"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.

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.  

A Father Who Keeps His Promises

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    I try to be a man of my word.  If I say something, I consider myself, except for extreme circumstances, bound to do what I said I would.  This has led me to become very particular with my word choice, and to say, when asked if I can do someone a favor, “Depends on what it is.”  If I make a promise, I intend to keep it, as far as I am able.
    But we have probably all had an experience (hopefully not from me!) when a promise has been broken.  I remember a local story from not too long ago about a contractor who took people’s money, but didn’t complete the work.  Or the sad broken promise of a marriage that ends in divorce, a promise not only made to each other, but also made to the children for their best upbringing. 
    How beautiful it is then, that we have a Father who keeps His promises.  God always is true to His word.  As St. Paul reminds us, when God says yes He means yes, and His no means no.  We hear God promise to David today that He will establish a house for David, and raise up an heir whose kingdom will be firm and endure forever.  David himself saw kingdoms fall and rise during his reign, and so this promise must have been quite encouraging! 
    But that promise seemed like it was broken.  David’s son, Solomon, was the only one who could claim a united kingdom.  The kingdom of Israel and Judah split into two due to the harshness of Solomon’s son, and they never rejoined.  Israel was eventually exiled because they worshipped false gods, so that only the southern kingdom of Judah was left.  But even then, eventually the king was captured by the Babylonians who exiled all the royal family.  After the Babylonian exile, the sons of David never ruled over a kingdom again, at least not an earthly kingdom.  Even after the Jews returned to Judah and rebuilt the temple, there was never a king to rule over them, and they soon found themselves a vassal territory of Rome.  King Herod, who ruled at the time of the Gospel we heard today, was not of David’s line, and he wasn’t even really a king in his own right.  He ruled only because Rome let him, and to try to appease the Jews.  For how many years must the people have thought that God had broken His promise to David!
    Enter the Archangel Gabriel.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, like her betrothed, Joseph, was of David’s house.  They were descendants of King David, though they had no political power.  But Gabriel assures Mary that her son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, will receive “the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”  God had not broken His promise.  He simply fulfilled it in a way that others did not expect.  And this unexpected way improved the apparent promise, as Christ’s kingdom would truly never end, because time could not limit the one who rules outside time, and the rule would not limit itself to only a particular piece of land, but upon all of humanity.  It would be like asking a parent for money for ice cream, but then not getting it when you wanted it immediately, only to find out that the parent was the heir to the Dairy Queen, and you had been named as the new owner and CEO.  It wasn’t what you expected, but it was better!

    We should keep that in mind when we think of God’s other promises: for example, God’s promise that He would never abandon us.  God is always there for us.  If He stopped being there for us, we would cease to exist; not just die, but disappear from existence, like George Bailey from “It’s A Wonderful Life” when Clarence the angel shows him what life would be like if he had never been born.  That’s not to say that we will always feel that God is with us.  St. Theresa of Calcutta rarely felt God’s presence.  St. John of the Cross felt abandoned by God, but knew that God would never forsake him, even in the midst of his dark night.  And what joy Sts. Theresa and John must have experienced when they, having remained faithful to God even in the face of difficulties and seeming abandonment, saw God face to face in heaven! 
    When we are going through difficult times, it is not that God has abandoned us.  God is simply allowing us to prove our love, not just for the good feelings that He so often sends, but for Him directly.  Sometimes God is so close to us that we cannot even sense Him.  Sometimes a struggle is meant to help us grow in a virtue or in general holiness, which will draw us even closer to God in the end.  But God never walks away from us.  He will never divorce us.  We are the only ones who can walk away, and even then, God always remains for us, watching for our return like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, ready to run to us if we come to our senses. 
    God is a Father who always keeps His Promises.  Jesus Christ says yes when He means yes, but sometimes also says no when He means no.  We may not always live to see how the promise is fulfilled.  And the promise may be so beyond our expectations that we can’t imagine how the promise will be fulfilled.  But God will fulfill it.  Have faith; our Father only knows how to give us what is good, even better than we can dream.

"To Thee Do We Turn"

 Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  As a Third Order Dominican, the Rosary is something near and dear to my heart.  It is part of my daily prayer habit.  But it wasn’t always.  As a child, I dreaded praying the Rosary.  Even though it only takes around 15-20 minutes, that was like an eternity for me!  My family had a practice that, whenever we went on long trips, we would pray the Rosary at the beginning of our travels.  That was not my idea of fun!
    Ironically, it is in my car most of the time that I pray the Rosary these days.  And it is a beautiful means of meditation, both for individuals and for families (even if the kids don’t always appreciate it).  And also, ironically, while we are often chastened by our Protestant brothers and sisters for worshipping Mary, as they think is demonstrated by the Rosary, it is actually very much a Scriptural prayer.  Obviously, the Our Father is scriptural, and the Glory Be, while not explicitly found in Scripture, is common to most, if not all, Christians.  But even the Hail Mary finds most of its roots in Scripture.  The first part, “Hail…full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” is the greeting of the Archangel Gabriel to Mary at the Annunciation.  The next part, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” is the greeting Elizabeth speaks to the Blessed Mother at the Visitation.  And the majority of the mysteries of the Rosary are explicitly found in Scripture, while others are implicitly found there.

