Charlie Brown and the Meaning of Christmas

 Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord

    I’m pretty sure my mom’s favorite Christmas show is  “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”  I’m sure we’re all familiar with the story: Charlie Brown wants a great Christmas, there’s a school Christmas play, Snoopy has decorated his dog house over the top, and the tree that Charlie Brown picks is a small, pitiful tree that barely has any needles left on it.  The play is falling apart, Lucy is being her usual self, and nothing seems to be going right.  Enter Linus, who, responding to Charlie Brown’s query if anyone knows what Christmas is about, says:
 

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

There is so much that goes on at Christmas, so many things that we prepare for, so many parties to attend, presents to buy, houses to clean, that sometimes we forget what Christmas is all about.  And we’ve celebrated it so many times, that perhaps it has lost some of its newness and power.  Perhaps we have become numb to the real meaning of Christmas, what Christmas is all about.
    To properly understand the real meaning of Christmas, we have to start at the beginning.  Adam and Eve had offended God by disobeying Him and seeking to be God on their own terms.  They were sorry.  God accepted the apology, and sought humanity out time and time again, but humanity kept distancing itself more and more away from God.
    Christmas, then, is about God making the ultimate move of reconciliation.  We could not approach God on our own.  We were hopeless that anything could be done to fully restore what we had broken.  And knowing that we had caused the pain, knowing that we had done wrong, we stayed to ourselves.  But God didn’t leave us to ourselves.  He sent us someone who could reconcile us to Himself, and someone who could do so without shaming us.  Christ was and is one like us, but without sin.  He took on our human flesh so that we could be comfortable in the presence of God again.  God became man so that man might become God.  Rather than seeing us continually suffer by our separation from Him, He came to us so that we could be healed.
    And He came in a way that utterly disarmed us.  The Incarnation was like the Trojan Horse, because how could we not accept one so tiny and fragile?  How could we not smile at a cute baby, whose face looked like ours, but was truly the face of God?  It would be like being estranged from a dear friend or family member, not knowing if we could ever be amicable with them again because of the pain that we caused, but then that dear friend sends us a little gift, something that we treasure, as a way of restoring that relationship.  We certainly did not earn that gift, and would never have expected it, but that friend sent it anyway, and the healing could commence.  

    The real meaning of Christmas is God’s love and mercy for us doing the unthinkable: lowering Himself beyond all expectation, just so that we could be reunited with Him.  The snow is beautiful (though you may think otherwise having driven in it to get here); the glimmering trees and the presents that often are under them give us passing happiness; the favorite and timeless songs that we sing give our hearts a certain levity.  But all those things will pass, and will be put away for another twelve months.  The love and mercy of God will remain, long after the snow has melted, after the trees have dropped all their needles and the presents are forgotten or broken, after you can only find Christmas songs on YouTube or Spotify.  
    Are we willing to embrace that mercy?  Are we willing to accept the love of God offered to us to restore us to friendship with God?  It seems like a silly question, but sometimes, after we know we have done something wrong, we fear even accepting an offer of mercy and love, because we so define ourselves by our faults and failing.  We think that the broken relationship cannot be made whole again.  Or we are afraid that, having restored that friendship, we will break it off again once more.  
    As the angel said to the shepherds in the field at Bethlehem, “Be not afraid.”  We are not the sum of our failings, as Pope St. John Paul II once said.  God can make what is broken whole again.  And yes, we may offend God again, but God, through Christ, will reach out His hand again when we turn back in sorrow for our sins, and will not reject any who come to Him, even if our sins were like scarlet.  And he will not do so begrudgingly, but with great haste and intention, because He would rather lower Himself and take on human frailty; He would rather die than have one of His beloved be separated from Him.  So great is the love of God that He will go to any lengths He can to save us.
    That is what we see at Christmas.  That is what we experience in the Incarnation.  That is what we celebrate today, every Sunday, and even every day as the priest, and the people united with him interiorly, offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  God loves you so much that He became like you.  Accept that great gift of love and mercy, and allow it to transform your life today, tomorrow, and all the tomorrows that you will have.  We broke off our friendship with God, but God has given us the opportunity to be His adopted sons and daughters in the Incarnate Son of God.  That is the real meaning of Christmas.  That is what Christmas is all about.

