Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: Advent

  • The Second Sunday in Advent

    The Second Sunday in Advent

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel reading is very interesting, I think. The beginning of the passage names important people at that particular time in Israel: Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip and Lysanias, and also the high priests: Annas and Caiaphas. Finally it names John the Baptist, who was then beginning to herald the unveiling of God’s plan for salvation. Luke does all this to say that, while the Word of the Lord came to John, who was pretty obscure, and who many thought was crazy, still that Word came at a particular point in history, a time they could remember and observe. God was getting real in their midst, and John wasn’t so much crazy as he was on fire.

    His message was a message of change, and no one likes change. So it’s no wonder they labeled John as crazy and made him take his message to the desert instead of the city and the temple precincts. Better that than actually listening to his message and changing their lives. But John’s message is clear. God wanted to burst into their midst, and if they didn’t make changes, they were going to miss it. It’s a message as pertinent and poignant now as it was then.

    Because we are a people who could use some time in the desert. Now, I don’t mean we should go to an actual desert or even take a trip to Las Vegas! What I mean is, we need to calm down and find some peace in our lives, because with all the craziness and busy-ness of our lives, we stand a pretty good chance of missing the Advent of our Savior as all the people back then did. We might be just as impatient with a John the Baptist as the people were then. Who wants to hear the word “repent?” That means a real change in our lives that we are often not willing to make.

    But we all need to repent of something, friends. Me included. Repent means turning around and going in another direction. We all get off track here and there in our lives. Repent means turning back to God, our God who is waiting to break into our lives and be born among us this Advent.

    John is really clear about what kind of repenting needs to be done. If we are going to prepare a way for the Lord, we are going to have to make straight the winding roads: stop meandering all over the place, and walk with purpose to communion with the Lord. We are going to have to fill in the valleys and level the mountains, because God doesn’t come in fits and spurts, showing up every now and then for a mountain top experience and then taking his leave when times bring you down. He’s there always and forever. We are going to have to make those rough ways smooth, because every time we’re jostled around on those rough roads, we stand the chance of getting thrown off the path. We have to repent, to change, to become vessels in which our Lord can be born so that all flesh can see God’s salvation in us.

    Wherever we are on the journey to Christ, whatever the obstacles we face, God promises to make it right through Jesus Christ – if we will let him. We may be facing the valley of hurts or resentments. God will fill in that valley. Perhaps we are up against a mountain of sinful behavior, addiction, or shame. God will level that mountain. We may be lost on the winding roads of procrastination or apathy. God will straighten out that way. We may be riding along on the rough and bumpy ways of poor choices, sinful relationships and patterns of sin. God will make all those ways smooth. And all flesh – every one of us, brothers and sisters – we will all see the salvation of God. That’s a promise. God, who always keeps his promises, will forgive us all of our sins. But we have to be open to the experience, and that is the challenge in these Advent days.

    And so, in the spirit of encouraging that openness, I want to encourage you in the strongest possible terms to prepare the manger of your hearts by going to Confession. We have a special time of confession, which we have come to affectionately call “Confessionpalooza” on Sunday the 22nd, at 1:30pm, after the 12:15 Mass. There will be 13 or so priests here to hear confessions in English, Spanish and Polish. Please plan to make a good confession before Christmas; it will be the greatest present of your season to receive the gift of God’s mercy!

    The Sacrament of Penance is where we Catholics level those mountains, straighten those winding roads, and fill in the potholes that have derailed us along the way. If you haven’t been to confession in years and you don’t remember what to do, come anyway. The priest will help you to make a good confession. That’s what we’re there for! Feel free to ask for help and don’t be embarrassed about having been away. It is always a joy for us to help a person return to the sacraments.

    The truth is, brothers and sisters in Christ, we come to this holy place to this sacred Liturgy, each of us at different places in the spiritual road. Our goal – all of us – is to advance on that road, tackling the obstacles that face us, and defeating our sin by the power of God’s forgiveness and mercy. There may only be one unforgivable sin: the sin of thinking that we don’t need a Savior. When we rationalize that we’re basically good people and we’re okay and that there is nothing wrong with our lives or our relationships, then we’re lost. It’s not that God doesn’t want to forgive us this sin, it’s more that we refuse to have it forgiven. If Advent teaches us anything, it’s got to be that we all need that baptism of repentance that John the Baptist preached, that we all need to prepare the way of the Lord in our hearts, making straight the paths for his coming in our lives.

    Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly, and do not delay!

  • The First Sunday in Advent

    The First Sunday in Advent

    Today’s readings

    I’ll admit it: I’m no good at waiting. Waiting gives me anxiety. What if it never happens? What if I miss it? What if what I’m waiting for is the worst thing in the world? I don’t think I’m alone on that: we as a society are terrible at waiting. We want to get rich quick, have everything our own way now, and if it’s not now, we want to see the manager! Waiting is fine for other people, but really not for us.

    But we know that waiting is a spiritual discipline. Our Church Year begins anew on the First Sunday of Advent, that season that prepares us for Christmas, the coming of our Lord as one of us. This time of year, we remember on the new year that God renewed the covenant with us, his people, his creation, and that in this new covenant, he is creating the world anew. But that doesn’t happen all at once; we have to wait for it to come to completion, and we have to cooperate with its happening.

    And so, this new year of the Church finds us waiting. That might be tough, but I think for many of us, the idea of a new year is welcome. For many people, a year gone past can have brought more than enough of the “anxieties of daily life” that our Lord speaks of in today’s Gospel. Maybe we’re more than happy to usher the current year of grace out the door, and look for more grace in the year to come.

    I think it’s pretty easy to see why this is so needed. I like to watch the news in the morning, but lately it doesn’t take too long before I have to turn it off. The bad news can be oppressive sometimes. And we could even look to our own lives. As we come to the end of the year, maybe this was a year filled with blessing or maybe it’s one we won’t miss. Most likely, it was a little bit of both. Perhaps this last year might have seen the death of a loved one, the ending of a relationship, or some other significant event. As we end another year, some of us might be doing that with some regret, looking back on patterns of sin or the plague of addiction. And so, for many of us, maybe even most of us, it doesn’t take too much imagination to know that there is a lot of room for renewed hope in our lives. We literally can’t wait for things to change.

    But wait we must, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. If we can’t wait for Thanksgiving to be over before we go Christmas shopping, it’s going to be hard to wait to see what God is doing in our lives. There’s a scene in the movie “Christmas Vacation” that I always think of when I read these readings. Clark Griswold is in his boss’s office, bringing him a Christmas gift. There’s an awkward silence and then the boss tells Clark that he’s very busy. He picks up the phone and says, presumably to his secretary, “Get me somebody. Anybody. And get me somebody while I’m waiting!” None of us likes to wait.

    So we have to find the grace in the waiting. Maybe that’s why I love Advent so much. I’m so generally impatient, that Advent has me slow down and re-create that space so that it can be filled with our Lord’s most merciful presence. So what do we do while we are waiting? How do we live among the chaos? How do we keep going when every fiber of our being wants to pack it in and hope for it all to be over real soon? Today’s Gospel warns us that people will die in fright when they see what is going to happen, but it cannot be so for people of faith. Even in the midst of life’s darkest moments, even when it seems like we can’t withstand one more bout of hopeless worry, we are still called to be a hopeful people. “Stand erect,” Jesus tells us, “and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.” God is unfolding his promise among us and even though we still must suffer the sadness that life can sometimes bring us, we have hope for something greater from the one whose promises never go unfulfilled.

    Then what does a hopeful people do while we are waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promises? How is it that we anticipate and look for the coming of our Savior in glory? Our consumerist society would have us cast aside our Thanksgiving dinners to get an early jump on Black Friday, and battle it out with a few thousand of our closest friends for the latest and greatest deals. And to that kind of thinking, Jesus says, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life.” Getting caught up in the things of this world does us no good. It does not bring us closer to salvation or to our God, and all it does is increase our anxiety. Who needs that?