   But the Rosary also grew out of a practice for illiterate people to be able to pray with priests, brothers, and monks the Divine Office, the Breviary, the other official prayer of the Church (in addition to the Mass).  In the original iteration of the Rosary, given, by tradition, by our Lady to the Order of Preachers, there were 3 sets of mysteries (joyful, sorrowful, and glorious), which each had 50 Hail Marys, just as there are 150 Psalms (50 times 3 equals 150).  I also pray with the Luminous Mysteries, and find no problem doing so (though we did not add another 50 Psalms).  The Rosary was a way for all people whether able to read or not, to join in prayer together throughout the day and week, following St. Paul’s admonition to pray constantly.

    It also helps ingrain in us these three basic prayers of Catholicism.  I have had priests tell me that they have visited patients who are dying of Alzheimers, who cannot even remember the name of their own spouse or children.  And yet, when the Rosary starts, they join in.  My own sister, Amanda, found the Hail Mary, the staple prayer of the Rosary, as a comfort for her.  When she was in the summer between junior and senior year, she was hit by another car (driven by a young man I had sponsored for confirmation) while traveling at the posted speed of 55 mph.  Her Chevy Astro (van) rolled into the corn field, and landed on her arm (she had gotten moved around a bit as the vehicle rolled).  When the car stopped rolling, she was conscious, but could not call 911.  So she prayed Hail Marys until the ambulance came, which helped keep her calm.
    Those prayers that we memorize, especially the ones in the Rosary, are made for times when we cannot think of our own words to pray.  We all know times in life when we’re just too scared, anxious, or excited for our own words to come to our minds.  At those times, we can turn to our favorite prayers, especially the Hail Mary, to ask our Blessed Mother to intercede for us.

    This feast day also commemorates the victory of the Christian fleet over the Ottoman Turk fleet at Lepanto, and so is a great example of turning to Mary when we need assistance.  The Turks had been “knocking on the door of Europe” for years and had sought a foothold in Europe so that they could take Europe for the Muslim faith.  This was a great victory that signaled the fading of Ottoman military power in the Mediterranean.  
    Where do we turn to, or to whom do we turn, when things look most bleak and dire?  It can be so easy to turn to our own machinations and wisdom, and feel that if we do not take control, then all will be lost.  Instead, as shown to us by Pope St. Pius V, who invited all Europe to pray the Rosary for the success of the Catholic fleet, we should turn to prayer, even while making necessary plans and preparations, entrusting ourselves and the situation to the providence of God.  We should, like Mary, say to the Lord, “Be it done unto me according to [God’s] word.”  It is that confidence in God’s plan that should be one of the hallmarks of our life as Catholics, knowing that God is in charge and He will work all things toward His plan of salvation, even when others, or even we, do not follow His will.  Using the metaphor of a naval battle, the waves may roll around us, and the fire around us may seem like the very gates of Hell, but if we are under our Lady’s banner, then we will not, in the end be sunk or destroyed, but will come out victorious.
    Still, that victory can take a while to develop.  We don’t simply pray the Joyful and Glorious Mysteries.  Sandwiched between them are the Luminous Mysteries which tell of some success and some struggles in preaching the Gospel, and even the Sorrowful Mysteries where it looked like all was lost.  In our life we can expect to have joy, light, sorrow, and glory, each in their own times.  But if we stay close to Mary, and view all of it in the light of Divine Providence, then nothing will shake us, no matter what happens.  
    May Mary, Mother of God and Our Lady of the Rosary, help us to ponder the life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.  May our life also mirror her abandonment to God’s will, and may Mary be the one we turn to as we go to Christ in our joys, sorrows, and glory of life.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Mary, The Ark who Leads Israel into Battle

 Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
 

   In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  In 1981, Steven Spielberg produced a movie that introduced to the world the great archeologist, Indiana Jones.  “Raiders of the Lost Ark” continued Harrison Ford’s connection with action movies that had been started with the “Star Wars” franchise, but was also one of those feel good movies about American beating Nazis.  It also raised this question about where the Ark of the Covenant was.  It reminded people that the Ark of the Covenant was “lost,” as it were.  Contrary to the movie, it has still never been found and is not sitting in a Smithsonian warehouse somewhere.  The two main theories that are prevalent now are: that the Ark is in Ethiopia, brought by Jeremiah to Egypt when the Chaldeans destroyed Jerusalem, and then made its way south to the great Ethiopian kingdom when the Chaldeans went to expand the empire to Egypt, and is now protected by Ethiopian Orthodox priests in a shrine; or that the Ark is buried under rubble of the Solomonic temple, which is currently located under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
    But for us Catholics, the Ark of the old covenant is not important, anymore than the Temple building would be important.  And it’s not important because we have a new Ark of the Covenant: Mary.  Our first reading from the Book of Judith described a woman who led Israel into battle and gained, victory, just as the Ark was often taken into battle, like at Jericho.  The Book of Revelation describes the ark in the temple, and then goes on to describe this woman “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars,” who gives birth to a son who rules the nations.  You don’t have to be a Scripture scholar to know that this refers to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  
    Usually as we celebrate this Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we focus on how Mary, at the end of her life, was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.  But our readings also draw us to Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant.  And it’s not simply in the Book of Revelation.  The Gospel account of the Visitation is chosen for today’s celebration (as Mary’s Assumption is not directly explained in Scripture) bears striking resemblance to the account of King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.  Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, her cousin, who lives just outside of Jerusalem, in a village we now call Ein Kerem.  The new ark is on the move, just as David had it brought to him.  As David brings the Ark of the Covenant with him, he dances before it.  John the Baptist, in the womb of Elizabeth, leaps for joy before Mary, the new Ark.  Elizabeth says at the Visitation: “How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  David says, after God promises to raise up a dynasty for him, “‘Whom am I, Lord God, and what is my house, that you should have brought me so far?’”  So Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant.
    Think, too, of what the Ark of the Covenant contained: not sand (like in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”), but a golden pot with manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the tablets of the Law.  Think about what (or better, whom) Mary carried with her: not the law written on stone tablets, but the author of the Law, who was God’s law made flesh; not the budding staff of the first high priest, but the Eternal High Priest Himself; not the manna which God had given the people in the wilderness, but the True Bread from Heaven, as we have heard over the past few weeks in the Gospel according to John.  Mary is this new Ark.  In fact, when I was in Israel as a seminarian on pilgrimage, I remember visiting a church in Abu Ghosh called Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant, and is said to have been built around the place where the Ark of the Covenant rested until King David took it to Jerusalem.

Statue of Mary in Abu Ghosh

    Today’s Solemnity of the Assumption reminds us that God will raise up, not just our souls, but also our bodies, at the end of time.  What Mary shares in now, we hope to share in when God re-creates the heavens and earth.  But in order to do that, we, in our own way, need to become arks.  God also invites us, and Mary shows us it is possible, to carry the Law within us, written on our hearts, the new law of love that Jesus gave us that does not annul the Ten Commandments, but helps us to live it out more fully.  God invites us to be priests according to our baptism, those who offer our daily sacrifices to God.  We offer God our joys and sorrows, our successes and our failures, our work and our vacation.  Each day we can call on God, just as Aaron, the first priest of the Law, did.  I know that sometimes this is used to distort the ministerial priesthood, but we are truly priests who can "dare to say" (audemus dicere as I say before I say the Our Father) that God is our Father and offer our daily sacrifices to Him.

And God invites us to be sustained, no longer by the old manna that decayed, but the new manna, the bread of life, the Eucharist, which is food for our pilgrimage from this vale of tears to the true Promised Land of heaven.  We are invited to worthily receive the Eucharist so that the Bread of Life can be within us, just as it was within the Ark of the Covenant.  In that way, we become arks of the new covenant, like Mary was and is.
    We don’t need to go to Egypt to find a secret cave that is filled with snakes (“I hate snakes!”) in order to find the Ark.  We don’t have to worry that “we’re digging in the wrong place!”  Following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we can be arks of the covenant, the covenant made in the Precious Blood of the Spotless Lamb, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is Lord for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant

 Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
 

   In 1981, Steven Spielberg produced a movie that introduced to the world the great archeologist, Indiana Jones.  “Raiders of the Lost Ark” continued Harrison Ford’s connection with action movies that had been started with the “Star Wars” franchise, but was also one of those feel good movies about American beating Nazis.  It also raised this question about where the Ark of the Covenant was.  It reminded people that the Ark of the Covenant was “lost,” as it were.  Contrary to the movie, it has still never been found and is not sitting in a Smithsonian warehouse somewhere.  The two main theories that are prevalent now are: that the Ark is in Ethiopia, brought by Jeremiah to Egypt when the Chaldeans destroyed Jerusalem, and then made its way south to the great Ethiopian kingdom when the Chaldeans went to expand the empire to Egypt, and is now protected by Ethiopian Orthodox priests in a shrine; or that the Ark is buried under rubble of the Solomonic temple, which is currently located under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
    But for us Catholics, the Ark of the old covenant is not important, anymore than the Temple building would be important.  And it’s not important because we have a new Ark of the Covenant: Mary.  In our first reading today, the Book of Revelation describes the ark in the temple, and then goes on to describe this woman “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars,” who gives birth to a son who rules the nations.  You don’t have to be a Scripture scholar to know that this refers to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  
    Usually as we celebrate this Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we focus on how Mary, at the end of her life, was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.  Our second reading talks about how Christ has been raised, and will bring all those who belong to Him to that same glory, “each one in the proper order,” which means Mary as first, since she is the perfect disciple.
    But our readings also draw us to Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant.  And it’s not simply in the first reading from Revelation.  The Gospel account of the Visitation is chosen for today’s celebration (as Mary’s Assumption is not directly explained in Scripture) bears striking resemblance to the account of King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.  Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, her cousin, who lives just outside of Jerusalem, in a village we now call Ein Kerem.  The new ark is on the move, just as David had it brought to him.  As David brings the Ark of the Covenant with him, he dances before it.  John the Baptist, in the womb of Elizabeth, leaps for joy before Mary, the new Ark.  Elizabeth says at the Visitation: “How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  David says, after God promises to raise up a dynasty for him, “‘Whom am I, Lord God, and what is my house, that you should have brought me so far?’”  So Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant.
    Think, too, of what the Ark of the Covenant contained: not sand (like in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”), but a golden pot with manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the tablets of the Law.  Think about what (or better, whom) Mary carried with her: not the law written on stone tablets, but the author of the Law, who was God’s law made flesh; not the budding staff of the first high priest, but the Eternal High Priest Himself; not the manna which God had given the people in the wilderness, but the True Bread from Heaven, as we have heard over the past few weeks in the Gospel according to John.  Mary is this new Ark.  In fact, when I was in Israel as a seminarian on pilgrimage, I remember visiting a church in Abu Ghosh called Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant, and is said to have been built around the place where the Ark of the Covenant rested until King David took it to Jerusalem.
    Today’s Solemnity of the Assumption reminds us that God will raise up, not just our souls, but also our bodies, at the end of time.  What Mary shares in now, we hope to share in when God re-creates the heavens and earth.  But in order to do that, we, in our own way, need to become arks.  God also invites us, and Mary shows us it is possible, to carry the Law within us, written on our hearts, the new law of love that Jesus gave us that does not annul the Ten Commandments, but helps us to live it out more fully.  God invites us to be priests according to our baptism, those who offer our daily sacrifices to God.  We offer God our joys and sorrows, our successes and our failures, our work and our vacation.  Each day we can call on God, just as Aaron, the first priest of the Law, did.  And God invites us to be sustained, no longer by the old manna that decayed, but the new manna, the bread of life, the Eucharist, which is food for our pilgrimage from this vale of tears to the true Promised Land of heaven.  We are invited to worthily receive the Eucharist so that the Bread of Life can be within us, just as it was within the Ark of the Covenant.  In that way, we become arks of the new covenant, like Mary was and is.
    We don’t need to go to Egypt to find a secret cave that is filled with snakes (“I hate snakes!”) in order to find the Ark.  We don’t have to worry that “we’re digging in the wrong place!”  Following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we can be arks of the covenant, the covenant made in the Precious Blood of the Spotless Lamb, Jesus Christ. 

Humble Moses

Fourth Sunday of Advent

There is a meme that I recently saw on Facebook.  It is a picture of a person writing at a desk (probably supposed to be Moses), and it says, “‘Moses was more humble than any other person on earth’, by Moses.”  What it references is Numbers 12:3, which reads, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than anyone else on earth,” along with the tradition that Moses himself composed the first five books of the Bible…including the Book of Numbers. 

Our first reading an our Gospel focus specifically on humility.  In the first reading we heard about Bethlehem, who is so small, and yet will be the place from which comes the ruler in Israel, the ruler “whose origin is from of old, from ancient times.”  Bethlehem was the City of King David, which is why Joseph and Mary had to travel back there during the census, since both Joseph and Mary were of the house of David.  But it had long since lost its notoriety, and was a place of no importance.  Still, God chose that place for His co-eternal Son to be born, from two parents who were very poor, who had next to nothing.

Our Gospel, too, talks about the Blessed Mother’s visit to Elizabeth.  Now, I’ve never been pregnant, but I’m not sure, if I were pregnant, that I would walk from Nazareth to Ein Kerem, a distance of 80 miles, to see my cousin, who was also pregnant.  However, Elizabeth was old, and it was out of love and concern that Mary did not think about her own needs, but went to take care of her family member.  Mary does not bask in the fact that she is the Mother of God (remember that life starts at conception, not birth!).  She does not let this great honor go to her head.  She focuses on the needs of others, and does as a pregnant woman what others may not have done without a child in the womb.