Don't Look Back!

Fifth Sunday of Lent

            One of the hardest things to do when you’re running a sprint in track is not to look back to see who is coming up behind you.  No matter whether you’re first and you want to see if anyone is gaining on you, or you just don’t want to be last, as you’re running those last meters, you want to know if you’re going to win, or if you need to push it harder.  Ironically, for most people who look back, they seal their fate and the other person often passes them, because looking back slows us down.

            Isaiah talks about it in our first reading.  He says for the Lord, “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!”  God tells the Israelites not to dwell on what led them into exile (their idolatry, their trust in foreign nations), but to look ahead and see the good that God wants them to accomplish.

St. Paul talks about that in our second reading today: “forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”  St. Paul certainly had stuff that he could have dwelt on in his past.  He was a zealous Pharisee; he arrested men, women, and children for following Jesus; he condoned the stoning of Stephen.  But, while he did not forget his past, he didn’t keep looking back to it to weigh him down.  He recognized he was the least of the apostles because he had persecuted the Church of God, but he used that to propel his missionary activity, and is still the greatest missionary the world has ever known.

            We see it in our Gospel passage today.  Jesus doesn’t ignore the woman’s past.  He doesn’t condone the fact that she was caught in adultery.  But He forgives her, and tells her to move on, to “‘Go, and…do not sin any more.’”  He does not want her past to determine her future, unlike the scribes and Pharisees, who want to end her future because of her past. 

            When we focus too much on our past, we lose our future, just like the sprinter who can lose the race because he looks behind him.  We all have a past, we all have things that we wish we would not have done: not just mistakes or accidents, but choices that we have made that we should not have.  It’s called being human.  Look at St. Peter: he denied that he even knew Jesus.  But he didn’t stay there.  He repented, he wept for his sins, and he reaffirmed his love for Jesus.  Look at St. Mary Magdalene: she had seven demons that Jesus had to cast out of her.  We don’t know exactly how they got there, but it wasn’t a pleasant past.  But she didn’t stay stuck on the fact that she had seven demons, she followed Jesus, even to the cross when all but one of the other apostles abandoned Jesus, and was able to be the first to see the risen Christ.  And that’s just the beginning!  Through the millennia, there have been saints who had serious sins in their past.  But they, like St. Paul, forgot what was behind them, and continued their pursuit towards the goal of union with God forever in heaven.

            “But Fr. Anthony, you don’t know what I’ve done!”  Or, “Maybe I haven’t done any one thing that was really bad, but I’ve got a whole lifetime of little bad things that sure add up!”  Please!  Don’t give your sins that power.  None of them are so heinous as to be unforgiveable.  Bring them to the Lord and let Him nail those sins to the wood of the cross so that new life can come from our death to sin and life in Christ.  What happens when we do give our sins that power, when we remain stuck in the past, is what happened to Judas: despair and death.  Judas could not turn away from his past and turn towards the Lord, and so could not receive the forgiveness that he wanted and needed.

            Now, in not looking back, it certainly does not mean that we do not learn from our past sins.  God wanted Israel to look ahead to the future, to see the blessings of fidelity to God, but He certainly didn’t want them to slip back into their old sins.  St. Paul continued to run the race and look ahead to the prize of salvation, but he didn’t think that he could just go back to being a Pharisee and persecutor of the Church because he had been forgiven.  And Jesus exhorted the woman not to be adulterous in the future.  Not looking back doesn’t mean that we forgo true conversion and treat our sins as if they do not offend God.  They do offend God, and harm whom we are called to be.  But they are not more powerful than God, and God can write straight even with crooked lines. 