    Instead, we people of faith are called to wait by being “vigilant at all times.” We are called to forgive those who have wronged us, to reach out to the poor and the vulnerable, to advocate for just laws, laws that protect religious freedom and the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, and to protect all those who are most vulnerable; to challenge world powers to pursue true justice and real peace, to give of ourselves so that those in need might have Christmas too, and even to love those who drive us nuts sometimes. When we do that, we might just be surprised how often we see Jesus among us in our lives, in our families and schools and workplaces and communities. It might just seem like Jesus isn’t that far from returning after all, that God’s promises are absolutely unfolding before our eyes.

    We are a people who like instant gratification and hate to wait for something good to come along. Maybe that’s why the Christmas shopping season starts about two months before Halloween. But if we would wait with faith and vigilance, if we would truly pursue the reign of God instead of just assuming it will be served up to us on a silver platter, if we spend our time encouraging others with the hope we have in Jesus, we might not be so weary of waiting after all. That’s the call God gives us people of faith on this New Year’s day.

    One of my favorite reflections on this hope that we have comes in the Advent hymn, “O Come, Divine Messiah.” It goes like this:

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

    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.

  • The Third Sunday of Advent

    The Third Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Today is Gaudete Sunday.  Gaudete is Latin for “rejoice,” reflecting the first word of the entrance antiphon for today which says, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.  Indeed, the Lord is near.”  On this Sunday, we take a break from the somber tones of purple and put on the more festive color rose to symbolize that in the bleak winter days of Advent, we have reason for joy, and that joy is the hope of our coming Savior.  The Lord is near!  Rejoice!

    We can see that rejoicing in our readings today. The prophet Isaiah starts the rejoicing in today’s first reading.  He rejoices that the Lord, having anointed him for service, is using him to work out salvation and justice.  To a people as long oppressed as Isaiah’s hearers were, this message would indeed be welcome and cause for great rejoicing. In the second reading, Saint Paul gives the Thessalonians very specific instructions about how they are to conduct themselves.  And the first instruction is that they should rejoice.  Rejoicing is the natural way for Christians to behave because they have in their presence the cause of all joy, Jesus Christ our Lord. In our Gospel this morning, Saint John the Baptist clearly points out the source of his joy: “I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” 

    Truly, there is no greater occasion for joy than being in the presence of our Lord, and having him present in our lives. We should indeed rejoice and always be glad because our God, who created us and gave us a  place in his glorious universe, has chosen to come to earth as a tiny child, to be one of us, in the most intimate and vulnerable way possible. That’s why we bless the Bambini from our mangers today: we recognize the source of all our joy.

    Another great cause for our joy, indeed the cause for our joy, is that our God, who has seen us walk away from him and pursue things that are not him, will not allow us to be abandoned in our sinfulness. Seeing the sadness of sin and death, our God does not want them to be the end of our story.  And so that’s why he came to us, to live for us, to die for us, and to open for us the way to salvation.  That way of salvation includes the sacraments which lead us back to God when we have gone astray.  Today we have available the last opportunity for confessions here after the 12:15 Mass.  We have thirteen confessors scheduled to celebrate the sacrament with you in English, Spanish, and Polish. If you have not yet been able to go to confession before Christmas, this afternoon is the time, and I hope to see you there. Please be there at 1:30 so we don’t miss you.

    Finally, we have to be the joy that our world needs right now.  There is so much sadness in our world today.  So we have to be witnesses to God’s love and presence all around us.  We have to show that our God is great and mighty and faithful and loving and glorious and forgiving and healing and more awesome than anything we can possibly imagine – and we have to do that by the way that we live our lives, by the words we say, by the things we do.  If we want the world to find the joy that Christ is in our lives, then we have to live that joy – choose to live that joy – right here and right now.

    Brothers and sisters, we are witnesses to joy.  “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.  Indeed, the Lord is near.”

  • The First Sunday of Advent

    The First Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Happy New Year!  Today is, as you probably know, the new year of the Church, that new year we always begin on the First Sunday of Advent.  As we light the advent candles, we imbue the year ahead with the light of Christ.  And so, we stand here on the precipice of something new: a new Church year, a new season of grace.  We eagerly await God’s new creation, lifting up souls full of hope and expectation.  We come to this place and time of worship to take refuge from the disparaging enemies that pursue us into our corner of the world.  And 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 very name means “coming” and stands before us as a metaphor of hope for a darkened world, and a people darkened by sin.