I’m sure we’ve all heard lots about humility.  Often times it gets confused with abasement, with lowering oneself.  And maybe that’s because our general trend is puffing ourselves up.  But humility is primarily concerned with the truth about ourselves, not with making ourselves less than we are.  Humility is thinking neither less nor more than we truly are.  And in not thinking more of ourselves than we are, in not holding on to what we want to believe we are, we open our hands to receive who we are from God.  Humility allows us to not try to take our identity, certainly not from what others say, but from the one who created us, from God, who knows who we are better than we do ourselves.

Bethlehem didn’t try to put on heirs.  It didn’t advertise itself as a center of power (that would have been Jerusalem).  But God chose it to be the place where the Messiah would be born.  Mary, though she was of the house of David, did not act as if she was supposed to be a queen.  And yet, because she became the Mother of God, truly became the Queen Mother of Heaven and Earth.  Humility allowed more honors than either of them could have achieved if they would have sought after honors and privilege themselves.

That approach to life is hard for us.  And it certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t use our gifts and talents to better the areas in which we live, work, etc.  That’s false humility, not recognizing the gifts that we have, burying our talents.  But it also doesn’t mean that we seek after power and notoriety.  We strive to be the best mother, father, daughter, or son that we can be, but when we do something well, we don’t have to proclaim it to the world.  We strive to be the best boss or best employee that we can be, but we don’t do it so that we are noticed by corporate or by our boss, we do it because it helps the company and the people that the company serves.  We strive to be the best student we can be, but we don’t have to brag to our friends that we got an A.  It’s not bad to be happy about those things, and maybe even to share then with close friends and family.  But it’s not about what others think of us.  It’s about how God thinks of us. 

Pride so often closes our hands to what God wants to give us.  God wants to give us every good gift that we need for our salvation.  God never holds something back from us that we need, because He is our loving Father.  And yet, in our pride, we close our hands to hold on to the lesser gifts that we think we need, that gives us passing pleasure.  And because of that, we might miss out on opportunities that God desires for us.  In these last couple of days of Advent, may we rediscover the gift of humility, which opens our lives us to the great things that God wants for us.  May we have the trust in God to let Him exalt us, rather than trying to exalt ourselves.

Celebrating Birthdays

Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

In our own times, birthdays are big deals.  Everybody I know celebrates birthdays, or avoids their celebration because they don’t want to be reminded that they’re going older.  Some people celebrate half birthdays (another excuse to party, I suppose), and some priests I know joke about celebrating an octave (8 consecutive days) of the day of their birth, just like we do for Jesus in the Octave of Christmas.

But for the Church, we generally celebrate the day a person died.  We don’t do this because we’re morbid, but because, especially as the Church first started celebrating holy men and women, we were celebrating martyrs, those who died for the faith.  So the date of their death was actually the date of their victory through Christ, the day they were born to eternal life; we might call it their heavenly birthday.  So today’s celebration, which supersedes a Sunday celebration, something not all that common, means something pretty big.  There are really only three birthdays that the Church celebrates: the Nativity of the Lord on 25 December, which is one of the holiest days of the year, after Easter; the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 8 September, which, when it falls on a Sunday, is not celebrated; and the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, which is one of the handful of days in the Church’s calendar that has different readings for the vigil, the night before, than for the day.

Birthplace of St. John the Baptist
in En Kerem

And St. John the Baptist, the Precursor, as he is also called, is a pretty big deal.  He’s not as holy as the Blessed Virgin Mary, but he prepares the way for the Lord.  He plows the ground, as it were, so that the seed of faith that Jesus plants, can grow in the hearts of the men and women of his time.

John is known as being, what we would call a radical: he wears camel hair and eats locusts and honey.  He lives near the Jordan River, in a mainly uninhabited place, and tells everybody that they’re sinners, in need of repentance.  He calls out King Herod for his unlawful marriage to his brother’s wife, and St. John loses his head for it.  But the word radical does not really mean extreme.  Radical comes from the Latin word radix, which means root.  Our English word radish is simply a transliteration of the Latin word, which, in another form can be radice.  Not a very inventive word for not a very special root that we eat.  But John goes to the root of following Jesus: proclaiming repentance in preparation for Jesus.

In the Gospel on Saturday we hear about how John’s conception is achieved miraculously, but without faith from his father, Zechariah, believing it could happen, and so he is struck mute by the Archangel Gabriel.  And in the Gospel on Sunday, we hear about the naming of John, which frees Zechariah’s tongue and allows him to proclaim God’s wonders again.  But in both the first readings, we hear about being a prophet, speaking God’s Word to the people, which is exactly the mission of St. John the Baptist.

