How Can I Keep From Singing

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–Mass during the Day

“Fr. Anthony, you sing a lot.”  I have heard that phrase no small amount of times.  Some people like the chanting.  Others do not enjoy it.  Some have even accused me of chanting just to show off my voice.  Why do I sing?

St. Augustine says that singing is for those who are in love.  And I am in love…with my God, above all.  So I sing, I chant, to Him.  Think about your favorite love song for a second.  What would it be?  In your mind, hum a few bars of the song, or at least imagine that person singing it.  Now imagine that person simply saying it.  Very different, right?  One of my favorite love songs is “My Girl” by the Temptations.  Probably most of us know it.  We can hear the into…We can hear The Temptations singing it.  So imagine if it were simply stated: “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day/ When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May/ I guess you’d say/ What can make me feel this way?// My girl, my girl, my girl/ Talkin’ bout my girl/ My girl.”  Not quite the same, is it (and not just because it’s me reciting it!)?

I rarely preach on the Psalm, but today did you listen to it?  “Sing to the Lord a new song,” and “Sing joyfully to the Lord, all you lands; break into song; sing praise.” and “Sing praise to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and melodious song.  With trumpets and the sound of the horn sing joyfully before the King, the Lord.”  The Psalm itself is a song, and it’s encouraging us to sing!!  But why?

We sing today because we are (hopefully) overflowing with love because God has become man in Jesus.  Salvation has been announced, the Lord has restored Zion, He has comforted His people and redeemed Jerusalem.  In Christ, we see our salvation.  And we know the Gospel.  While the brightness of the day is slightly clouded by the crucifixion which we will recall in three short months, the crucifixion itself is enlightened by the Resurrection.  

We sing today because we are (hopefully) overflowing with love because while “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son.”  Jesus is the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament, and makes clear in Himself what God wants us to know and how God wants us to live.  Jesus, the refulgence (there’s your million dollar word for the day) of the glory of God the Father, “the very imprint of his being,” begins the way by which He purifies us from our sins.  We sing today because “A holy day has dawned upon us.  For today a great light has come upon the earth.”  

We sing today because we are (hopefully) overflowing with love because Jesus, the eternal Word who was in the beginning with God and is God; who created all things and without whom nothing came to be; became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we say his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son.”  We rejoice because “From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace, because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”  

All of this is Good News, is great news!!  Our hearts should be bursting with joy at this news.  Even those for whom this is a particularly tough time of year, those who have lost loved ones, whether recently or longer ago, can rejoice because by the mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation, which made possible the crucifixion and Resurrection, we know that death is not the end, and that those who follow Jesus can look forward to an eternal life of joy.  By His Incarnation, Jesus gave us the possibility to be healed from all illness, and to find the fullness of life in heaven.  That is joyful news!!

Will we keep it to ourselves?  Or will we share it with others?  Will we limited by word, like reciting a love song, or will we break into song and sing praise?  May we be the ones about whom Isaiah prophesied when he said, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation.”  May we “Sing joyfully to the Lord…break into song; sing praise.”

A Savior, Not a President

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–Mass at Night

In eleven months, we will be electing a new president of the United States.  And yet, we are all too familiar with the fact that campaign season is in full force.  It seems like every fifth commercial on the TV ends with, “I’m so and so, and I approved this message,” or “Paid for by the Elect So and So Fund.”  In recent weeks, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, much of the attention of the country has turned to what the federal government is doing to keep us safe.  A good chunk of the news is also focused on the use of guns, either by private individuals or police officers.  Every candidate has his or her view on what really needs to be done to keep all people safe from all threats, whether from abroad or from within the homeland.

Hopefully we are forming our consciences by the light of the Gospel and Catholic Social teaching so that, when it comes to the primaries and the general election, we can vote for someone who advances not so much the agenda of a political party, but the truth and policies that will help all people to live in freedom and security.

But it can be too easy for people to pin all their hope on a new president.  They are convinced that if Hillary Clinton is elected, then all will be well.  They are certain that if Donald Trump is elected, then America will be great again.  Brothers and sisters, this Christmas we celebrate and we remember that our hope is not in this person or that person who will have the highest office in the land.  We celebrate not a political solution to our problems, but a Savior!

