Humility and Poverty

Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the foci (plural of focus) of St. Francis of Assisi (or, as the Dominicans call him, our Holy Father St. Francis), and the Franciscan Orders, is the humility and poverty of God.  This shouldn’t surprise us much, as Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone (as he was baptized) gave up his family’s wealth and prestige to become a begging or mendicant friar and took the name Francis.  He literally (and I use that word properly) stripped off his family’s wealthy clothes and put on a rough, brown habit, and relied on the generosity of others to survive.  And through this poverty, and with the assistance of our Holy Father St. Dominic, they did much to rebuild the Church, which had so greatly fallen into disrepair.
    But poverty and humility don’t only regard physical possessions or wealth.  Our Lord shows us great humility and poverty in His Incarnation.  And yes, the Gospels are clear that the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph did not have much wealth (they had to present the poor family’s offering of two turtledoves or pigeons to redeem their firstborn son).  But the poverty of Christ comes from recognizing how much He gave up to take our human nature onto Himself.  As pure spirit, before the Incarnation, Christ had no limits, experienced no lack, and existed in pure actuality.  After the Incarnation, Christ could be seen in only one place, few the pangs of hunger and thirst, and would grow from potentiality to actuality throughout His life.  The King of the Universe could be mocked by his neighbors.  He could get splinters and feel pain while working with St. Joseph in his workshop.  
    But beyond that, Christ subjected Himself to the Law of Moses.  Our Lord gave the Law to Moses, and knew its deeper meaning, as He would preach in the Sermon on the Mount.  But, as one like us in all things but sin, He subjected Himself to a Law to which He, as Lawgiver, should never have had to follow.  The Law was for children as a tutor.  He needed no such tutor.  And yet, He did not consider it beneath Himself to obey the law in all its commands.  He received circumcision on the eighth day (as we will hear on Wednesday); His parents redeemed Him in the Temple 40 days after His birth (as we will celebrate on Candlemas), which is the earlier passage of today’s Gospel; He went to the Temple for Passover and the Feast of Booths and the Day of Atonement.  He who would declare all animals clean to St. Peter in a vision, obeyed kosher laws.  He would pay the temple tax, though He was the Lord of the temple and the object of its worship.  
    And He did all this so that He could redeem those under the law, so that we might not simply be servants or slaves (though St. Paul will still use these words from time to time), but sons and daughters in the Son of God, so that we could have the same access to the Father that He has.  What great humility for the one who did not sin, which the Law was meant to guard against, to live according to the Law!  What great poverty that He would live under the same rule as slaves, though He is Son.
    So how do we demonstrate this humility and poverty?  Or are we too important to humble ourselves and live under the rules of others, even when they seem not to apply to us (as long as they don’t go against our conscience)?  Kids will often confess disobedience to their parents in one way or another.  I know I disobeyed my parents when I was a child (shocking, I know!).  I will often remind them that our Lord, when He was a child, obeyed Mary and Joseph, even though Christ made and redeemed Mary and Joseph.  Christ, strictly speaking, owed no obedience to anyone; He is God.  And yet, if Joseph told Him to wash His face, or help His mother with dinner, or join in in the workshop, Jesus would yes, “Yes, Abba.”  If the Lord of all Creation can obey human parents, then we, who are not divine, can certainly give our best attempts to obey our parents and what they say.
    How about when Holy Mother Church asks us to do something: how do we respond then?  Some laws are man-made.  They are rooted in what we believe, but they are not directly from God.  Do we take time to obey them, or do we figure that we know better and don’t need to be shackled by such limiting regulations?  When the Church asks us to do penance to unite ourselves to Christ on the cross on Fridays, do we do that, in one way or another?  When the Church asks for some support in prayer, can we add a little prayer time to our daily habits, or do we complain that we pray enough, and are too busy to add another devotion?  Certainly devotions are not necessary, but they can sometimes help.  
    It is so easy to think that we know best, and we shouldn’t have to do something because it doesn’t apply to us, or won’t have an effect on us.  But Christ, through. His Incarnation and Nativity, shows us how to humble ourselves, and how to live in poverty, maybe not of possessions or money, but in poverty of spirit.  May the humble Christ Child, whom St. Francis, il Poverello, the little poor one, loved so much and imitated, help us all to be a bit more humble, a bit more poor, so that we can be more like our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Not Mine