And that is exactly the mission of all of us: to proclaim God’s Word.  And that Word is not so much a particular teaching (though we can teach others about what God says), but a Person, the eternal Word of God that St. John the Apostle and Evangelist talks about, the Word that was in the beginning, the Word that was with God and is God.  We, like Jeremiah, like Isaiah, like St. John the Baptist, are called to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight His paths.  

But, you might say, if you’re paying attention and not reading your bulletin, Jesus has already come!  We don’t need to prepare for Him, any more than we need to prepare for the Belgium vs. Panama World Cup Soccer game, because it’s already come.  But, in fact, Jesus’ coming happens daily to each person.  Each day Jesus wants to enter our hearts.  But in order to do that, we have to be prepared for him, and in order to be prepared, someone has to help us prepare, and that’s where we come in.  Each day we are called to help people see Jesus in what we say and in what we do: in the kind word to a person who is having a rough day; in the challenging word that we speak with love to a person who is not living as Jesus teaches us; in serving people in the food pantry.  But we have to be purposeful about it, about making it about Jesus.  When the person asks us why we are being kind to them, or why we are lovingly challenging them, or why we are serving them, we need to witness to Jesus and say it’s because Jesus loves them, and as followers of Jesus so do we.  It’s not enough to hope that they’ll catch on.

Imagine if John had been calling people to repentance, but then when Jesus came by, not said, “Behold the Lamb of God!”  He would not have completed his mission.  If, when John was baptizing and being asked why, John said, “I don’t really feel comfortable talking about it,” instead of, “One is coming after me who will baptize you with fire!”, maybe we wouldn’t be celebrating the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.  But we are.  And that in itself is a challenge to us to be like John, to prepare the way of the Lord, to help Jesus find a welcome home by our participation in the mission to proclaim the Word of God, the eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ in our daily words and actions.  

Be radical!  Embrace your mission!  Prepare the way for the Lord!

Not Yet

Fourth Sunday of Advent

I’m not quite ready.  This is the shortest Advent possible, and this year, it feels like it.  I don’t know about you, but it feels like we just started Advent, and tomorrow night/tonight we are at Christmas.  That’s not to say that the time has had good things.  On the contrary, I have had some great celebrations over the past week.  But I just feel like I’m not ready yet.  Now does not seem like the right time for Christmas.

God in our first reading tells King David through the prophet Nathan that it wasn’t, in fact, quite time yet for the temple.  David wanted to build a temple out of his love for God.  David lived in a pretty plush house for the times, and wanted God’s house to be even greater.  And at first, Nathan agrees.  But then, after God speaks to Nathan at night, Nathan tells David that it’s not time yet.  God has blessed David in many ways, and God will even make a dynasty for David that will last forever.  But God will have David’s son, Solomon, build the temple, not David.

A model of Solomon's Temple
in Jerusalem

We can’t really say that God wasn’t ready for David to build a temple.  But the promise God made to David, and even the building of the temple, was not just in the short term, with David’s immediate descendants and a temple building, but looked forward to the Gospel passage we heard today.

God fulfilled His promise to David through Jesus, who has a kingdom that will never end.  Whereas David died and rested with his ancestors, Jesus was raised from the dead after three days, and lives forever.  And since Mary is of the house of David, Jesus is the fulfillment of that Davidic prophecy.  Jesus rules over the house of Jacob for ever from His throne in heaven.  Perhaps that is why Handel’s Messiah is so popular even at Christmas.  The words from the Hallelujah chorus, at which people traditionally stand, is from the Book of Revelation, and says, “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth” and “The Kingdom of this world/ Is become the kingdom of our Lord/ And of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever” and “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.”  That promise that we associate with Jesus being born, is still fulfilled as Christ reigns in heaven for ever and ever as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  

But God also fulfills in our Gospel the promise to have a temple.  No, there is no building really spoken of in our Gospel.  It speaks about the Annunciation, when Jesus becomes flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  But the temple is the house of God, the place where God dwells, and the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary becomes the new temple, not made with hands, that houses God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  And because the temple was the house of God, it had to be pure, immaculate, so God preserved, from the moment of her conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary from the stain of original sin, which we celebrate each year on 8 December.  When King Solomon built the temple and consecrated it, God overshadowed it and dwelt in it.  So, when Mary said “yes” to becoming the Mother of Jesus, and therefore the Mother of God, the Theotokos, God overshadowed her and Jesus began to dwell in her.  

But besides Mary being the temple, because she was the house of God, Jesus is also the eternal temple, which was destroyed in His crucifixion, but rebuilt in three days.  Jesus’ Body is the physical house of His Divinity, and so is the new temple forever, because Jesus’ humanity is never divorced from His Divinity; they are forever one flesh, the marriage of God and man.  