Our burden is so much greater than high or low taxes; unemployment rates and those no longer looking for jobs; whether or not our military should be involved in a war in the Middle East.  Our burden is sin: sin which causes us to hate others, sin which causes us to take advantage of others, sin which causes us to destroy ourselves.  And no human person can save us from that.  No human person will free us from this cycle of sin.  But we proclaim, this night, that we have a savior.  We have a Person who will smash the yoke that burdens us and the rod of our taskmaster.  We have someone who will confirm judgment and justice for us, who will give light to our lives and make us rejoice.  And that Person is not the person who will occupy the most powerful office in the world.  That Person is the “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.”  That Person, whose birth around 2,000 years ago we celebrate tonight, instituted His reign as a baby.  “For a child is born to us, a son is given us.”

The temptation is to be no different than all of our ancestors who placed their hope in earthly rulers.  How many people were sure that Caesar Augustus, who instituted the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, was the savior who would protect and govern the whole world?  And yet, while Octavian Augustus ruled in his fine palazzo in Rome, the true King was born, in a cave, in a land that no one cared about, from a people whose glory had long since faded with the death of King David.

The solutions to our problems, as a nation and as a world, do not come from the political order.  Politics certainly has its place in promoting the common good and order among all people.  But the problems in our nation and our world come from the fact that, while the angels proclaimed a great joy for all people, someone who would truly save us, we are convinced that our salvation cannot come from a peaceful child who grew up to be a crucified leader of a small “heretical” group of Jews.  We do not have peace on earth because we do not give glory to God in the highest.  We are constantly at war–in the world, in our cities, and in our hearts–because we have been like the inn keepers of Bethlehem who, when asked to make room for a poor couple who is about to give birth to their first-born, have pushed them back out into the streets.  The Prince of Peace has come to the doors of our hearts, and we have turned him away.  

The solutions to all of the world’s problems begin here, as they began in a manger in a cave in Bethlehem.  Even with the multitude of the heavenly host praising God, the shepherds must have thought, ‘What good can this little family do?  They are so few, and the kings of the world are so powerful.’  Maybe we think, too, ‘What good would it do if I lived as Christ called me to?  Would it change anything if I truly lived as if Jesus were the most important person in my life?’

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, the king of Ephyra, was cursed by the gods for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness, and was made to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to see it roll down to the base as he approached the top.  If we place our hope for the solutions to our problems in worldly efforts of this or that political party or that, we are bound to the same results.  But tonight, as we celebrate Christmas, let us recommit ourselves to electing a new king for our hearts, a king who seems powerless, but is the only one who can save us.  

Tonight, Jesus knocks on the door of your heart and invites you to elect Him to rule over you, an election which can change the course of human history, just as He did with twelve uneducated men and a handful of followers in the middle of nowhere in the Roman Empire.  “Beloved: The grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desire and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.”  Beloved: “Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord.”

The Best Names

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–Vigil Mass

Hopefully we all know that it is not kind to call people mean things.  We each have our own, beautiful names, which were chosen by our parents, and by which the Church has called all of us when we were baptized, when we were confirmed; when we were married or ordained.  And the Church will even call our name when we die.  Our names are important parts of who we are; in some ways they express who we are.  It is not kind to call people mean things instead of their name, things like: booger, stupid, stinky, or even Hey You.  

In our first reading, God talks about the name he will call Israel.  It will no longer be mean things, like “Forsaken,” or “Desolate.”  Those are mean things, things which mean there is no life, no people, and that no one loves them.  Instead, God says, Israel “shall be called ‘My Delight,’ and [its] land ‘Espoused.’”  God says that He will refer to Israel like a husband refers to his wife.  Today we might heard, “My love,” “Dear,” “Honey,” or some other sweet, kind names.

When a person call us a mean thing, it hurts us.  If it’s really mean, we might even cry.  When someone says something mean to us it makes us think that we’re not good, that the other person doesn’t like us, and that we’re alone.  But, when someone calls us by our name, or even by a kind thing, we feel great, we feel like others want us around, and we feel like we’re loved.