Feast of the Holy Family

    One of the things that we learn from a young age, which is not necessarily good, is the concept of “mine.”  Certainly there is a natural, perhaps genetic, reaction to items that we need to survive.  But anyone who has dealt with a toddler who has learned the word, “mine,” can attest that it quickly goes beyond basic necessities of life like food and drink, and becomes the M.O., the modus operandi, or way of operating, when it comes to just about anything.  And toddlers have a grip strength that seems to defy logic.  Hopefully, the child grows out of this obsession with mine, though some adolescents, and even adults are still fixated on what is mine, such that they sound more like the seagulls in “Finding Nemo,” or like Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings.”
    Contrasted with the idea of mine is the family, as we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family today.  Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, had experienced difficulty in conceiving, and had wept copiously in the temple, such that Eli, the priest, thought she was drunk.  But she, with God’s help, conceived and gave birth to Samuel, and, as promised, she returned Samuel to God after she finished weaning Samuel.  
    This probably does not make sense to us.  We would never give up a child.  But this theme of a child that belongs to God runs through the Old Testament.  Think of Isaac, the son of Abraham.  Or Samson, whose father and mother couldn’t conceive, but who received the blessing of a child as announced by an angel, as long as the parents didn’t drink alcohol or eat unclean foods.  And their son, Samson, could not cut his hair.  In fact, the Mosaic law commanded that every firstborn son had to be presented to the Lord in the Temple and redeemed with a sacrifice, as Mary and Joseph did with Jesus, which we will celebrate at Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So offering one’s child to the Lord was not unknown to the Jewish People before the birth of Christ.
    But even after the birth of Christ, we should offer our families to God.  No, I’m not saying that when you child is misbehaving you can drop him or her off at the church and not have to worry about the child again.  But we should be ready to offer our family spiritually to God each and every day.
    Because, after baptism, before we belong to anyone else, we belong to God.  Yes, naturally we belong to our human family, but the bonds of baptism bind us to God in a way that supersedes our bonds to the human family.  That is how Jesus can say that if we cannot give up father and mother, we cannot truly be His disciple.  Most of the time we don’t have to give up family to follow God, but if our family asked us to do something wrong, our first allegiance should be to God.

    For husbands and wives, that means that your spouse, who is probably the most precious person to you in the world, doesn’t really belong to you.  He or she belongs to God, and your vocation as a spouse is to help your spouse get to heaven, because that’s where God wants him or her to be.  In the Episode III of “Star Wars,” Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side because he cannot stand the idea of his wife, Padmé, dying, and so the Sith Lord, Emperor Palpatine, tricks Anakin into following him with the promise that Palpatine will help save Padmé’s life.  He forsakes all the good he could do for the opportunity to hold on to his wife.  Ironically (spoiler alert), Anakin himself ends up killing Padmé in his anger towards her for not going along with his conversion to evil.  Certainly, husbands and wives should love each, and sacrifice their own good for the other.  But your spouse belongs to God first and foremost, who allows you to be a good steward in caring for your spouse.  But you do not fully possess him or her.
    For parents, this applies to children, as well.  Your child is yours.  But your child is primarily God’s.  You are called to help the child know God and follow God.  Sometimes children will thank you for this and make this part of your vocation easy.  Sometimes children will not like you making sure that you know about God and about how following Him leads to perfect happiness.  And, to a certain extent, we can’t control how children end up.  But parents are responsible for doing all that they can to help their children grow in the faith through prayer, Bible reading, instruction, and even discipline to help children grow in virtue.  From the second you have your child baptized, you acknowledge that your child is “on-loan” to you from God, and God will want to collect on that loan with interest.  God doesn’t want your child to remain a child in the faith, but to grow to adulthood in his or her relationship with God.  That is the interest God expects on what He entrusts to you.
    So please, by all means, care for your family members: your spouse, your children, your parents, your siblings.  But do so recognizing that they are not primarily yours.  We cannot be toddlers when it comes even to our families and say “mine” all the time.  To paraphrase St. Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians, you are not your own.  You belong to Christ, and Christ to God the Father.  May we each find ways of offering our family to God each day, and helping them get to our true home in heaven.

"Jesus Our Brother, Kind and Good"

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord
    Merry Christmas!  One of the non-theological things that I enjoyed most about seminary was the fraternity.  Now, when we think of fraternity and college students, our minds probably turn to John Belushi and rowdy houses filled with boys in men’s bodies, drinking, debauching, and the like.  But I mean fraternity in the sense of brotherhood.  I have two younger sisters, so going from that to a seminary with 80-110 young men my age was a big, but welcome shift.  It was good to have other guys with whom I could play the board game Risk or the video game Call of Duty, share the joys and struggles of the very fast-paced and filled-to-the-brim activities of preparing for the priesthood, play ultimate frisbee, and watch “Band of Brothers,” not to mention enjoying an adult beverage once we had come of age.  