But we, too, are called to be the temple of God.  God consecrates us and begins to dwell within us in baptism.  Our bodies become the temple of the Holy Spirit, which the Church holds to even in our death, which is why the Church recommends a funeral and burial with a body whenever possible (even if the Church does allow cremation as long as one does not act in a way that rejects the resurrection of the body).  All throughout our lives we strive to make sure that the temple is clean, and a place where God feels at home.  We don’t do as well as the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was the perfect disciple, but when our temple needs cleaning and purifying, we ask God’s mercy in confession, so that it can be a place where the Holy Spirit feels at home again.  God always gives us the necessary grace to live as His temple, but we have to respond to that grace.

As we prepare tonight to celebrate the Nativity of our Lord, when the temple of the Lord in Jesus became visible in Bethlehem, may we also prepare our temples, even in this last day, to be the pure and holy temple of God.

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.

Promises, Promises

Fourth Sunday of Advent

One of the things we learn from a very early is that we are supposed to keep our promises.  When we say something, we are supposed to stand behind what we say and follow through.  Sometimes it requires that special phrasing, “I promise I’ll give you $20 if you drink that milk that’s 5 days past the expiration date.”  Sometimes it is expressed by a handshake or a signature.  In any case, we expect that when someone tells us that something will be done, it will.  We can just hear the kids whining when they don’t get something they thought they were told they were: “Awwww, but you promised!”

It seems like promises don’t hold the same weight as they did before, though.  Some people still stand behind their word alone (without the words, “I promise” or a signature).  But those people seem to be in a minority.  It’s almost expected now in contracts that there is some special language which basically backs a person out the guarantee that was made, so that it’s only the rarest of cases where a business has to stand behind what it promised (with all the fine print that alleviates them from that burden).  When a man and woman have sex, they make a promise with their bodies that they give all of who they are, past, present, and future, to the other (which is why sex is made for marriage), and yet how often, in the culture of hook-ups, friends with benefits, and one-night stands is that promise broken, leading to many broken hearts and lives.  And, when a child is conceived after sex, an implicit promise is made to the infant in the womb, that the mother and father will take care of that child, but how often is that promise broken through abortion or an absentee parent!  In marriage, a promise is made to love each other above the self for life, no matter what happens.  And while sometimes separation and divorce follow because of abuse, or something that only became known after the marriage which would have changed the mind of at least one of the spouses getting married, we live in the no-fault divorce culture, so that if you simply grow tired of living with the same person, you can go your separate ways.  We live in a world of broken promises.

In the midst of all these broken promises, we hear good news today: God is the one who always keeps His promises.  These promises are kept most perfectly in Jesus.  In the first reading, we heard about how David would always have an heir on the throne, and that his kingdom and throne would endure forever.  The Jews were waiting for that promise to be fulfilled.  Not for hundreds of years had Judah had a king.  For hundreds of years they had been ruled by foreign powers, who had appointed puppet kings to help govern the people.  But it seemed like David’s throne and kingdom were only a thing of the past.

But what the Archangel Gabriel tells Mary is that the child that will be conceived in her womb is God (“Son of the Most High,” he says), and God will give Him the throne of David, His father.  This makes sense as Mary was a descendant of David.  But the family of David was long past its ruling days.  So God is making good on His promise to David, and in Jesus the throne of David would endure forever, since Jesus’ rule has no end.  In Jesus, the promise made to David is fulfilled.

But Jesus also fulfills an older promise that God had made.  After Adam and Eve had sinned against God, God laid out the consequences of sin.  For the serpent, the consequence is that there would be a battle between the serpent and the woman, “and between your offspring and hers.”  Eve’s children would always fight against the spawn of the evil one.  But God promises a savior to Adam and Eve, a victor in the battle, when He says, “‘He [the offspring] will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.’”  God promises to end the battle, once and for all, by a male offspring of Eve, who will strike the serpent at its head, killing it.  Jesus is that offspring of Adam and Eve, since he takes human nature upon Himself in the Incarnation.  Though Satan strikes at Jesus on the cross and uses all his influence to get Jesus killed, by Jesus’ death and resurrection, He destroys the kingdom of Satan and restores the kingdom of David, the kingdom of God, for all time.  

God has made a promise to us, and He has fulfilled it in Jesus.  He has promised to be our God, and we His People.  In Jesus, humanity is forever married to divinity, and God and His People are inseparably joined.  God has promised to dwell with us.  In Jesus, we see Emmanuel: God-with-us.  God never breaks His promise.  He is ever-faithful, even if it seems like He has forgotten.  Think of the Jews who were waiting for the kingdom of David to be restored.  It was almost 1,000 years until Jesus came.  And those Jews who do not acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah are still waiting.  But they know that God will fulfill His promise.  