            The same happens in reconciliation.  We don’t pretend we haven’t done anything wrong.  Rather, we confess our sins, acknowledging how we have turned away from the Lord, and then He forgives us and urges us to press on towards Him and the road to salvation, that straight and narrow road that Jesus spoke of in the Gospel.  But just as we don’t pretend we haven’t sinned, we also don’t let our sins bog us down afterwards, because God has forgiven them.

            Don’t be the sprinter who loses the race because you looked back and were overtaken by the past.  Win the race by learning from past sins and pressing onwards toward God, keeping Him always before your eyes.

My Favorite Sacrament

Fourth Sunday of Lent

            When people ask me what my favorite sacrament is, I don’t think they’re generally surprised to hear me say the Eucharist.  Vatican II teaches us that the Eucharist is meant to be the source and summit of Christian life, the beginning of our life in Christ, whence we get the strength to live as disciples, and the goal of the Christian life, that we have intimate communion with God.  For priests even more so, the Eucharist is the key to the priesthood, as the priest acts in the person of Christ the Head, offering himself to the Father represented by the bread and the wine which become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

            I think they are more surprised when I say that there is another sacrament that is tied for first with the Eucharist, and that sacrament is Reconciliation.  But it’s true.  While I was, in some ways, prepared for the joy of celebrating the Mass and bringing about, in an unbloody manner, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross through the Eucharist, I have to say I was not prepared for what a gift celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation would be.

            At this point I have to make a disclaimer: I don’t love to celebrate Reconciliation as a confessor because I get to hear all your dirty little secrets of the things you’ve done wrong.  What I love is the fact that I get to take part in an intimate moment between the penitent and God and get to grant that penitent the forgiveness of their sins in the name of Christ, and bring them back to the road to heaven.  It is an experience of humility (because it takes true humility to tell God, not that we have made a mistake, but that we freely chose to go against His will) and an experience of love.  I treasure the “ministry of reconciliation” as St. Paul says in our second reading, that God has entrusted to me.  I am in awe of the fact that, though I continue to need to confess my sins (being a priest doesn’t mean that I suddenly stop sinning), God has chosen me to grant that forgiveness to His beloved sons and daughters so that they can, once more, be prepared for heaven.

            Our Gospel passage is all too familiar to us today.  We likely hear it every year, at least once.  But it is so powerful, if we let it speak to us!  We can put ourselves in the place of the prodigal son, the son who wastes his inheritance on dissipate living, and then who goes broke, and has to work as a swineherd (one of the worst jobs that a Jew could have), and would love just to eat the pigs’ food.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son who recognizes that he needs to return to the Father, if for no other reason than just to work as a slave so that he can eat.  And we can put ourselves in the place of the son who is embraced by the Father who has run out to meet him.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son, because that is what happens in reconciliation.

            “All men have sinned,” says St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, “and are deprived of the glory of God.”  We all tell God that we know better, that we’d rather control our own lives and do our own thing.  It’s the ancient sin of pride, which leads to so many other sins.  We squander the inheritance of grace that we received in baptism, when we were made sons and daughters in the Son of God.  And when we do that, we squander it quickly, and we find that we are living a trashy life, amidst slops that are meant for the pigs.  But God does not abandon us.  He gives us grace, we use the term prevenient grace, to lead us back to Him, to consider that the “threshold of the house of God” is better than the “tents of the wicked,” as Psalm 84 says.  Even just being close to union is God is better than living with evil.  And so we start on our way back.  But before we can even get out the words of our apology, to try to argue our case for being a slave rather than the heir that we were, the Father embraces us and says to us

“Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.  Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.”

God doesn’t rub in our face the wrong we have done, but celebrates that we have returned to our Father’s house, and that we are back to life in grace.

            There is nothing quite like the experience of welcoming someone back to the love of God in reconciliation.  Often, those who have been away from the Church for some time or those who feel the heavy weight of sin are brought to tears.  I am not ashamed to say that from time to time I am brought to tears as the love of God flows through me and I rejoice in the fact that the penitent was lost and now is found, was dead and is now alive by the grace of God.

