, blames someone else: the serpent.  As if neither of them had been created with a brain to think for themselves, they begin that blame game that traced its ugly path all through history and that we all participate in from time to time.

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

    This cyclic state of sin and rejection was never intended to be the case.  We are not defined as a people by our sins.  We cannot mess up and say, “hey, I’m only human,” because being perfectly human does not include sin.  The perfectly human one – Jesus Christ – came to show us the way out of the cycle of sin and rejection.  This grace was always intended.  As St. Paul says to the Ephesians today: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.   In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ…”

    And so, in these Advent days, we await the unfolding of the plan for salvation that began at the very dawn of the world in all its wonder.  God always intended to provide an incredible way for his people to return to them, and that was by taking flesh and walking among us as a man.  He began this by preparing for his birth through the Immaculate Virgin Mary – never stained by sin, because the one who conquered sin and death had already delivered her from sin.  He was then ready to be born into our midst and to take on our form.  With Mary’s fiat in today’s Gospel, God enters our world in the most intimate way possible, by becoming one of us.  Mary’s lived faith – possible because of her Immaculate Conception – makes possible our own lives of faith and our journeys to God.

    One of my favorite Christmas songs is “Mary, Did You Know?”  The lyrics are very touching, and they express a lot what we believe about Mary.

    Mary, did you know
    That your baby boy would one day walk on water?
    Mary, did you know that your baby boy
    would save our sons and daughters?
    Did you know that your baby boy
    has come to make you new;
    the child that you delivered
    will soon deliver you?

    But I have one quarrel with the theology. That last line: “the child that you delivered will soon deliver you” is wrong based on the theology of today’s feast. The feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates that Mary has already been delivered by the death and resurrection of Christ – before those things ever happened – and makes possible that all of us will soon be delivered.

    Our celebration today has special meaning for us.  Because Mary was conceived without sin, we can see that sin was never intended to rule us.  Because God selected Mary from the beginning, we can see that we were chosen before we were ever in our mother’s womb.  Because Mary received salvific grace from the moment of her conception, we can catch a glimpse of what is to come for all of us one day.  Mary’s deliverance from sin and death was made possible by the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus, who deeply desires that we all be delivered in that way too.

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

  • Saint Nicholas

    Saint Nicholas

    Today’s readings

    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.

  • The Second Sunday of Advent [A]

    The Second Sunday of Advent [A]

    Today’s readings

    I’ve had the feeling, lately, that things just aren’t right.  I think we all get that in our lives from time to time, and it leads us to take stock of what’s going on in us and around us.  For me, of course, it’s this impending move, just ten days from now.  I’m trying to finish up things here at Saint Petronille, and I’ve been fielding calls and emails from Notre Dame to make decisions about things that are coming up quick, like the celebrations of Christmas, and things like that.  I’m starting to go through the very unpleasant task of packing – I just hate that! – and I feel like I’m starting to live out of boxes, and that’s only just begun!  Times of transition are like that; they are disconcerting, unsettling – they give you that distinct feeling that things just aren’t right.

    We could all probably think of times in our lives when things just haven’t been right: times of transition, times dealing with the illness of a loved one, or family difficulty, times when we have been looking for new work or trying to discern a path in life.  These are unsettling times that we all have to experience every now and then.

    But at some point in our lives we find that even this kind of thing is merely a drop in the bucket. At what point did you figure out a lot of things in this world just weren’t right? We could cite many examples: rising violence in our communities, declining respect for authority, terrorism, fear and war, poverty, hunger and homelessness, corruption in politics on every conceivable level, the proliferation of consumerism, greed, and overconsumption, pollution of the environment, and more. All it takes is a few minutes’ worth of the evening news to let us know that somewhere at the core, fundamentally, our world just isn’t right.

    God knows it isn’t right. And he’s known for a long time. The whole Old Testament is filled with God’s lament of how things went wrong, and his attempts to bring it back. The fourth Eucharistic Prayer sums it up by saying to God, “Again and again you offered a covenant to man, and through the prophets taught him to hope for salvation.” But, as we well know from our studies of the Scriptures and its proclamation in the Liturgy, again and again humankind turned away from the covenant and away from the God of our salvation. Ever since the fall, things just haven’t been right.

    So what is it going to take for all of this to turn around?  What is going to get things whipped into shape?  Albert Einstein once said something like that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Nothing ever changes if nothing ever changes.  Things don’t suddenly become right by continuing to do the wrong thing.  I really think the only way things will ever change is by starting over.  And that’s what I believe God is doing.