God has promised to be with us.  In the midst of the myriad broken promises that surround us, God reminds us that He can be trusted.  And only living as disciples of Jesus can enable us to live up to the promises we make on this earth.  What good news it is for us that God keeps His promises!  May that inspire us to keep ours.

God Chooses Hobbits

Fourth Sunday of Advent

            I have now seen “The Hobbit” two times since it’s release on Friday.  While there have been a number of criticisms, I found myself enjoying the movie and its presentation of the classic book by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Certainly some license was taken; that always happens with movies.

            At one point, as the dwarves are discussing the drawbacks to having a burglar who has never burgled before, Gandalf mentions that Smaug, the evil dragon, will not recognize the smell of a Hobbit like he will of a dwarf.  Plus, Gandalf mentions, the Hobbit is small and will not attract much attention. 

            Now, it’s no secret that Tolkien was a Catholic.  He was a very devout Catholic.  And he permeated his writing with a Catholic worldview and Catholic theology.  I don’t know if he meant to compare Gandalf with God (in fact, I think scholars relate the wizards more to archangels), but we see in our readings today that God also uses the small to accomplish his work, those who will not attract much attention.

            Our first reading mentions the smallness of the city of Bethlehem of the Tribe of Judah.  It is too small to “be among the clans of Judah,” and yet “from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; whose origin is from of old, from ancient times.”  God doesn’t choose the large city of Jerusalem to bring forth the Messiah, but the little town of Bethlehem.

            And in choosing Mary to be the Mother of God, it is not a famous personage, or a grand queen in the secular sense, but a quiet, humble maiden in a small, quiet town.  And in the Gospel passage today where we hear about the Visitation of the Blessed Mother to her cousin Elizabeth, it is two, small people, not noticed by the world, who recognize the coming, the Advent, of the Messiah.  In fact, even the littlest one, St. John the Baptist in the womb of his mother, leaps for joy in the presence of the God whom John will later point out as the Lamb of God.

            How much does our society tell us that we shouldn’t be small and unnoticed.  We have TV shows whose aim it is to take people from being unknown to being stars of music.  YouTube is full of people, including, sadly, children, who do stupid stuff just to get their 15 minutes of fame.  So many of us desire to be “big time.”  We want to be famous and well known.  The more Facebook friends or followers on Twitter we have, the better.

            In the midst of this, God doesn’t say that it’s wrong to be well known.  But He wants to make us well known, rather than us try to slingshot our way into notoriety.  Bethlehem wasn’t waging a campaign like, “Who Wants to be the City of the Messiah.”  Mary did not try to posture so that she could be the one that God chose as the Mother of the Messiah.  It was all about simply doing the will of God, and letting God make them known.

            In fact, Mary knows that she will be very well known.  After this passage, she prays the words that the Church has echoed down throughout the ages: “From this day all generations will call me blessed.”  But why will Mary be blessed?  Because “the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is His Name.”  God is the agent of Mary’s blessing and notoriety.  And the same has happened with so many of the saints.

            Look at our first pope, St. Peter: I’m quite sure that, sitting in his boat on the Sea of Galilee, he wasn’t dreaming of leading the disciples of the Messiah and being the one to speak for Christ in a unique way.  Or St. Augustine of Hippo in the 5^th Century: as a believer in two powers, one of good, one of evil, in his youth, the last thing he had on his mind was being one of the most prolific theologians the Catholic Church has ever seen.  Or St. Thomas Aquinas: in writing his Summary of Theology for beginners, his Summa Theologiae, he probably never dreamed that a later pope would require his teaching to be part of the curriculum in Catholic seminaries.  Or St. Kateri Tekakwitha: as she was exiled from her New York village of Native Americans because she had embraced the Catholic faith, she probably never dreamed that centuries later she would be added to the list of saints who called America their home.  Or Bl. Teresa of Calcutta: I’m sure that as she was picking up dying people with rotting bodies in India she did not anticipate the fame she would have while still alive, let alone after her death.  Or even those still working on being saints, like Pope Benedict XVI, or Timothy Cardinal Dolan or Francis Cardinal George: in the small towns in which they grew up, I’m willing to bet that none of them dreamed of having the large responsibility in governing the Church that God has given them today. 

            It is not for us to work on being famous, or being well known.  We are called to be faithful to God and serve Him by serving His People with the gifts and talents that God has given to us.  If we do that, then we will be known by the only Persons who really matter: the Persons of the Blessed Trinity.  And if God recognizes us because we have configured our life to the image of His Son, then we will join the ranks of the truly famous, the lives truly worth celebrating, the lives of the saints.