            I want to invite each of you today, whether it’s been a week or a lifetime, to come experience this great sacrament of God’s mercy, and to start a habit of making regular confessions.  There’s no sin that can permanently keep you from the love of God, unless you give that sin that power.  God will forgive all sins, if we come to Him in sorrow, sincerely at least wanting to stop.  Whether it’s lying; impatience; stealing; adultery; viewing pornography and the sin that often accompanies it; sex outside of marriage; contracepting; murder; abortion; missing Mass; pride; or whatever other sins we may struggle with, God wants to put a robe of love around you and put the ring that signifies your place in God’s household on your finger.  Maybe it’s only been a few days since you last went to confession.  Maybe it’s been forty years since you last went to confession.  In either case, we priests are glad to give you the assurance of God’s mercy.  We have a great confession schedule between St. Thomas and St. John, and we even have a communal penance service with individual confession & absolution next Sunday, 17 March at 2 p.m. at St. Thomas in case you want to go to a priest from out of town (though recall that we can’t tell anyone else your sins, nor can we treat you any differently based upon your confession).  Don’t stay stuck in the pigs’ slop.  Come back to the Father’s house.  Let God love you and forgive you.  “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”

Why Advent?

First Sunday of Advent

            As I prepared this homily for the First Sunday in Advent, a question arose in my mind: why do we even have advent?  Christmas songs began on some radio stations on All Saints Day, November 1.  Christmas decorations went up in most stores at about the same time.  So why take this time, this season of hope, this season of penance?  Is it just an excuse for the clergy to swap vestments from green to violet, with rose stuck in on the third Sunday just for good measure?  Why bring out a wreath with four candles to mark the passing of time?  We have iPhones and Droids which have much more sexy apps to countdown to Christmas.  Why Advent?

            Advent is lost to the extent that it’s misunderstood.  It loses its force and its power when we don’t know why we do what we do.  And to understand in order that we might believe, perhaps we need to take a look at Advent again, to capture its beauty and its power.

            Advent comes from the Latin word adveniens and means “a coming.”  What we celebrate in Advent is not just any coming, any expectation for any person, but the expectation for the Person who reveals man to his very self, as Gaudium et spes, 22, from the Second Vatican Council says.  We are awaiting Jesus.  Because we are only 23 days away from the celebration of Jesus’ birth, that naturally leads us to feel like we are preparing for Christmas.  But St. Bernard of Clairvaux reminds us that Advent is really a celebration, an expectation, of three comings of Christ: the first coming at Bethlehem which we celebrate at Christmas; the second coming of Christ at the end of time, which our readings focus on today; and the thid coming of Jesus: the desire of Christ to come into our hearts daily and make a home there, so that Christ might be born in us.

            To help us prepare for the first coming, the celebration of Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem, we use symbols: some in the home, some at Church.  In the Church we use an advent wreath with four candles, traditionally 3 violet and 1 rose, to give us a visual reminder of how close we are.  And candles are fitting because they remind us of Jesus who is the light of the world.  The closer we get to celebrating the birth of Jesus, the more light there is, even as the days get shorter around us and darkness increases.  Even the traditional colors of the candles are dark, and yet the third rose candle reminds us that our wait is almost over, that we are more than halfway to the joyful celebration of our knowledge that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”  In your homes you might have an advent wreath as well.  Others will use a calendar where you open little panels that reveal a fuller picture of the Nativity, sometimes with recommended passages from Scripture, other times with little chocolates.  However as we draw closer to celebrating the birth of Jesus, we are meant to be more and more excited as the day of celebration draws near.

            The second coming is the main focus of the first two weeks of advent, when we still hear readings of how Jesus will come in glory to establish the fullness of His kingdom, where Christ is King of the Universe and all others are subject to Him.  That is why advent takes on a penitential tone, because all of us are in need of further conversion.  Some of us may be more ready than others for Jesus’ second coming, but we take on penances to atone for our sins that have placed ourselves or another on a throne, rather than Jesus.  Whether Jesus comes on December 21, or tomorrow, or whenever, Advent reminds us to stay awake and be ready for the bridegroom to return.  For at the moment we least expect, He will come.  We light our candles in imitation of the wise virgins who kept enough oil in their lamps to be ready to welcome the Bridegroom with their flames burning brightly.