This evening we are in vigil.  That’s a fancy way of saying that we’re waiting.  When we began Mass at 4, it wasn’t even dark out!  It’s so early to be celebrating Christmas!  But we come to Mass because we are waiting, not for someone to come down a chimney, but to celebrate the birth of Jesus.  We are waiting and watching, trying to imagine what it was like for the Jews to wait for their Messiah to come to them, which happened when Jesus was born.  We wait, and the waiting gives us a kind of excitement, because we really want our waiting to be over, and for Christmas to be here!

But we should also be excited because of the name of the Person who is born at Christmas.  He kind of has two names.  The first name we hear a lot, hopefully when we’re praying and coming to Mass, not when someone is mad: that name is Jesus.  Jesus’ Name has a special meaning.  It means, “God saves.”  That’s a good name, because we know that we don’t always do what we’re supposed to; we don’t always make good choices.  Jesus, who is God, saves us from sin and death.  And that’s a beautiful name which gives us hope and love and should make us feel good.  And that’s the name that St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary gave to the little child that was born on Christmas.

But the angel also told Joseph about a second name for Jesus, a name that we don’t hear as often.  And that name is Emmanuel, which means God is with us.  That’s a beautiful name, too, because that name reminds us that we are never alone, and we always have someone who loves us.  That someone is God.  He loves us so much that He never wants to be separated from us.  He wants to be with us so much, that He sends His Only Begotten Son, Jesus, who lives just like us, but who never sins.  

We each have our own beautiful name by which we are known.  Maybe it’s Anthony, like me, or maybe Joseph, like the patron saint of this church building, or maybe it’s a different beautiful name.  But as we keep vigil, as we wait and watch for Jesus, we remember that God gave us someone with the most beautiful names ever, because they remind us how much God loves us and wants us to be with Him always.  That someone is Jesus, Emmanuel, who saves us and who is with us always.  And those are the best names of all.

Patience is a Virtue

Fourth Sunday of Advent

One of the most frequently confessed sins, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a male or female, child or adult, is impatience.  Perhaps it’s more prevalent now because technology has made it so that we get most things at the click of a mouse in a few seconds.  If we want to know the weather, we open up our weather app or click on our favorite weather page.  If we want to know what’s happening in the US or around the world, we go to CNN or Fox News or whatever news app or webpage or television station that we prefer.  We are the drive-thru culture that wants everything our way and we want it immediately.  We’re can be a lot like Veruca Salt from the original “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” with Gene Wilder constantly saying, or at least thinking, “I want it now!”  And certainly I’m not immune to these temptations to be impatient.

But God, more often than not, operates with patience.  Take for example that our first reading from Micah, where it was prophesied that the ruler of Israel would come from Bethlehem, was written 800 years before the birth of Christ.  If you think you waited a long time for your Big Mac, imagine waiting 800 years!  

From before time began, God the Father knew that He would send His Only Begotten Son, Jesus, to take flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  But He waited for the perfect time.  We hear that on Christmas Eve at our Mass at night (7:30 p.m.) in the proclamation of the Nativity of  Our Lord Jesus Christ from the Roman Martyrology: “when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world,…when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood,…in the twenty-first century since Abraham…came out of Ur of the Chaldees; in the thirteenth century since the People of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt; around the thousandth year since David was anointed King.”  So much waiting!!  

In the face of such waiting we can give up hope.  We can forget that God will fulfill His promises.  The Blessed Virgin Mary is praised in our Gospel today by St. Elizabeth because she “believed that what was spoken…by the Lord would be fulfilled.”  Mary was patient herself, but Mary as the type and image of the Church was patient as she waited through all of those millennia and centuries for Her Messiah to come.  

We, too, are invited to wait for to fulfillment of all time, when Christ will return.  Perhaps we have lost hope that it will happen.  Perhaps we don’t even think that it will happen.  But, at the right time, in God’s time, everything will be subjected to Christ, and God’s Kingdom will be all in all.  But it cannot be forced; it cannot be rushed.  One of the popular Advent and Christmas hymns is “Lo! How a Rose ere Blooming.”  Just as with Jesus’ Nativity in the flesh, so with Jesus’ second coming: like a rose, it cannot be forced open.  The seed must die in the ground first, and then ever-so-slowly rise up through the ground; and then the bud must come forth from the stem, and then the bud start to blossom.  You cannot force a rose to bloom without ruining the rose.  So we cannot rush God to fulfill His promises.  We simply wait in joyful hope that what was spoken to us by the Lord will be fulfilled.  