    So, as we celebrate Christmas, my mind this year turned to Christ our brother.  This is part of the great news of Christmas and the Incarnation.  Jesus became our brother.  He took on our human nature, though without sin.  I’m sure the neighbor kids at Nazareth–where the Savior spent His youth after His family fled Bethlehem for Egypt, and then moved to Nazareth after leaving Egypt–played games with the young Messiah, talked about their joys and sorrows, and took time to enjoy His company.  
    But beyond the very human daily activities, Christ chose to stand in solidarity with us, to be united with us in all the things that made us great, and even took upon Himself all the sins that are the worst of us.  [That’s why we read the entire genealogy tonight, which I usually don’t do: to show that] Jesus became our brother, a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a son of King David, and even joined with us in the darker parts and stories of our human family, names like Tamar, the wife of Uriah, Manasseh, whose wickedness led to the Babylonian Exile.  Christ was our brother with all the holy men and women who came before Him, and Christ was our brother with all the evil men and women who came before Him.  
    And because He is our brother, this gives us a certain familiarity.  This is certainly true for priests who are ordained to act in His Name.  One of my favorite lines of prayer comes from the Preface for the Chrism Mass: “…with a brother’s kindness he also chooses men to become sharers in his sacred ministry through the laying on of hands.”  But it’s also true for all the faithful, not just priests.  We hear it in the devotional Christmas carol, “Jesus Our Brother, Kind and Good,” whose title is the first line of the song.  We hear it in the third verse of the Christmas carol, “O Holy Night,” as we sing, “Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother.”  We read it in the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2, verses 11-12: “Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them ‘brothers,’ saying: ‘I will proclaim your name to my brothers, in the midst of the assembly I will praise you.’”  
    But the mystery of the Incarnation is not simply about a fellow human who did some amazing things and lived a holy life.  The Redeemer is not only our brother; He is also our God.  He is not just a good man; or a good teacher; or a person who live an exemplary life.  He is the Eternal God, Son of the Eternal Father.  If He were only our brother, He could not save us, anymore than Abraham, Moses, or Elijah could save us, though they were holy and upright and allowed to work great deeds in God’s Name.  But, if He were not our brother, we would not feel the camaraderie with God that God desired us to have, like He had with Adam and Eve when He walked with them in the cool of the evening, as Genesis 3:8 says.  In the Messiah, the divinity of God, whom we cannot approach and before whom the proper response is to fall on our needs (again quoting “O Holy Night”), comes to us in a way that we can accept and feel comfortable, so that we could imagine, as the country singer Thomas Rhett does, having a beer with Jesus.  It all comes together in Christ, so that we can sing another great hymn, though not specifically about Christmas: “Jesus my Lord, my God, my all / How can I love thee as I ought?”  
    That is why our hearts are moved with great love and tenderness as we think on the Christ Child, lying in a manger, but also why I bowed before that same manger, and why we will all genuflect today as we profess our faith that, “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”  In Jesus Christ, we encounter both our Lord who frees us from the bonds of sin and death, and our brother who shares with us in all that is truly good.  
    Today, as we come to receive Him in the Sacrament of the Eucharist at Holy Communion, we approach our Lord and our brother.  Probably, we each emphasize one or the other, but both are equally true.  Our goal as followers of Christ is to live both in balance.  If we tend to focus on Jesus as Lord most of the time, then perhaps allow a little more familiarity in your life with Him, and make it a point to remember that, aside from sin, He did not deem it unbecoming to take on all that it meant to be human: from soiling His diapers, to enjoying a good meal, to sitting with friends and just talking about life.  If we tend to focus on Jesus as our brother most of the time, then remember that our brother created all the heavens and the earth, and is our King, whom the angels dare not even look upon out of reverence and awe.  Both Lord and Brother come together in Christ, and are present with us here tonight, in you, the People He has made His own; in His Word, proclaimed to us and alive for us; in me, His brother who, despite my unworthiness, He chose to act in His Name and with His power; and most especially in the Eucharist, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of our Lord and our Brother who shares with us all that it truly means to be human and redeems us from all the fallen realities that were not supposed to be part of being human, but which we introduced into the world through our disobedience.  On this Holy Night/Day, may we remember and put into action in our lives the reality that Christ is both our Lord and our Brother, through the words of the hymn:
 

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is our Lord!  O praise His name forever!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!

Revealing What is Hidden

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Recently the fifth season of the western-drama, “Yellowstone” finished up.  Like most TV shows, the audience is given a divine-like view, where they know what is going on, while the characters in the show have to figure things out for themselves.  This fifths season begins with the death of one of the major characters, and while the death is initially ruled a suicide, the TV audience knows that, quoting Shakespeare, “there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”
    I think that many television shows, especially, but not only, dramas, rely on the human desire to play God.  We don’t want to wait for God to bring to light those things hidden in the darkness.  We want to know now all that is going on, even the things that don’t seem to make sense or those that confound us.  
    St. Paul promises that God will reveal all hidden things when the Lord returns.  And in some sense, we might enjoy this.  When many people talk about heaven, they talk about an eternal Q & A session with God, asking questions as profound as why this person had to die, or why that person got to live, to the more mundane and silly questions like whether Adam and Eve had belly buttons, or who killed JR (you might have to be a little older to get that reference).  
    It’s also something to which we look forward because often there are serious questions to which we could never know the answer for sure.  We sense a lack of justice when we don’t know if the guilty party received punishment or not.  Think about how much ink has been spilled about whether Lee Harvey Oswald truly killed President Kennedy, and whether he acted alone or was part of a grander conspiracy, whether with the Mafia or perhaps even with our own government.  When those who, ostensibly, do not get punished for the wrong they do, especially prominent people like actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians, our desire for justice seems unfulfilled, like there’s no resolution that satisfies.
    However, bringing to light what has remained hidden in darkness cuts both ways.  It doesn’t only apply to actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians.  It applies to us as well.  The things that we work so hard to hide from others, whether simply out of embarrassment or perhaps out of true shame and contrition, Christ will also manifest as He judges us.  That, I imagine, delights us a bit less than the idea of knowing where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.  I imagine we would like to know the secrets of others, but we probably don’t want them to know our own secrets.
    Of course, the Lord knows it all.  He is omniscient.  He sees all time as at once, and knows the causes and the effects of every action and reaction.  Nothing we could do could ever be hidden from him.  And yet, God chooses to forgive us for those wrong actions, and, when we are truly sorry and confess our sins, He no longer holds those things against us, no matter how secret they may be.  Yes, those sinful actions still happened, and yes, they still echo through their consequences, but God does not hold them against us at our judgment if we are contrite and confess.  Those sins going from being things of shame to being opportunities to grow in the grace of God, who transforms our sins into healing, just as God healed the death of sin through taking death upon Himself, though He had no sin Himself.  