    When we’re praying through Advent, perhaps we feel a sense of longing.  We do long for that newness.  This time of year, we long for warmer days.  In the news, we long for peace in the world and even in cities and communities.  Perhaps we long for peace in our families, and ourselves.  As a community of faith, we long for the One who alone can bring the real, lasting peace that makes a difference in our lives and in our world.  We long for the promised Savior who will bind up what is broken in us and lead us back to the God who made us for himself.

    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!”  We so much want to break free of the chains of sin and sadness, and turn back to our God, but so often, we encounter so many obstacles along the way.

    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?  A quick look at the news leads us to ask ourselves, what kind of people have we become?  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?

    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.

    As we prepare to remember the first coming of our Savior into our world at Christmas, we now look forward with hope and eagerness for his second coming.  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.

    All of this requires vigilance; we must be watchful, be alert, as Jesus instructs us in today’s Gospel.  We want our God to meet us doing right.  And so our task now is to wait, and to watch, and to yearn for his coming.  Waiting requires patience: patience to enjoy the little God-moments that become incarnate to us in our everyday 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, alert to opportunities to grow in grace, with faith lived by people who are the work of God’s hands.

    We wait and we watch knowing – convinced, really – absolutely positive – that God will rend the heavens and come down to us again one day; that Christ will return in all his glory and gather us back to himself, perfecting us and allowing hope to sing its triumph so loud that all the universe can hear it, dispelling the night and putting sadness to flight once and for all.  Brothers and sisters, be alert for that day.

    Come, Lord Jesus, and bring us hope.  Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

  • The First Sunday of Advent

    The First Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    I don’t know about you, but I always find this weekend after Thanksgiving to be a little strange.  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 observance of the Incarnation of our Lord, but rather 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 into the end of the aisles, just past the Halloween costumes.  On Thanksgiving day, you get about a thousand emails from every store or business from whom you’ve ever purchased anything.

    And then there’s Black Friday itself, which now starts bright and early on Thursday morning – Thursday, you know, Thanksgiving Day.  We then get to be treated to Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.  What a commercial mess this has all become, what a sad commentary on what makes our society tick.  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.

    Now, I will say this.  There are times in my life, this year included, when the joy of Christmas is definitely welcome, and I’ll celebrate it as long as I possibly can.  So I’ve been listening to Christmas music, and have watched more than my share of Hallmark Christmas movies with Mom over the past several weeks.  I like to celebrate Christmas all the way until February 2nd, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So I’m in it too.

    But I find that this rampant consumerism is really just part of the ambient noise of our society.  From television to social media to email spam to Christmas jingles on the store loud-speakers, the noise never seems to stop.  Whether it’s political bantering and bureaucratic infighting, or the latest pop culture scandal, it seems like there’s always a lot of noise going on.  And we could add to that our own noise: sin in our lives, unaddressed family strife, and so much more.  It’s no wonder we often have the television on as background noise, we seem to clamor for it.

    But all that noise comes at the peril of our spiritual lives.  The noise fills up the space that God wants to use to speak words of encouragement, solace, or challenge.  When we are constantly listening to other things, we can’t hear the voice of God who wants to be part of our lives, who wants to give us himself.

    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, and can be filled up if we will just be quiet and make space.  That something isn’t going to be an item you can pick up on Black Friday, or a trite holiday jingle, or even a peppermint mocha latte.  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.

    And so in our readings today, rather boldly, the Church is telling us to cut out all of this nonsense and get serious about our eternity.  Because if we’re only living from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, we are going to be left behind with our cheap electronics and gaudy trinkets, and have none of the real riches of the Kingdom of God.

    And so our first reading, from the second chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, has us taking a step back to look at our lives: “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 need to go a little higher and look down on what we’ve become in order to see how we fit into the bigger picture.  Do we see ourselves as concerned about peace and justice in the world, looking out for the needs of the needy and the marginalized, blanketing our world in holiness and calling it to become bright and beautiful as it walks in the light of the Lord?