Patience is a virtue.  I’m sure we’ve all heard that from our mother, grandmother, religious sister, or someone.  A virtue is an acquired habit that has become second nature.  The only way we acquire that habit of virtue is by doing acts of patience.  In these last days before Christmas, the temptation will be to practice impatience in trying to finish last-minute shopping; traveling to see friends and family; waiting to open presents; and so many more ways.  May the Holy Spirit fill us with His grace so that we can be like Mary, the perfect image of the Church, who waited patiently for the Messiah to come and God to become man, as we wait for the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus made before He ascended into heaven: that he would return.  The Kingdom of God is not an app nor is it a drive-thru.  To experience its fullness, we must be patient.  Lord, make us patient people.

Getting Lost

Third Sunday of Advent

When I was younger, I would go camping with my family during the summer.  One weekend during the summer was our family camping weekend, which included my grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins.  One such family camping weekend, when I was in 5th or 6th grade, I decided to go exploring with one of my sisters and two of my cousins.  We were having a grand old time, wandering around, until we realized we were lost.  After the original panic of not knowing what to do, one of my cousins and my sister decided that they were going to try and find their way back by retracing their steps.  I was pretty sure I had no idea how we had arrived at our location, so I decided to try to find another section of the State Campground, and then walk back to our site, following the numbers.  We both eventually made it back, each with our own stories of how we made it.

Today the Church invites us to rejoice.  She does so because we are more than halfway to our celebration of Christmas.  But we also rejoice because of the Good News of the Incarnation.  We rejoice because God was made flesh in order to save us from our sins.  But, in order to rejoice, we have to recognize that we are sinners.  We all get lost.

A savior is only helpful when someone needs saving.  You don’t rejoice at a lifeguard swimming out to get you when you just taking it easy, floating in your inner tube on the lazy river.  You rejoice at a lifeguard when you’re drowning.  Many soldiers celebrated General Patton pushing through in the forest of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, but not Easy Company of the 101st Airborne, because, while they were surrounded by Nazi troops and running out of supplies, they claimed they didn’t need Patton to save them.  We only rejoice at Jesus’ coming, at the true meaning of Christmas, when we recognize that we need to be saved.  Otherwise it’s just another day off from work.

To sin is to be lost.  The Greek word for sin, 𝛼𝜇𝛼𝜌𝜏𝜄𝛼, means to miss the mark.  It has the connotation of an arrow being off-course from hitting the bulls-eye.  Whenever we sin, we go off target.  We get lost, and we need to find our way back to the right path.  The problem is, only Jesus gets us truly back to the right path to God.  We can never do it by ourselves.  

The worst thing, when you’re lost, is not recognizing that you’re lost.  How many times have wives asked their husbands to stop and ask for directions, while the husband assured the wife he knew where he was going, only to end up farther away than ever 30 minutes later when he finally recognized he was lost and needed to ask for help.  We can tend not to take sin so seriously, perhaps an over reaction to decades long gone where we gave sin more power and influence than it truly had.  So many people figure that if they’re not Hitler or Stalin, then they’re doing ok.  They’re just skipping Mass; they’re just lying occasionally; they’re just taking small supplies from the company; they’re just looking at porn by themselves; it’s not like they’re murdering anyone.  Murder is certainly missing the mark.  But so are all those other things.  

The Jews knew they were in need of a savior.  That’s why the crowds asked St. John the Baptist in today’s Gospel passage, “‘What should we do?’”  St. John the Baptist didn’t say, “You’re not that bad, so don’t worry about it.”  He gave them all practical things that they could do to repent, to turn away from their sins, and prepare for the Messiah to reveal Himself.  St. John the Baptist told the people they were lost, so that they could rejoice when the one who was going to lead them back to the right path would appear.