    But, as we approach the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord, we also have another aspect of revealing what was hidden.  And that is God Himself.  True, God had revealed Himself, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews states, in various and sundry ways.  But the birth of our Savior was a true revelation, the revelation, of who God is.  When Christ came in the flesh, even though the flesh sometimes hid his divinity, it also revealed it.  One of the Christmas songs I hate, and I consider it at least partially heretical, is “Mary, Did You Know?”  And one of the lines I think is heretical is, “Mary, did you know / […] when you kiss your little baby / You’ve kissed the face of God?”  First of all, yes, she did know, because the Archangel Gabriel told her.  But more importantly, in the Incarnation, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who was pure spirit, took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and after He was born, we all saw God any time we saw Christ.  Throughout His life, the Savior revealed God as the one who loves sinners, but hates sin; as the one who welcomes those who wander away, but condemns those who make obstacles to repentance; as the one who heals the sick with tenderness, but casts out vendors from the Temple; as the one who dies for our sins, but rises on the third day because death cannot cancel out life.  God does not hide himself, but reveals Himself, so that we can access salvation.
    Though not my favorite season of “Yellowstone,” this, what I believe to be, final season draws people in by allowing them to know what remains hidden from the characters in the show, at least at first.  Through our upcoming celebration of our Lord’s birth, may we rejoice at the revelation that had remained hidden, only suggested and pointed to from afar by the prophets, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

"It is the Small Things"

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    Galadriel asks, “Mithrandir, why the halfling?”  “I do not know,” Gandalf replies.  “Saruman believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check.  But that is not what I have found.  I found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay.”  In the movie, “The Hobbit,” this is the exchange between Lady Galadriel, an Elven queen, and Gandalf, known to the Elves as Mithrandir, who is a wizard.  They know that a great, evil being, Sauron, is active again.  And yet, Gandalf seems very focused on Bilbo, who is a Hobbit, a halfling, who only begrudgingly acquiesced to Gandalf’s request and went on a quest with twelve dwarves to reclaim their home and treasure from a dragon.
    In our readings today, we hear about the small: Bethlehem, the Incarnate Christ, and the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Maybe Christ seems odd to have in a list of the small, but even Christ, in His Incarnation, became small, when compared to His Divine Nature.  But I’ll come back to that.
    First, Bethlehem.  Micah describes the little town as, “too small to be among the clans of Judah.”  Bethlehem means “House of Bread,” and had a long history in the Bible.  It was the burial place of Rachel, the wife of Jacob in the Book of Genesis; in the Book of Judges, Bethlehem was the home of a young Levite who served as an idol-worshipping priest, as well as the home of a concubine whose murder almost destroyed the Tribe of Benjamin; in the Book of Ruth, it is the home of Naomi, whose servant, Ruth, moved back with Naomi after they had left for Moab, and where Ruth married Boaz.  Boaz and Ruth gave birth to Obed, who was the grandfather of King David, who also came from Bethlehem.  After the Babylonians exiled the Davidic kings, it loses all fame, except in this passage from Micah, which is fulfilled when Christ is born in Bethlehem.  
    In our Gospel, we hear about the Blessed Virgin Mary, who, to us, seems anything but small.  But in her own time, she was not well known.  She was likely around fourteen years old at the time she conceived our Lord.  While she was from the family of King David, she had no power or prestige.  She was the daughter of an old couple Joachim and Anne, who had no other children.  She was, to everyone except God, a nobody.
    And even in the Letter to the Hebrews, the sacred author talks about Christ coming into the world in His Incarnation when He took on our human nature.  Even this was small, in its own way, because Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who created the universe and whom the heavens cannot contain, allowed Himself to be limited by our humanity, to do the will of the Father and reconcile us to God.  When comparing Jesus’ divinity and humanity, He did become rather small.
    But this is how God works.  St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, “God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.”  When great people do great things, they might think that it is them, not God, who accomplishes it.  When a weak or lowly or despised person does something great, they know that they could never have done it by themselves; they needed help from God.