    Today’s first reading speaks of this new creation: a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse.  A young woman in my previous parish once visited the concentration camp at Auschwitz.  She saw the horrible death chambers and holding cells.  But she also noticed, that growing up through the cracks in the asphalt, were some beautiful little wild flowers.  Her tour guide commented that that was nature’s way of healing what had gone on there.  It was a new creation, breaking up through the horrible devastation of the murder and destruction that had reigned in that place.

    The bud that blossoms from God’s new creation is something completely different, something incredibly wonderful, something that would never be possible in the old order:  “The wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.”  None of those species would ever get along in the old creation; none of them would ever have been safe.  But in the new creation, all of them will know the Lord, and that knowledge will give them new life, a new direction, new hope and a new salvation.

    In today’s gospel reading, Saint John the Baptist proclaims the coming of Christ who will do things in a new way, too:  “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”  The all-consuming fire of the Holy Spirit will burn away all that is not right and heat up all that has been frozen in listless despair for far too long.  That fire will force a division between what is old and just not right, and what is of the new creation:  “He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

    All of these are nice words, and the idea of a new creation is one for which I think we all inwardly yearn.  But what does it really mean?  What does it look like?  How will we know that we are moving toward new creation and new life?  I think Saint Paul gives us a hint in the second reading today: “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to think in harmony with one another, in keeping with Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  We are to be people who think and act in harmony with one another and with Christ.

    Which is, as most things are, easier to say than to actually do.  For one thing, if we are really to be created anew, that means that some of the old stuff has to die: the death chambers have to be closed, the chaff has to be burnt up in the fire.  Our old, stinkin’ attitudes have to be abandoned: resentments have to be put aside, rivalries have to be ended, forgiveness has to be offered and accepted, jealousies have to be thrown away.  All of that festering, disease-ridden thinking has to be put to death if we are ever to experience new life.

    The death of that old nonsense then has to give way to the new life that God intends for us.  We have to be a people marked by new attitudes, new grace, new love.  We have to strive for peace and justice – real peace and real justice available to everyone God has created.  We have to be a community who worships God not just here in Church, but also out there in our daily lives: a community that insists on integrity, a community that genuinely cares for those who are sick, in need, or lost.  We have to be a people who worship God first every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, who confess our sins with hope of God’s mercy, who give priority to prayer in the midst of our crazy lives.

    Most of all, we have to be a people who are open to being re-created.  If we are not willing to put to death our old stinkin’ selves and embrace new attitudes and ways of living, then we are proving Einstein right: we are doing the same old thing and hoping for a different result.  It doesn’t work that way.  We have to cooperate with God’s new creation, we have to be eager to let God do something new.  We have to be willing to live out of boxes for a while, so that the transition can take place.  We have to have unwavering hope that giving ourselves to God’s re-creation will be worth it, if not immediately, then certainly in the long run.  We have to truly believe our Psalmist’s song: “Justice will flower in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.”

  • St. Francis Xavier, priest

    St. Francis Xavier, priest

    Today’s readings: 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 16:15-20

    We celebrate the memorial of St. Francis Xavier as a feast today, because he is the patron saint of the Diocese of Joliet. Francis Xavier was a sixteenth century man who had a promising career in academics. He was encouraged in the faith by his good friend, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and went to join the new community founded by Ignatius, the Society of Jesus, better known today as the Jesuits.

    Francis had a passion for preaching the Gospel and living a life of Gospel simplicity. He would live with and among the poorest of the poor, sharing their living conditions, ministering to the sick, and preaching and teaching the faith. He lived in the East Indies for a time, before going on to minister to the Hindus, Malaysians, and Japanese. Francis even learned a bit of Japanese in order to communicate well with his people and to preach to them. He dreamed of going on to minister in China, but died before he could get there.

    Francis Xavier truly took to heart the words of St. Paul who said he made himself all things to all people in order to save at least some. Francis made it his life’s work to live as his people lived, preaching to simple folk, and calling them to Jesus. He was also able to live freely Jesus’ Gospel call today: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

    Now we might not have the opportunity to live as Francis Xavier did and to actually go out to distant shores to preach the Gospel. But we certainly are still called to preach it with our lives. We are called to witness to Christ to everyone we meet: family, friends, coworkers, neighbors-anyone the Lord puts in our path. Our diocese chose Francis Xavier for our patron because our founders took seriously the call to proclaim the Gospel to every person in this diocese. We are called upon to do the same, according to our own life’s vocation and state of life. May all who hear our words and see our actions come to believe and be saved.