Zephaniah also connects rejoicing and being saved in our first reading.  Zion is encouraged to shout for joy, and Israel exhorted to sing joyfully, and Jerusalem told to be glad and exult because “The Lord has removed the judgment against you.”  The joy that God is granting is one based upon being freed from sin.  Instead of judgment and the penalty falling upon the guilty, God takes it upon Himself, and restores us to right relationship with Him.  God does what we could not do, and that is certainly a reason to rejoice.

In this Jubilee Year of Mercy, Jesus invites us to receive the greatest gift He gave us: the gift of chesed, the Hebrew word which means steadfast love and mercy.  But we can only receive it if we are aware that we need it.  We are dirty; we are in need of the shower of God’s mercy.  But until we recognize that we have sinned and are in need of God’s mercy, it’s like we take an umbrella into the shower with us, to prevent us from getting wet.  Pretty rediculous, right?  

Brothers and sisters, we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  But the Good News is that God has come to save us, and in less than two weeks, we will celebrate when that Good News of the Incarnation became known to the world through the birth of Jesus.  That is truly a reason to rejoice.

"Merciful like the Father"

For my homily on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, I read a selection of the Bull Misericordiae Vultus, by which Pope Francis established the Jubilee Year of Mercy.  The selections I read are given below.  I highly encourage everyone to read the entire text.

1. Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy. These words might well sum up the mystery of the Christian faith. Mercy has become living and visible in Jesus of Nazareth, reaching its culmination in him. The Father, “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4), after having revealed his name to Moses as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6), has never ceased to show, in various ways throughout history, his divine nature. In the “fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), when everything had been arranged according to his plan of salvation, he sent his only Son into the world, born of the Virgin Mary, to reveal his love for us in a definitive way. Whoever sees Jesus sees the Father (cf. Jn 14:9). Jesus of Nazareth, by his words, his actions, and his entire person reveals the mercy of God.

[3.]  This liturgical feast day recalls God’s action from the very beginning of the history of mankind. After the sin of Adam and Eve, God did not wish to leave humanity alone in the throes of evil. And so he turned his gaze to Mary, holy and immaculate in love (cf. Eph 1:4), choosing her to be the Mother of man’s Redeemer. When faced with the gravity of sin, God responds with the fullness of mercy. Mercy will always be greater than any sin, and no one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to forgive.

9. In the parables devoted to mercy, Jesus reveals the nature of God as that of a Father who never gives up until he has forgiven the wrong and overcome rejection with compassion and mercy. We know these parables well, three in particular: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the father with two sons (cf. Lk 15:1-32). In these parables, God is always presented as full of joy, especially when he pardons. In them we find the core of the Gospel and of our faith, because mercy is presented as a force that overcomes everything, filling the heart with love and bringing consolation through pardon.

[…] At times how hard it seems to forgive! And yet pardon is the instrument placed into our fragile hands to attain serenity of heart. To let go of anger, wrath, violence, and revenge are necessary conditions to living joyfully. Let us therefore heed the Apostle’s exhortation: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph 4:26). Above all, let us listen to the words of Jesus who made mercy an ideal of life and a criterion for the credibility of our faith: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Mt 5:7): the beatitude to which we should particularly aspire in this Holy Year.

13. We want to live this Jubilee Year in light of the Lord’s words: Merciful like the Father. The Evangelist reminds us of the teaching of Jesus who says, “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36). It is a programme of life as demanding as it is rich with joy and peace. Jesus’s command is directed to anyone willing to listen to his voice (cf. Lk 6:27). In order to be capable of mercy, therefore, we must first of all dispose ourselves to listen to the Word of God. This means rediscovering the value of silence in order to meditate on the Word that comes to us. In this way, it will be possible to contemplate God’s mercy and adopt it as our lifestyle.

[15]  It is my burning desire that, during this Jubilee, the Christian people may reflect on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too often grown dull in the face of poverty. And let us enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special experience of God’s mercy. Jesus introduces us to these works of mercy in his preaching so that we can know whether or not we are living as his disciples. Let us rediscover these corporal works of mercy: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead. And let us not forget the spiritual works of mercy: to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offences, bear patiently those who do us ill, and pray for the living and the dead.