    And, as we prepare for Christmas on Wednesday, that’s what God wants us to remember.  We could not, we cannot, save ourselves.  No amount of right living on our part could have ever bridged the gap between heaven and earth that Adam and Eve created when they disobeyed God and passed on their disobedience through original sin to us.  God had to save us.  Without Christ, we could not enter heaven, not even Abraham or Moses or King David.  All had sinned, and were deprived of the glory of God.  But God sent Jesus to save us, He whose name means “God saves,” and opened heaven not only for Abraham and Moses and King David, but also for us.  And even now that we are baptized, God gives us what we need to respond to that salvation.  Without the grace of God, we cannot do anything good even simply to cooperate with God’s salvation offered us through Christ.  The only thing that we can do without God’s grace is sin.  Every good thing requires God’s help.
    When we remember this, nothing can stop us, because nothing can stop God.  With God’s grace, Bethlehem became, not only the birthplace of a strong, human king, David, but the birthplace of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.  With God’s grace, a young virgin who seemed to have nothing special about her became the Mother of the Redeemer.  Jesus Himself made Himself small so that He could attract us to Himself and save us by His invitation, rather than by force.  And we need only, by the grace that God gives us, respond to that invitation in order to enter the enteral home that God wants for us in heaven.  
    Some do believe that it is only the powerful that can keep evil at bay.  But, it is in the small ways that God defeats evil, with those who know of their smallness and yet rely on God.  May we cooperate, in our smallness, with the grace of God through small things, everyday deeds of we, ordinary folk, and so participate in Christ’s victory over sin and death.

Rejoicing and Patience

Third Sunday of Advent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Patience is not a virtue at which I generally excel.  While we had posted the Office Manager job, I wanted good candidates to immediately apply for the position.  My best friend is sometimes bad at responding to texts, and I struggle when he doesn’t respond to me quickly enough (at least quickly enough in my mind).  And, generally, I respond pretty quickly, whether to an RSVP, a request for information, or to a text or a phone call.  In fact, I’m becoming a bit of a cause celeb among the Diocese of Lansing priests because I usually pick up my cell phone on the first ring, which somehow means it hasn’t even rung once for the person calling (I don’t know how that happens).

    So, as we hear the word “rejoice” today in the introit and in the epistle, which both come from Philippians chapter four, verse four, I’m all for it!  We rejoice because soon we don’t have to be patient anymore!  The celebration of our Lord’s Nativity, the day when our salvation became known in the flesh, is closer than the beginning of our time of waiting in Advent.  Our waiting is closer to finishing than when we first began waiting.
    But, we rejoice, not because we don’t have to exhibit the virtue of patience.  We rejoice because we can celebrate soon.  And that goes for our celebration of the Nativity (which will become an even greater focus in the readings in the coming days), but also for the return of Christ in glory.  The second coming is closer today than yesterday.  And that second coming is when all will be made right, the righteous will be welcomed into heaven to enjoy eternal bliss.
    But, we can even rejoice today because we know that Christ has come to save us, and that the salvation He offers us we can receive at any time.  Christmas is near.  The return of Christ is near.  But Christ offers us the gift of salvation now.  All we have to do is take hold of it and make it a part of our lives.  
    We see this most especially in two important Advent sacraments: Penance (confession) and the Eucharist.  Through the Sacrament of Penance, God reconciles us to Himself.  Twice in two verses in his second epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul talks about how God reconciled the world to Himself in Christ.  That was the good news of Christmas and the Incarnation.  But that good news still applies today.  God is still reconciling the world to Himself through Christ.  And in the Sacrament of Penance, we participate in that reconciliation.  God takes our sins, like my impatience, and He removes it from us, and gives us in its place His grace, which is really His life.  He breaks down all the barriers between us and Him that sin creates, “so that we might become the righteousness of God in him,” to use the words of St. Paul from that same second epistle to the Corinthians.  In the Sacrament of Penance, the Holy Spirit accomplishes in us what Christ accomplished when He died on the cross.  And that is certainly a reason to rejoice.
    Likewise, in the Eucharist, we receive our salvation.  Christ gives Himself to us under the sacramental signs of bread and wine which truly become the Body and the Blood of Christ, so that we can have, in the most special way on earth, Christ living within us.  The same Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, took flesh and humbled Himself to be born with our human nature, again humbles Himself by allowing bread and wine to become Him, and allowing us to see His Sacred Flesh and Precious Blood with our eyes of faith.  The same Incarnate Lord whom St. Joseph, his foster father, held in his arms, I get to hold in my hands and give to you.  The same Suffering Servant who offered His life for the salvation of the world by dying on the Cross, joins us to that same sacrifice on Calvary through the Mass.  As I invite you to “Behold the Lamb of God,” (“Ecce Agnus Dei”), I remind you how near the Lord is to you and encourage you to rejoice as you behold your salvation.  And this is certainly a reason to rejoice.
    Patience is not my greatest virtue.  I continue to work at growing in that virtue which is described by St. Thomas Aquinas quoting Tully, “the voluntary and prolonged endurance of arduous and difficult things for the sake of virtue.”  And this virtue will help us to wait these next ten days until we celebrate Christmas, and these next days, however many, until Christ returns in glory.  But, what we will celebrate at Christmas, and what we await at the end of time, we also have now: Christ our God, reconciling us to the Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Judith and Mary

Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “‘Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all the women on earth.’”  “‘You are the glory of Jerusalem!  You are the great pride of Israel.’”  The gradual today echoes these words as we celebrate Mary’s immaculate conception in the womb of her mother, St. Anne.  Yet these words were not originally written or spoken about the Blessed Mother.  These words come from the Book of Judith, which tells of the widow, after whom the book takes its name, using her beauty and charm to kill Holophernes, the Assyrian general who laid siege to her city.  Along with our Gospel, they help form the first part of the prayer we all know and love, the Hail Mary: “Hail [Mary], full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou amongst women…”  
    This prayer, then, connects the Old and the New Testaments.  Certainly, St. Elizabeth also echoes the words of Judith, but in Judith we see prefigured Mary, the beautiful one who attacks, not the general of a foreign army, but the leader of the ancient rebellion, the devil.  Judith kills Holofernes by cutting off his head.  This connects to the Blessed Mother, the new Eve, through the words God speaks in Genesis, chapter 3: “‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They will strike at your head.”  Our Blessed Mother in her immaculate conception is depicted as a woman standing with a snake under her feet.  How do you kill a snake?  You cut off its head.  
    God, from all eternity, prepared the world and His People for this great gift that He gave to the Blessed Mother.  He began in Genesis, as I just mentioned, and then continued through the Book of Judith to tell us of a woman who would strike at the head of our enemy.  This woman would be blessed by God above all the women on the earth, the woman who is the glory of Jerusalem and the pride of Israel.  No other woman can claim such a high honor, and in the church, while we don’t worship the Mother of God, we give her more honor than any of the other saints.  We give the saints dulia or honor (the English word “adulation,” is connected to dulia).  We give to the Blessed Mother hyperdulia, or above-ordinary honor.
    Some would claim that our celebration of her immaculate conception removes the Blessed Mother from humanity, and therefore makes her not truly human.  And at first glance, one can understand the confusion.  After all, if the Blessed Virgin Mary was not conceived with sin, how can she truly by the highest honor of our race, since all of us are born with original sin?  How can she be a model for us when her beginning was so unlike ours?

    Yes, our Blessed Mother received a gift whereby she was more like Eve at her creation from the side of Adam than like Judith.  God created Eve (and Adam before her) without original sin.  And yet, Eve, though she had no sin, still disobeyed God (and Adam after her).  Eve had the power to choose good or choose evil, a power she used poorly when tempted by the devil.  The Theotokos also had the power to choose good or choose evil, but she used this power well, never disobeying God, never giving in to Satan’s wiles.  The first Eve’s disobedience found healing in the second Eve’s lifelong obedience.  But both the first Eve and the new Eve were fully human, though both entered the world without any sin on their soul.  And just as we call Adam and Eve our first parents, though they did not originally have sin at their creation, so we rightly affirm that the Blessed Virgin Mary, even with the prevenient grace of the immaculate conception, was one of us, not a tertium quid, a third thing between God and man.
    And this great gift makes sense for the one who would agree to be the Mother of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God.  God is pure holiness, and no sin can exist in His presence, any more than darkness can exist in the direct light of the sun.  So if our Blessed Mother had even just original sin, when our Lord took flesh in her womb at the Annunciation, it would have destroyed the Blessed Mother.  It is as St. Paul wrote in his second epistle to the Corinthians: “what fellowship does light have with darkness?  …What agreement as the temple of God with idols?”  The Mother of God had to be pure because light has no fellowship with darkness, and the temple of the incarnate God could not exist in the same place as idolatry, the worship of the false god of pride.  And in this sense, we return to the Gospel, in which the Archangel Gabriel refers to Mary as “full of grace.”  How could the messenger of salvation refer to her as full of grace if there were any sin in her at all?  
    Our Blessed Mother is truly a warrior queen who, united to her Divine Son, conquers the ancient enemy, the devil.  She strikes at the head of the ancient serpent to kill it, by being obedient to God and cooperating in the work of our salvation.  May we honor with lives lived in obedience to God, as best as we can, the highest honor of our race, the glory of Jerusalem, the woman blessed above all the women of the earth, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the eternal redeemer, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Muppets and Making Ready

Second Sunday of Advent

    Growing up I was (and still am) a fan of the Muppets, the cloth puppets that Jim Henson created.  And so, during this Advent season, my mind turns to the Muppet adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, called, “The Muppet Christmas Carol.”  Gonzo plays the part of Charles Dickens, with Rizzo the Rat assisting him.  Kermit the Frog is Bob Cratchit, with his wife, Miss Piggy, and their kids, including Robin playing Tiny Tim.  Michael Caine plays Ebenezer Scrooge.
    On the evening of Christmas Eve, Kermit and his fellow accountants (who are played by rats) close up the shop and start on their way home to get ready for Christmas, singing a song entitled, “One More Sleep ’til Christmas.”  They even ice skate in the street, and then Kermit makes his way home where Miss Piggy prepare the Christmas feast (meager as it was for the Cratchit family).
    As the Gospel introduces us to St. John the Baptist today, we continue to make our Christmas preparations, though we have more than one more sleep ’til Christmas.  St. John the Baptist is Jesus’ cousin, and fulfills the prophecy of the Prophet Isaiah as he cries out to prepare the way of the Lord and make straight his paths.  Isaiah also says that the valleys will be filled, and the mountains and hills will be leveled out, so that the road to God is flat and easily traversed.  