            The third coming of Jesus—His desire to enter into our hearts—is something that we can grow in every day of the year, not just at this time.  But we take this special time to redouble our efforts to make straight the pathways of our God.  We take this time to level the mountains and fill in the valleys that make an obstacle for Jesus to come to us.  Just as we clean our house to welcome family and friends over for Christmas celebrations, so we should be daily striving to clean our hearts and souls to welcome the Trinity into us.  Maybe we take time each day to slowly read over the meditation from the Little Blue Book, or Magnificat, and spend the time and energy it takes to develop a deep, strong relationship with the Lord; maybe we attend sung Evening Prayer on Friday evenings at 6:30 p.m. at St. Thomas to stretch our usual forms of prayer; maybe we join a Bible study, or a faith-sharing group; maybe we celebration the Sacrament of Reconciliation on the usual days or with the greater Lansing area on December 16 at 2 p.m. at St. Thomas; whatever we do, the key is that we are trying to make more time for Jesus so that He is comfortable in our hearts, rather than a stranger.  And, we pray for those who have been away from the Lord, away from His Church, inviting them to join us again in this holy place, because Christ wants to enter their hearts as well, and He often uses His disciples to extend that invitation.

            If we treat this time no differently than any other; if we figure that we’ve been preparing for the parties, the eggnog, the gift giving, and the hype of the secular celebration of Christmas since November 1, then I can assure you that you won’t be ready when Christ comes: for the celebration of the first coming at Christmas; for the celebration of the second coming at the end of time; and for the daily desire of Christ to come into your heart.  But, if amidst the hustle and bustle of the secular season, you take time to spend with the Lord in prayer, getting to know Him better and letting the symbols touch your heart and soul, then I can also assure you that you will know the joy of the angels as they sang “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will,” as we celebrate the first coming; you will know the joy of the elect as Christ comes a second time as the eternal King of Glory, with everything subjected to His reign; and you will know the joy of the abiding presence of God as He comes into your heart and makes His home there, truly making you a temple of the Holy Spirit, and the dwelling place of God.

Leprosy?

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            Sometimes people will ask me when I start preparing my homily.  We were taught at Sacred Heart to always take a look at the readings for the following Sunday by the previous Monday, at the latest.  When looking over them I tend to look for trends or themes in the readings, and then to mull it over for a good couple of days, letting the readings bounce around in my head and seeing what the Lord wants me to say.  Sometimes I end up zeroing in the Gospel, other times it’s a combination of two of the readings, and on rare occasions, all three readings seem to have a similar theme.

            Looking over the readings this past week, the theme of the readings as I looked them over seemed to be leprosy.  It’s a major point in our first reading and Gospel passage today.  But I wondered, ‘What am going to do with that?’  This is a homily, not a medical school lecture (although it is important to note that the leprosy the Bible speaks of could be a number of skin ailments, and was most likely not limited to Hansen’s Disease).

            What struck me were the two different approaches God takes to leprosy.  In the first reading, God tells Moses and Aaron that “‘The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare, and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, “Unclean, unclean!”  […] He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.’”  In essence, God is telling Moses and Aaron, and all the priests and scribes that will follow and interpret this passage, to ostracize the leper.

            And yet, when it comes to the Gospel, Jesus not only welcomes the leper into His presence, but even touches the man.  This seems the exact opposite reaction to God’s warning in the Old Testament.  It’s not hard to see how, as a Jew at the time of Jesus, it was confusing for this apparent carpenter’s son from Nazareth to claim He was God, yet at the same time seem to go against what God had said in Sacred Scripture.  It’s also easy to see how one of the early heresies of the Church, Marcionism, asserted that the God of the Old Testament was a wrathful, angry God and was a lower deity than the God of the New Testament, proclaimed by Jesus to be loving, forgiving, and welcoming to the outcast. 