24. My thoughts now turn to the Mother of Mercy. May the sweetness of her countenance watch over us in this Holy Year, so that all of us may rediscover the joy of God’s tenderness. No one has penetrated the profound mystery of the incarnation like Mary. Her entire life was patterned after the presence of mercy made flesh. The Mother of the Crucified and Risen One has entered the sanctuary of divine mercy because she participated intimately in the mystery of His love.

Chosen to be the Mother of the Son of God, Mary, from the outset, was prepared by the love of God to be the Ark of the Covenant between God and man. She treasured divine mercy in her heart in perfect harmony with her Son Jesus. Her hymn of praise, sung at the threshold of the home of Elizabeth, was dedicated to the mercy of God which extends from “generation to generation” (Lk 1:50). We too were included in those prophetic words of the Virgin Mary. This will be a source of comfort and strength to us as we cross the threshold of the Holy Year to experience the fruits of divine mercy.

At the foot of the Cross, Mary, together with John, the disciple of love, witnessed the words of forgiveness spoken by Jesus. This supreme expression of mercy towards those who crucified him show us the point to which the mercy of God can reach. Mary attests that the mercy of the Son of God knows no bounds and extends to everyone, without exception. Let us address her in the words of the Salve Regina, a prayer ever ancient and ever new, so that she may never tire of turning her merciful eyes upon us, and make us worthy to contemplate the face of mercy, her Son Jesus.

Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 11 April, the Vigil of the Second Sunday of Easter, or the Sunday of Divine Mercy, in the year of our Lord 2015, the third of my Pontificate.

FRANCISCUS

Planning for Christmas

Second Sunday of Advent

I am a planner.  Some of you may know that already.  My close friends certainly know that.  I have been known to call friends and see if they want to go on vacation…ten to eleven months before I am planning to leave.  There are a few of my friends who are not planners at all.  And it drives them up a wall to no end when I try to arrange times to get together with them.  They would much rather see if something will work a week out.  Of course, my calendar has a tendency to fill up, so planning something a week out usually means it won’t happen because I’ve already committed to something else…because I’m a planner.

St. John the Baptist may or may not have been a planner.  But we heard today about how he was trying to prepare Israel for the Messiah by preaching in the desert and saying, “‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’”  He was getting them ready for the day when Israel could take off its robe “of mourning and misery” and “put on the splendor of glory from God” as we heard in our first reading.  St. John the Baptist was trying to help them plan for the day when God would clothe them in the righteousness of God, a royal priesthood.  This was not something which the Chosen People could simply fall into or start working on a week ahead of time.  St. John the Baptist was helping the Chosen People prepare to meet their new king.  

How have we been preparing for the celebration when we will meet Jesus Christ the King?  For four weeks the Church gives us the chance to plan for Christmas: not for the parties; not for the decorations; not for the presents; but for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.  She does not simply tell us one week ahead of time, “Hey, you doing anything 25 December?  We should hang out at Church; I hear it’s going to be a big celebration.”  Instead, she asks us to watch in joyful hope for the coming of our savior, Jesus Christ.  One week out would not give us enough time to prepare.  We need four weeks (and even that doesn’t quite seem long enough) to be ready to celebrate.

And what are we celebrating?  We are celebrating a paradox.  We celebrate that the God who created Time and who guides it according to His will, became subject to Time in the Person of Jesus.  We celebrate that God, Whom the heavens and the earth cannot contain, suddenly was seen as a little infant who took up space and could be located in one place and not another.  But this story, though 2,000 years removed from us today, happened in a particular time.  And that is hat St. Luke also tries to convey to us.  The Birth of Jesus did not happen long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.  It happened sometime before the “fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee…during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.”  God, the Lord of History, in the Person of Jesus became a subject of History as well.  Jesus is not a made-up story, like the Greek or other Middle-Eastern stories about the gods.  Jesus was seen, heard, touched by many people, who spread that Good News to others.

Have we planned enough for Christmas?  Not for the parties, the decorations, or the presents, but to celebrate what Christmas is truly about: God loved us so much that in the Person of Jesus He became man and dwelt among us.  Has the message of St. John the Baptist taken root in our hearts?  Have we prepared the way of the Lord?