  • Wednesday of the First Week of Advent

    Wednesday of the First Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    We are a people who are always in a rush, and so way too often we pick up a bite to eat on the run.  We stop at fast food places so often that they are a thriving industry, all of this to the detriment of our health.  We offer this same mentality, at times, to our relationship with Christ.  Today’s readings tell us of the feast that God would spread out for us – nourishment for our bodies and our souls. Advent is a time for us to slow down and feast on the hope that God provides for us.  Not some fast food quick bite to eat, but rich, juicy fare.  All we need to do is pull up a chair and really enter into the feast.

  • Saint Andrew the Apostle

    Saint Andrew the Apostle

    Today’s readings

    There are two presentations of Andrew’s discipleship in Scripture.  In the Gospel story we have today, Andrew is called at the same time as his brother Peter.  They are both fishermen, and are casting their nets into the sea.  Jesus, of course, has plans for them to cast nets for bigger fish, for souls for the kingdom, and so he calls them.  They immediately drop their nets and leave their father and turn to follow them.

    I always wonder what would make them do something like that.  After just one call, they drop everything they have ever known, turn away from their family, and go off to pursue the admittedly greater call to follow Christ.  But why?  Yes, we know who Jesus is, but did they?  Maybe they had heard him preach, or had heard about him in some way, but I often think of my own call, which took years, and am amazed by their seemingly instantaneous decision to drop everything and follow Jesus.

    The second presentation of Andrew’s story comes in the Gospel of John.  In John’s Gospel, Andrew is a disciple of St. John the Baptist.  One day, Jesus is passing by and John says, “Behold the Lamb of God.”  Andrew and another one of the disciples follow Jesus and he asks them what they want.  Andrew says, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  To which Jesus replies, “Come and see.”  So they do, and then it is Andrew who goes to get Peter and present him to Jesus.

    Either way, the call is a great one, and the response of Andrew is one of wonder and openness.  We are called often in our lives to follow Jesus in some new way.  May Saint Andrew be our patron in those calls, and may his example lead us to drop what we are doing and follow our Lord.

  • Monday of the First Week of Advent

    Monday of the First Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Could you do that?  You have someone close to you at home, and you know Jesus is near and one visit could heal her or him.  Yet, you realize the unworthiness that you have, that we all have, for him to come under your roof.  Would you have faith enough to tell him not to come, but just say the word.  Would you be confident enough that his word would heal your loved one?

    That’s the faith we are called to have, and I wonder if we have that kind of faith when we pray.  Do we trust God enough to let him “say the word” and then know that we don’t have to set “Plan B” in motion?  Today’s Scriptures call us to greater trust as we begin this Advent journey to the house of the Lord.  In what way do we need to trust God more today?

  • The First Sunday of Advent [A]

    The First Sunday of Advent [A]

    Today’s readings

    I don’t know about you, but I always find this weekend after Thanksgiving to be a little strange.  And I love Thanksgiving: what a great holiday when we don’t have to worry about shopping for gifts, but instead can concentrate on a nice meal with family or friends, or whatever our traditions may be.  But this weekend, as a whole, has become rather strange, and I think I’ve always struggled a bit with it.

    Here is a weekend when we can barely clear the plates at the Thanksgiving dinner table before we have to make room for Christmas.  And I’m not talking about the religious implications of Christmas here, but you know I mean all the secular trappings of that holy day.  It begins about Halloween, or maybe a little earlier, when you start to see the stores slowly make room for the Christmas stuff.  They sneak in some “holiday” signs here and there, and start to weave the garland in to the end of the aisles, just past the Halloween costumes.  On Thanksgiving day, you hear the great “thud” of the daily newspaper, heavier than it is on most Sundays because of all the “Black Friday” sales.

    And then there’s that horrible thing – Black Friday – what a nasty, evil name for a day that is, well, nasty and evil.  I loathe the idea of even getting in the car to drive to the drug store to pick up a prescription on that day.  And you can get an earlier and earlier start on the madness every year; this year the friendly folks at Kohl’s were waiting for you at 3am – at least that’s what I gathered from their advertisements for I have no personal experience to verify that fact!  We barely have time to gather up the pumpkins and corn stalks and autumn leaves before we have to set out the Christmas stockings and brightly-lit trees and candy canes.