    Or do we take part in those deeds of darkness that Saint Paul writes about in his letter to the Romans today?  Do we participate in these dark deeds to the point of giving scandal to those who carefully watch the activities of people of faith?  If we do, then Saint Paul clearly commands us to get our act together: “Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.  Let us conduct ourselves properly…”

    So this Advent season is clearly about something more than hanging up pretty decorations for a birthday party.  It’s about something more than perpetuating rampant consumerism and secularism.  And it’s definitely about more than participating in the same old noise we encounter all the time.  The stakes are too high for that.  Because while we are distracted by all of that ambient noise, we are in danger of missing the joy for which we were created.  Just as in the days of Noah, as Jesus points out in our Gospel today, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, so it will be in the coming Day of the Lord.  Just as those oblivious ones were surprised by the flood, we too are in danger of being surprised by the second coming.  God forbid that two men are hanging lights on the house when one is taken and the other is left.  Or that two women are getting some crazy deals at Kohls and one is taken and the other is left.  Or that two people are having a Twitter feud and one is taken and another is left.  We have to be prepared, because at an hour we do not expect, our Lord will certainly return.

    Don’t get me wrong: the return of our Lord is not something to be feared.  Indeed, we eagerly await that coming in these Advent days.  I’m just saying that if we aren’t attentive to our spiritual lives, if we don’t create a space for silence and reflection, if we aren’t zealous about living the Gospel, if we aren’t intentional about making time for worship and deepening our relationship with the Lord, then we are going to miss out on something pretty wonderful.  And that pretty wonderful thing isn’t in the far-off, distant future.  If we quiet ourselves and open our eyes, He’s right in front of us, walking with us, calling us to become more than we are, to become the glory for which we were created.  We have to stay awake, we have to turn off the noise, we have to live in the Lord’s daylight and not prefer the world’s darkness.  We have to eagerly expect our Lord’s birth into our hearts and souls, right here and now, and not in some distant day.

    Or we’ll miss it.  God forbid, we’ll miss it.

    So I am going to give you some quiet time right now, and also after Communion.  I want to give you an opportunity to pray in that silence. 

    So, in these moments of silence, I invite you to take a moment to call to mind something positive you’ve been meaning to do.  Maybe it’s a practice of prayer, or getting up on time, or exercising regularly, or reaching out to a friend or family member you haven’t talked to in a while.  If you’re like me, you could come up with a whole list of those things, but I want you to call to mind the one that is most tugging on your heart right now.  In these moments of silence, I invite you to talk to Jesus about that thing.  Offer it to him, and ask him for the grace to accomplish it, or at least begin it, in these Advent days.  And then listen for his support of you in that endeavor.

  • 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 Second Sunday of Advent

    The Second Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths!”

    Today’s Gospel reading is very interesting, I think. The beginning of the passage names important people at that particular time in Israel: Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip and Lysanias, and also the high priests: Annas and Caiaphas. Finally it names John the Baptist, who was then beginning to herald the unveiling of God’s plan for salvation.  Luke does all this to say that, while the Word of the Lord came to John, who was pretty obscure, and many thought was crazy, still that Word came at a particular point in history, a time they could remember and observe.  God was getting real in their midst, and John wasn’t so much crazy as he was on fire.

    His message was a message of change.  I have heard it said that no one likes change except for babies with dirty diapers!  So it’s no wonder they labeled John as crazy and made him take his message to the desert instead of the city and the temple precincts.  Better that than actually listening to his message and changing their lives.  But John’s message is clear.  God wanted to burst into their midst, and if they didn’t make changes, they were going to miss it.  It’s a message as pertinent and poignant now as it was then.

    Because we are a people who could use some time in the desert.  Now, I don’t mean we should go to an actual desert or even take a trip to Las Vegas!  What I mean is, we need to calm down and find some peace in our lives, because with all the craziness and busy-ness of our lives, we stand a pretty good chance of missing the Advent of our Savior as all the people back then did.  We might be just as impatient with a John the Baptist as the people were then.  Who wants to hear the word “repent?”  That means a real change in our lives that we are often not willing to make.