Country Club of Heaven

First Sunday of Advent

Ever since 24 June, the Solemnity of the Birth of John the Baptist, there has been less and less daylight in our part of the world.  That changes right around 25 December, the Solemnity of the Birth of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.  But until we get there, it’s dark.  And with daylight saving’s time having ended, it gets dark pretty early.  Today the sunset around 5:05 p.m.  Even though 5 p.m. is not late at all, with the early darkness, it just seems gloomy, especially with the usual Michigan winter cloudiness.

In the midst of this gloom, we can long for the long, warm days of summer, when all was bright and the sun was out until 9 p.m. or even later!  But it can be hard to think that those days will ever be here again when its dark so early, and certainly not as warm (though it is a warm weekend!).  

We get a sense through our weather of what the Jews were going through as Jeremiah was prophesying.  At this point in the Book of the prophet Jeremiah, the city is under siege by the Babylonians, who are about to take Jerusalem.  This will be the beginning of the Babylonian Exile, which exiles most of the Jews from Judah and Jerusalem until 587 B.C.  Those days were certainly dark, and not because of daylight saving’s time!  

In the midst of that darkness, Jeremiah speaks for the Lord a word of hope: “I will raise up for David a just shoot;…In those days Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem shall dwell secure.”  God promises that the dark days will not last forever.  He will give them new life, and a new king from the line of David, the idyllic king, who will be just.  Judah and Jerusalem shall not be besieged, but shall be safe and secure.

Jesus’ words in the Gospel do not sound so calming and hopeful.  Jesus is speaking to His disciples just before His Passion, and is warning them about the end times.  They will be so horrible that people will die of fright simply anticipating what will happen.  “‘But,’” as Jesus says, “‘when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.’”  For Jesus disciples, who are following Him and His will, the terror of the end is like the birth pangs which bring about new life.  So, maybe we can breathe a sigh of relief.  After all, we are Jesus’ disciples, and we have nothing to worry about.  We go to Mass each Sunday, so we’re good.  Right?

Well, Jesus’ next words should give us a little more trepidation.  Jesus warns His disciples not to become lax so that the end catches us off-guard.  And he tells His disciples to be vigilant “‘and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.’”  

Being baptized and attending Mass each Sunday and Holyday is a big deal.  It shows at least a minimal attachment to Jesus and a desire to work at our relationship with Him.  But baptism is not a membership card in the Heavenly Country Club.  It’s not like if we sign up to join (baptism) and pay our weekly dues (going to Mass) that Jesus has to let us in.  Being a disciple of Jesus is not about going through the motions.  Being Catholic is not about the rules.  Being a Catholic and a disciple of Jesus is about growing in our friendship with Jesus and making our lives more like His.  That is the sign that we have accepted God’s friendship, which is offered to all, and that we are going in our friendship with Jesus.  We cannot rest on the laurels of our past good deeds.  We are never at a point in our relationship with Jesus where we can say, “I’ve done enough; I can just coast from here on out.”  Imagine if you treated your friends that way: “I’ve spent enough time with you for a while.  I’ll see you sometime in June.”  You probably wouldn’t be good friends.  Or imagine if you treated your spouse that way (so many saints and even Jesus talk about our relationship in marriage/wedding terms): “I spent every day with you so far in 2015; I’m going to live with someone else for December, but I’ll see you again in January.”  I’m sure that marriage wouldn’t last long.  

St. Paul encourages us to conduct ourselves in a particular way, as friends of Jesus.  We see that in the love that we share with others, but especially in the love we have for God, which overflows into our love for others.  As Pope Benedict said in his Encyclical, Deus caritas est: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”  If we love God, then we don’t simply go through the motions of the sacramental life of the Church and weekly Mass attendance, but we allow those sacraments and the Mass to propel us in loving God and our neighbor in daily life, that is to say, in growing as friends of Jesus.  

Things may seem dark during this time of year.  Things may seem dark in our lives at other times.  But God has a vision of hope for us: the hope of new life in growing in our relationship with Jesus.  That relationship gives us the true Light, Jesus Christ, and prepares us for the unending Day of the Lord in heaven when Jesus returns.