    This is a weekend that has always brought a lot of conflicting emotions for me.  As a Liturgist, I want to celebrate Advent, but we don’t get to do that at least in the secular world.  And I’m not a Scrooge – I love Christmas, but I’d like to experience the eager expectation of it, and to be mindful of the real gift of Christmas, before we launch headlong into the real sappy Christmas songs that get played over and over and over in the stores and on the secular radio stations.  By the way, I do have a list of sappy songs that I could do without ever hearing again.  I’d tell you some of the titles, but I don’t want you to leave here with those tunes going through your head – God forbid!

    And, for a lot of people, these upcoming Christmas holidays are hard.  Maybe they’re dealing with the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job or house, or who knows what calamity.  The synthetic joy of these holidays just heightens their grief, and that makes this season anything but joyful for them.  I remember the year my grandmother on dad’s side passed away.  I went into a store here in Glen Ellyn about this time of year, and it was decorated with all sorts of subdued lighting and homey Christmas motifs, and I had this feeling of grief that was just overwhelming – it came at me out of nowhere, and I had to leave the store in tears for no apparent reason.

    The emotions we feel at this time of year are palpable and often conflicted.  The Church knows this, and in Her great wisdom, gives us the season of Advent every year.  It’s a season that recognizes that there is this hole in our hearts that needs to be filled up with something.  That something isn’t going to be an item you can pick up on Black Friday, or a trite holiday jingle, or even a gingerbread-flavored libation.  Those things can’t possibly fill up our personal sadness, or the lack of peace in the world, or the cynicism and apathy that plague our world and confront us day after day.

    What we’re really going to need is a full immersion of hope.  And we know what – or rather Who – is the source of that hope.  That’s what we really celebrate at Christmas, what causes us to bend the knee in genuflection, what brings us here week after week, or even day after day.  Our hope can only ever come from Christ our God, sent into a world just as listless and cold as the one we live in today.  He came to redeem that world and re-create it in love, painting it all along the way with the bright hues of a hope that can never fade.  We will not find that hope in our own personal resources; we won’t find it in science, in politics, in soccer, golf or work.  We won’t find hope in Oprah or Dr. Phil or anyone else.  The only real hope we have is Jesus Christ, and he is all the hope we will ever need.

    Today’s first reading lights up the way to that hope: “Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” We have not been left to deal with the sadness of our world without an anchor of hope. That anchor is the Church, the Lord’s mountain, which provides instruction in the ways of God and a kind of roadmap to follow in God’s ways.  Because, let’s face it, our ultimate goal is to come through the Judgment Day and be in God’s presence for all eternity.  God has given us the Church to show us how to get there.

    And that gift of the Church is wonderful, but we must humble ourselves and slow ourselves down to take advantage of it.  The problem is that most people don’t believe in the necessity of the Eucharist and the sacraments any more.  Far too many skip Mass on days when the kids have a sports event, or when they want to sleep in, or when they don’t feel like going through the trouble of getting the family to Church.  Entirely too many people don’t think the Sacrament of Penance is necessary; that they haven’t done anything that bad, or that the priest won’t understand the bad thing they did, or that they can just pray for forgiveness.  There is hope in the Church and her sacraments, and if we don’t take advantage of them, we have to stop wondering why our lives seem so devoid of hope sometimes.

    We absolutely have to stop thinking we know what’s best for our lives-both our temporal as well as our spiritual lives.  Because the Church has two millennia worth of saints who have wrestled with the truth and been victorious over the world by joining themselves to Christ.  We need to open our minds and hearts to the wisdom of a Church that is governed by the Holy Spirit and possesses a Truth that is eternal, irrefutable and able to bring us to salvation.  Maybe this Advent that means that we will humble ourselves and come to the Sacrament of Penance for the first time in many years.  Or maybe in the coming year we won’t miss Sunday Mass in favor of a soccer game, an opportunity to golf, or a really important project at work.  Because as important and wonderful as these things may be, soccer, golf and work will not get you to heaven.  They just won’t.

    Today’s prayer after Communion aptly pronounces what our readings call us to today.  I want you to pay special attention to that prayer when I pray it later on.  It speaks of the Eucharist teaching us to love heaven and says: “May its promise and hope guide our way on earth.”  If we’re ever going to get through the craziness of a secularized holiday and our own struggles and the world’s woes, we need to take a step back, quiet ourselves, and let the hope of Advent brighten our outlook and heighten our longing to be with our God.  May we all be transformed from the cynicism and apathy of our world into the joyful promise of the Kingdom of God.  As the Psalmist sings today, may we all go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.