    So, do we listen to St. John and the Prophet Isaiah?  How do we prepare for the return of Christ and the celebration of His Nativity at Christmas?  What are the paths to God like in our lives?  
    First, how are we preparing for Christ, whether His return in glory, or the celebration of His Nativity?  Are we preparing?  It is so easy just to treat Advent like any other time of the year, but colder, darker, and with more parties.  There is so much to do, from decorating the house for Christmas, to buying presents, to attending work or personal Christmas parties, that the season can fly by.  In fact, as of today, there are only seventeen more days until Christmas, or slightly more than two weeks.  
    The best way to prepare for Christ is to prepare our hearts.  We do that by making a little more time for prayer each day.  Maybe it’s a daily Advent reflection, or simply an extra five minutes of prayer in the morning or before you go to bed.  But one of the best ways to prepare for Christ is to speak with Him about how life is going, and listen to what He says to you.  
    Another good way is to read Scripture.  In the Bible God reveals who He is and who we should be.  If do not familiarize ourselves with the Word of God in the Bible, then we’ll miss out on knowing God and knowing ourselves.  And while the Bible can be a bit overwhelming if you try to read it from cover to cover, during Advent, read the Book of the Prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament.  Isaiah prophesies a lot about the Messiah, prophecies that Christ fulfilled when He was conceived and born.  And while some of what Isaiah says needs some explanation, much of it is pretty accessible.
    As for valleys that Isaiah prophesied: what are the low points of our life?  I would suggest that the valleys in our lives are sins and sinful habits.  During this season of Advent, God wants to fill them in with His grace so that they no longer bring us low.  Advent is always a good time to go to confession.  But, in addition, look more deeply at your most common sins, or maybe the most serious sins, and try to understand why those sins are so tempting to you, and how you fall into them.  When it comes to our sins, the Devil always shows his hand in showing us where we like to fall.  Maybe it’s overeating; maybe it’s sexual sins by ourselves or with another; maybe it’s gossiping or detracting from someone.  Whatever our most common or most grievous sins, ask yourself when sin seems most appealing for you, and then ask for God’s grace during those times, and make a plan to distract yourself during those times from sins with something else that is good.
    As for mountains and hills: these are the times of pride in our life.  How does pride keep us from God?  Pride is a raising of ourselves in our own eyes or the eyes of another not in accord with God’s will.  When we have pride, we put ourselves in the place of God and unreasonably focus on our own good, rather than the good that God is, or the good that others need.  Humbling ourselves doesn’t mean pretending we’re no good, but it does mean not primarily going after honors or attention.  Humility means allowing God to be God and taking our cue from Him, rather than deciding that we know best and that the world should operate according to our wants and desires.  
    As we prepare for Christ’s return and the celebration of His Nativity at Christmas, St. John the Baptist invites us to make sure we are ready.  Are we praying daily, and maybe praying a bit more during Advent?  Do we read God’s word, especially maybe the Book of the Prophet Isaiah during Advent?  Are we seeking forgiveness of sins, and even trying to get rid of habits of sin?  Do we seek humility and not focus so much on ourselves?  All these ways, and more, are great ways to prepare for Christ so that God will bless us, everyone.

Darkness and Light

First Sunday of Advent
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  I don’t know about you, but during these winter days, I feel like it’s ten o’clock at night, based upon how dark it is outside, and then look at my watch and it’s only 7 p.m.  Others will mention how they long for the season when they don’t both go to work and return home in the dark.  

    Darkness is, however, a natural theme of Advent.  Not darkness for its own sake, but how the birth of Christ scattered the darkness.  We see it in the candles on our Advent wreath.  We will see it especially during our Rorate Coeli Mass on Saturday, which is held entirely in candlelight and with the growing light of the dawn.  Zechariah, the husband of St. Elizabeth and father of St. John the Baptist, notes in his canticle, that “the dawn from on high shall break upon us,” prophesying Christ as the light that makes the darkness flee away.
    And yet, our Lord’s words in the Gospel today may seem a bit dark.  He says that “on earth, nations will be in dismay….People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”  Talk about dark.  Just as the light of prophecy ceased some hundreds of years before Christ came as an infant at Bethlehem, so the preparation for His return in glory will be a dark time with much tribulation.  Perhaps, whether for us as individuals, or even the way the world seems to be going now, we can identify, maybe not with dying of fright, but with a darkness that seems to have swept over much of the world, and even, in some ways, into the Church itself.
    I don’t know when the end will come, but it is coming, and that is a large part of what the Church prepares us for in Advent.  Not just between nations, but even the entire trajectory of our human race seems to be in the midst of a great battle between good and evil, truth and lies, love and hate.  

    While I was in Alabama, I had a chance to read a Catholic novel called The Sabbatical by Michael O’Brien.  It’s about an Oxford professor who gets involved with a family whom other mysterious, evil forces seek to destroy.  I certainly don’t want to give away the book, and I encourage you to read it if you’re looking for good, Catholic literature.  Towards the end of the book, there is a dialogue between an elderly wise priest, Fr. Turner, and the protagonist, Professor Owen Whitfield:
 

[Father Turner said,] “You have come through a great stress–and sorrow.  You are very tired, and you are asking yourself if all the effort of your life is useless.”
[Owen responds] “At times I do feel that.  Of course, I know it’s not true.  But the battle seems interminable, and the gathering forces of darkness go from victory to victory…the captive minds of a generation and those who rule them are now beyond numbering.”
“Minds can be illuminated.  Providence is ever at work.  Love does not abandon us.  He never abandons us.”
“It certainly feels like abandonment, and looks very much like it too.”
“The enemy taunts you, Owen….He insinuates in your heart that he is winning this war, and you wonder whether he is right.”
[…]
“I do feel defeated,” Owen admitted.
“That is the enemy’s provocation.  If you leave your station in the battle line, you break the line of defense and weaken the lines behind you.  But if you stand firm, if you hold your position, even though you do not understand its purpose or usefulness, when it comes time for the King to tell you what to do, you will be ready for it and you will be effective.”