            But, Jesus is the same God, of the same substance (hence we use the term in our Creed consubstantial) as God the Father.  They are distinct Divine Persons, but the same deity.  And we cannot separate the two into different revelations, as if the Old Testament is opposed to the New Testament.  Rather, the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old Testament.  So what do we do with these two readings?

            In my meditation on these Scriptures, I found that leprosy could be interpreted allegorically to mean not so much a physical illness, but a spiritual illness.  And in general, we can refer to the illnesses of the soul as sin.  So what we’re really working with is the way God treats sin.

            God was slowly teaching His people, the Chosen People, about who He is, and how the world works.  As He taught them about leprosy, and how it distances people from the community, we can easily see how this is also true of sin.  One of the effects of sin is that it damages or ruptures our relationship with God and our relationship with each other, including even the rest of the created world.  Remember that all the world was in harmony in the Garden of Eden, but after Adam and Eve sinned, the whole created order was ruined, and even the plants stopped bearing fruit easily for our first parents, the animals, rather than being obedient and docile to them, started to either run away or to attack them, and even Adam and Eve started to desire each other not in accord with Divine Law, and so had to cover their nakedness.  Certainly, all was not totally ruined.  Adam and Eve were still carrying in them the image of God, but that image had been marred, and all creation felt the effects of the original sin.

            Jesus, as the full revelation of the Father, does not deny that sin damages or ruptures the relationship with God and with the community, but completes the message that God wanted to communicate, that He is also the one who can heal sin.  Yes, sin injures us and causes separation, but if we come to the Lord, then He heals us of our sins and restores us to a right relationship with God and with each other.  Sin does not get the last word, but grace does. 

            These two passages are not used to explain the Catholic teaching on the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but read allegorically, it can help us to understand that sacrament.  Because sin damages our relationship with God and with each other, we need someone who can represent both God and the community, and to heal what has been injured.  And so the priest, acting in the Person of Christ the Head, speaks for Jesus in the words of absolution.  And the priest, also because he is able to act in the Person of Christ the Head, who is Head of His Body, the Church, acts in the Person of the Church to welcome the sinner back to communion with each other. 

            The Good News is that God has shown us the effects of sin: damaging our relationship with God and with the community in the Book of Leviticus.  But He does not leave us to be forever separated.  In the Person of Jesus, God reveals that the separation does not have to be forever.  If we come to Jesus, through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we can be forgiven our sins and returned to a right relationship not only with God, but also with each other.  May we utilize this great sacrament of God’s love and forgiveness regularly, especially in the approaching season of Lent, and thank God that He has given us the divine remedy for the spiritual illnesses the plague us. 

In the bulletin this weekend is last week’s response from Bishop Boyea to the Health and Human Services mandate.  This past Friday, the Administration proposed a compromise that it felt would address the major issues with which not only Catholics, but also Evangelicals and members of the Jewish community and others have grave concerns.  To this proposed compromise the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops replied:

“[The compromise] continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions…The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for the HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.

We will therefore continue—with no less vigor, no less sense of urgency—our efforts to correct this problem through the other two branches of government…and we renew our call to the Catholic faithful, and to all our fellow Americans, to join together in this effort to protect religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all.”

Again, this is not a partisan issue: this is an issue of the Federal government, even in this new proposal, being allowed to force institutions and individual citizens to violate their consciences.  As Catholic Americans, regardless of which party we support, we should work hard to make sure that the government can never tell any institution or person: Catholic, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or any person of faith to do something which is contrary to that institution’s or person’s faith.

The Comfort of the Truth

Second Sunday of Advent

            “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.”  When I heard the word comfort, and try to think of what comforts me, I think of a cold, snowy evening, sitting by the fireplace, the living room lit only by a few flickering flames from candles, drinking my family recipe of hot spiced cider, and watching a favorite television show or movie.  For others it might be a hot tub, or a warm beach, or even just a pint of Häagen Dazs.  Or maybe you’ve got your own sense of what comforts you that is radically different from the examples I just listed. 