    But we all need to repent of something, friends.  Me included.  Repent means turning around and going in another direction.  We all get off track here and there in our lives.  Repent means turning back to God, our God who is waiting to break into our lives and be born among us this Advent.

    John is really clear about what kind of repenting needs to be done.  If we are going to prepare a way for the Lord, we are going to have to make straight the winding roads: stop meandering all over the place, and walk with purpose to communion with the Lord.  We are going to have to fill in the valleys and level the mountains, because God doesn’t come in fits and spurts, showing up every now and then for a mountain top experience and then taking his leave when times bring you down.  He’s there always and forever.  We are going to have to make those rough ways smooth, because every time we’re jostled around on those rough roads, we stand the chance of getting thrown off the path.  We have to repent, to change, to become vessels in which our Lord can be born so that all flesh can see God’s salvation in us.

    Wherever we are on the journey to Christ, whatever the obstacles we face, God promises to make it right through Jesus Christ – if we will let him.  We may be facing the valley of hurts or resentments.  God will fill in that valley.  Perhaps we are up against a mountain of sinful behavior, addiction, or shame.  God will level that mountain.  We may be lost on the winding roads of procrastination or apathy.  God will straighten out that way.  We may be riding along on the rough and bumpy ways of poor choices, sinful relationships and patterns of sin.  God will make all those ways smooth.  And all flesh – every one of us, brothers and sisters – we will all see the salvation of God.  That’s a promise.  God, who always keeps his promises, will forgive us all of our sins.  But we have to be open to the experience, and that is the challenge in these Advent days.

    And so, in the spirit of encouraging that openness, I want to make a very personal invitation.  Our parish is embarking on a time of renewal this week.  We will begin our Year of the Eucharist to remind ourselves of why we need to be here, and of the absolute necessity of strengthening our relationship with Jesus through Mary.  This week is also our parish’s patronal feast day: The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Wednesday the 8th.  In order to prepare for that, at the end of the 12:15 Mass this Sunday, we will have a Eucharistic procession through the hallways of our campus, then return here to church to begin 40 Hours Devotion.  If you have not signed up for an hour or two or three yet, you still can; the sign up book is in the narthex and online.  We particularly need people during the night hours.  Our Lord, who is always here for you, has asked me to keep the light on so that you can be here with him.  Please don’t let him down.

    I also want to encourage you in the strongest possible terms to begin this year of the Eucharist and to prepare the manger of your hearts by going to Confession.  We have confessions today at 7pm during 40 Hours, during a holy hour of praise and worship.  We will have four priests here to hear confessions, please be sure to keep us busy!  We also have a special time of confession on Sunday the 19th, immediately following the 12:15 Mass.  There will be 8 or more priests here to hear confessions in English, Spanish and Polish.  Please plan to make a good confession before Christmas; it will be the greatest present of your season to receive the gift of God’s mercy!

    The Sacrament of Penance is where we Catholics level those mountains, straighten those winding roads, and fill in the potholes that have derailed us along the way.  If you haven’t been to confession in years and you don’t remember what to do, come anyway.  The priest will help you to make a good confession.  That’s what we’re there for!  Feel free to ask for help and don’t be embarrassed about having been away.  It is always a joy for us to help a person return to the sacraments.  That’s what we are here for!

    The truth is, brothers and sisters in Christ, we come to this holy place to this sacred Liturgy, each of us at different places in the spiritual road. Our goal – all of us – is to advance on that road, tackling the obstacles that face us, and defeating our sin by the power of God’s forgiveness and mercy. There may only be one unforgivable sin: the sin of thinking that we don’t need a Savior. When we rationalize that we’re basically good people and we’re okay and that there is nothing wrong with our lives or our relationships, then we’re lost. It’s not that God doesn’t want to forgive us this sin, it’s more that we refuse to have it forgiven. If Advent teaches us anything, it’s got to be that we all need that baptism of repentance that John the Baptist preached, that we all need to prepare the way of the Lord in our hearts, making straight the paths for his coming in our lives.

    Come, Lord Jesus.  Come quickly, and do not delay!

  • The First Sunday of Advent

    The First Sunday of Advent

    Today’s readings

    Happy New Year!