I’m sure my reading of this dialogue doesn’t do it justice, but you can see how it aligns with our readings today.  And I imagine it speaks to some, if not all, of you, at least at one point of your life or another.
    So, what do we do?  How do we keep our station in this battle between light and darkness?  A battle, I might add, that has already been won, but in which the “minor” skirmishes are still being fought on the field until the fullness of victory comes forth.  Owen’s monologue illumines this point.  He says to himself:
 

You do the duty of the tasks at hand….You keep faith with your responsibilities and your vocation, and you love the souls you’ve brought into the world and the souls God brings into your life.  You work and you pray.  You try to turn everything into prayer, and you practice hope.  You keep your eyes trained on the true horizon.

Because the dawn is coming, the dawn that shall break from on high, the rising Son who is not an orb of burning gas, but God Himself who took on our human nature.  He is coming, and the time is now to prepare for that return.  It is like Gandalf coming with Éomer to relieve the beleaguered forces at Helms Deep: “Look to my coming at first light….At dawn, look to the East.”  The Lord will return and will forever put to flight the forces of darkness by the rising of His Light, the Light from Light, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Looking Back

Last Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When I turned forty, I wouldn’t say I had a mid-life crisis, but I will say that I took stock of my life.  Forty is not old, yet it significant, because eighty years old would be a good life, and the fortieth birthday means that I’m halfway there.  So I looked back to what I had done and what I had failed to do (using the words of the Confiteor).  
    As we come to this last Sunday of the liturgical year, we would do well to take stock of how our last year has gone.  I don’t mean so much in our natural lives, though that is fine to recall, too.  But I mean our spiritual lives.  How have we grown closer to Christ?  Or have we grown further separated from Him?  What virtues have really taken root?  Or what vices?  What grand intentions have we put into place?  Which ones remain simply intentions upon which we never or rarely acted?
    Our Lord gives us signs of when things would come to a head, so to speak.  One Scripture scholar notes that the abomination of which our Lord spoke in reference to Daniel was when the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes set up a statue of Zeus in the temple in the year 167 BC.  The scholar notes that early Christians would have seen the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 as a similar calamity.  But what has entered into the temples of the Holy Spirit that we are?  How have we given into the world and worldly views?
    Our Lord also mentions false messiahs.  Others will point to false saviors and false prophets, whether in the desert, or in a room.  He tells us not to believe them.  Do we have people or things in which we put the trust that we should only put in God?  It’s so easy to elevate a person like a political leader or party, or a material good like money to the place that only God should occupy.  I will even get very queasy when, in March, the phrase pops up associated with the Michigan State basketball team, “In Izzo we trust.”  I’m all for some good March Madness, and Tom Izzo, who is Catholic, does seem to find a way to bring his team along to the Big Dance.  And that phrase is said in jest.  But still, whom do we trust?  Maybe this time of year, we’re putting more trust than we should into Dan Campbell.  Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing the Lions win for a change.  And he seems like a good guy, so I’m not trying to detract from his good name.  But how much do we allow a win from our men in Honolulu blue to affect our lives?  There’s nothing wrong with being a Lion or a Spartan fan (though I know there are a number of Wolverine fans who would say differently to that last part), but how much of our lives are spent focusing on sports, distracting us from things that matter much more and last much longer?
    But this year-end review is not all bad news.  While it’s good to examine our conscience, we should not only focus on what we have done wrong, but what is going right?  How are we progressing in virtue and growing closer to God?  Because, even in the midst of these tribulations, God promises mercy to those who stay faithful.  Christ mentions that the days of tribulation will be shortened for the sake of the elect.  God knows how much we can take, and He doesn’t give us more than we can handle (even if we end up saying with St. Teresa of Calcutta, I wish God didn’t trust me so much).  And none of the end tribulations should catch us off guard, because Christ Himself has warned us about what is to come, even if some of it has already come.  

    What lasts is the word of God.  The teachings of Christ remain forever, and they are sure and steady anchors onto which we can hold.  If we connect ourselves to that anchor, the waves may crash upon us, and may even push us around a bit.  But if we anchor ourselves on Christ, then we won’t go far from Him, and we’ll remain in the kingdom of Christ with the saints in light.  
    So, spend some time today reflecting on the past liturgical year.  Focus on areas in which we can grow.  But, also focus on successes we have found in Christ and cooperating with Him.  Both are important to note.  And pray, as we come to the end of this liturgical year, that we will remain faithful to Christ, no matter what happens in the world; no matter what happens in the Church.  Pray that we will have the strength to survive any tribulation because we are connected to the one who does not pass away, even as the heavens and the earth will, God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.