            It’s beautiful to hear the words of Isaiah the prophet, telling us that God wants to bring us comfort.  “Speak tenderly,” he says, “and proclaim to her that her service is at an end; her guilt is expiated…Go up on a high mountain…cry out at the top of your voice…Here is your God!  […] Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.”  Who doesn’t want to know that the Lord is going to speak tenderly to us, to proclaim that our service is at an end, and that our guilt is no more?  Who doesn’t want the Lord to come as a shepherd, feeding his flock, gathering us in his arms and carrying us close to his chest?

            So what do we do with the middle part of the first reading and our Gospel?  We heard twice, “A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!  Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!”  We have traditionally associated that proclamation with St. John the Baptist who, as St. Mark wrote in today’s Gospel passage, “appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  If any of you have seen the movie “Jesus of Nazareth” by Franco Zeffirelli, you can picture how enthused John the Baptist was about his message.  In the movie, John the Baptist is screaming at the top of his lungs: Repent!  And he’s only wearing a camel’s hair tunic and a leather belt around his waist, eating locusts and honey.  In fact, he screams so much that Herod has him arrested for preaching against his so-called marriage to his brother’s wife.  This is not the warm, pastoral scene that Isaiah has at the end of our first reading.  And it certainly doesn’t seem like the comfort that Isaiah prophesies at the beginning of our first reading.  So why is the figure of John the Baptist, the one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the Way of the Lord, sandwiched between those two soft images?

            What John preaches is the truth.  As St. Augustine says in one of His sermons, Jesus is the word, and John is the voice.  Jesus is what is being proclaimed, and John is the one proclaiming it.  John is preaching repentance, which is the beginning of the comfort that God wants to give.  “But change is hard!  Change isn’t comfortable!”  Change can be difficult.  We’re seeing that as we slowly get used to our new translations, saying “And with your spirit” instead of “And also with you.”  But what is most comfortable is the truth.  The truth is precisely what gives comfort.  It may not always seem like it does, but if Jesus is the Truth, as he says (I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life), then when we receive the truth, we receive Jesus, who is the shepherd, drawing us close to his bosom, and leading us with care, from lies to truth, from darkness to light, from slavery to sin to freedom in God’s commandments. 

            It is true, sometimes the truth hurts, and we don’t usually associate that hurt with comfort.  But that painful truth is like knowing the reality that our infected wound has to be drained.  It is going to be painful at first, probably very painful, but it will actually be comforting to know that the infection is being treated, and the wound will heal properly. 

            So when John is preaching repentance, turning away from sins and being faithful to God, he is bringing the comfort of God.  Because it is only when we recognize that we need to turn back to the Lord, when we recognize the truth, that we can actually start going in the right direction with the help of God, rather than wandering off by ourselves away from the kingdom God has prepared for us, where the fullness of comfort is present. 

            We all need that message that John the Baptist preaches.  We need to hear, time and time again, “Repent!  For the Kingdom of God is at hand!”  We need the truth.  Otherwise we get stuck with the mentality: my sins aren’t that bad!  It’s not like I murdered someone!  It was just a little gossip; I just cheated a little bit; it’s just a little pornography every now and then; I’ll give back the money I took at my next paycheck.  If our mentality, no matter what sins we struggle with, is, “I’m really ok; I’m not that bad,” then we will not receive the comfort that God wants to give us, the comfort of living how God has created us: for Him in love, and with Him eternally in heaven.  If we do not repent, through the sacrament of Reconciliation, then God won’t be able to say to us, “your service is at an end, your guilt is expiated,” because we will have closed ourselves off to the mercy and love that God wants to communicate to us.  Next Sunday, on 11 December, we’ll once again host a Communal Celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation with Individual Confessions, with priests from around the Eastern part of Lansing offering you the sacramental grace and peace that comes from hearing the words and knowing the reality: your sins are forgiven; go in peace.  That’s the comfort the Lord wants to give you.  That’s the tenderness that waits for our response.  How will you answer?  Where will you find comfort?