    I know, as I say that, that we are still more than a month away from the end of the year.  But I also know that you know that I’m speaking of the new year of the Church.  Our Church Year begins anew on the First Sunday of Advent, that season that prepares us for Christmas, the coming of our Lord as one of us.  This time of year, we remember on the new year that God renewed the covenant with us, his people, his creation, and that in this new covenant, he is creating the world anew.

    And that might just be alright with us, I think.  For many people, a year gone past can have brought more than enough of the “anxieties of daily life” that our Lord speaks of in today’s Gospel.  Maybe, for many of us, we’re more than happy to usher the current year of grace out the door, and look for more grace in the year to come.

    I think it’s pretty easy to see why this is so needed.  I like to watch the news in the morning, but lately it doesn’t take too long before I have to turn it off.  The bad news can be oppressive sometimes.  And we could even look to our own lives.  As we come to the end of the year, maybe this was a year filled with blessing or maybe it’s one we won’t miss. Most likely, it was a little bit of both. Perhaps this last year might have seen the death of a loved one, the ending of a relationship, or some other significant event.  As we end another year, some of us might be doing that with some regret, looking back on patterns of sin or the plague of addiction.  And so, for many of us, maybe even most of us, it doesn’t take too much imagination to know that there is a lot of room for renewed hope in our lives.

    But it’s hard to wait for the fulfillment of that hope, isn’t it? If we can’t wait for Thanksgiving to be over before we go Christmas shopping, it’s going to be hard to wait to see what God is doing in our lives. There’s a scene in the movie “Christmas Vacation” that I thought of when I was getting this homily ready. Clark Griswold is in his boss’s office, bringing him a Christmas gift. There’s an awkward silence and then the boss tells Clark that he’s very busy. He picks up the phone and says, presumably to his secretary, “Get me somebody. Anybody.  And get me somebody while I’m waiting!” None of us likes to wait.

    So we have to find the grace in the waiting. Maybe that’s why I love Advent so much.  I’m so generally impatient, that Advent has me slow down and re-create that space so that it can be filled with our Lord’s most merciful presence. So what do we do while we are waiting?  How do we live among the chaos?  How do we keep going when every fiber of our being wants to pack it in and hope for it all to be over real soon?  Today’s Gospel warns us that people will die in fright when they see what is going to happen, but it cannot be so for people of faith.  Even in the midst of life’s darkest moments, even when it seems like we can’t withstand one more bout of hopeless worry, we are still called to be a hopeful people.  “Stand erect,” Jesus tells us, “and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”  God is unfolding his promise among us and even though we still must suffer the sadness that life can sometimes bring us, we have hope for something greater from the one whose promises never go unfulfilled.

    Then what does a hopeful people do while we are waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promises?  How is it that we anticipate and look for the coming of our Savior in glory?  Our consumerist society would have us cast aside our Thanksgiving dinners to get an early jump on Black Friday, and battle it out with a few thousand of our closest friends for the latest gadget or bauble or toy.  And to that kind of thinking, Jesus says, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life.”  Getting caught up in the things of this world does us no good.  It does not bring us closer to salvation or to our God, and all it does is increase our anxiety.  Who needs that?

    Instead, we people of faith are called to wait by being “vigilant at all times.”  We are called to forgive those who have wronged us, to reach out to the poor and the vulnerable, to advocate for just laws, laws that protect religious freedom and the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, to challenge world powers to pursue true justice and real peace, to give of ourselves so that those in need might have Christmas too, and even to love those who drive us nuts sometimes.  When we do that, we might just be surprised how often we see Jesus among us in our lives, in our families and schools and workplaces and communities.  It might just seem like Jesus isn’t that far from returning after all, that God’s promises are absolutely unfolding before our eyes.

    We are a people who like instant gratification and hate to wait for something good to come along.  Maybe that’s why the Christmas shopping season starts about two weeks before Halloween.  But if we would wait with faith and vigilance, if we would truly pursue the reign of God instead of just assuming it will be served up to us on a silver platter, if we spend our time encouraging others with the hope we have in Jesus, we might not be so weary of waiting after all.  That’s the call God gives us people of faith on this New Year’s day.

  • Monday of the Third Week of Advent

    Monday of the Third Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    The whole progression of Advent is one that has always captured my imagination.  I see Advent as a kind of dawning of a new day.  Just as the day doesn’t come all at once, so Advent progresses and we see the coming of Jesus ever more gradually as we participate in each day’s Liturgy of the Word.  At the same time though, night doesn’t last forever, and the day arrives more quickly than we might be ready for.  I think that’s kind of where we are at this sort of late-middle point of Advent.

    Today we see some glimmers of light.  The prophet Balaam speaks of a star advancing from Jacob and a spear from Israel.  This wasn’t terribly good news for Balaam’s people, but it sure is for us.  The hope of all the earth was in the somewhat distant future for the people of Israel, and even though in the Gospel that hope was standing right in front of them, the Truth of it all had not yet dawned on the chief priests and elders.

    Tomorrow we begin a special part of Advent, marked by reflection on the “O Antiphons” which we famously sing in the hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and which we pray during Evening Prayer each day.  The Liturgy is pretty strict during these days and calls for us to focus on the coming of Christ and his manifestation among us in so many wonderful ways.

    So the question is, have we been progressing faithfully this Advent?  Has the light been made ever brighter in our hearts?  Are we progressing toward the dawning of the day, or will it happen all at once and find us unprepared?  This is the time to light the lamp if we’ve been keeping it dim.  This is the time to wake from our sleep.  Our salvation is near at hand.

  • The Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday)

    The Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday)

    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.” 

    Today we rejoice because our Lord is near.  We light that third, rose-colored candle on our Advent wreath and we see there’s just one candle left until the feast of the reason for our rejoicing.  We rejoice, too, that we can come to him for help and sustenance and companionship on the journey to healing. 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, heal our brokenness, 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 our most difficult moments – THE LORD IS NEAR!

    During my trip to Israel this past fall, I got a sense of what Isaiah is talking about in today’s first reading.  When we were there, it was unseasonably hot.  I remember that we went up to the top of Masada, in the desert, and it was oppressive.  I was even worried for some of the less able pilgrims that were with us.  By contrast, we also visited Carmel, and even up at the top of the mountain, it was refreshing (actually it was raining a bit, so very refreshing!).  Also, at the top of Masada, all you could see was brown, parched desert.  At the top of Carmel, you could see all around Israel, with bodies of water, and villages.  

    They were different experiences, and it sheds light on what Isaiah is saying.  If the desert were to bloom with abundant flowers, and be given the splendor of Carmel, that would indeed be reason to rejoice.  But what would cause such a miraculous turn of events?

    Many times when I have had occasion to anoint a person having surgery, or battling an illness, I have read the first part of the Gospel reading we heard today.  Jesus tells the disciples of John the Baptist to tell him what they have seen and heard: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.  Again, any one of these would be reason enough to rejoice.  But again, what would cause such a miraculous outpouring of events?

    Well, we all know what caused all these miraculous events to burst forth upon the earth: the glorious coming of our Savior, Christ the Lord.  Our God who, as the Psalmist says, keeps faith forever, has turned to us in our need and become one of us, giving us a completely new life, where sin and death and disease, and even the scorching heat of desert have no power over us.  Our God remembers his promises: he “gives food to the hungry.  The LORD sets captives free.  The LORD gives sight to the blind; the LORD raises up those who were bowed down.  The LORD loves the just; the LORD protects strangers.”  Because our God is not a god who sets events in motion and then steps back to see them all flounder in desperation, but instead, he is a God that cares for every one of us as if we were the only one on earth.  Our God would have come to save us even if we were the only one who needed saving.  Our God, THE LORD IS NEAR!  Indeed we ought to rejoice!

    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 world that can sometimes be dark and scary.  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!

    In our silent time after the homily today, I invite you to pray with me.  I want you to picture Jesus coming to you, approaching you, and extending his hand to you.  He wants to give you a message of hope and encouragement.  He wants to tell you that you are important to him, that he came to save you.  What is he saying to you as he approaches? What is hopeless in you right now that he offers to sustain you through?  What is he saying to you on this day of rejoicing?