Running on Empty

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

While all generalities fall short in describing the reality of the world, we can say with decent accuracy, that there are two types of people in this world: those who fill up for gas when they’re around half a tank, and those who try to get that needle as close to E as possible before getting gas.  Being the cautious guy that I am, I usually try to fill up my Malibu when I have about half of a tank left.  But, when it comes to our life in Christ, we should mimic those who, more often than not, are running on empty.

There are so many messages that God wants to communicate to us as we enter Holy Week this year.  There are so many themes that I could preach on as we begin our pilgrimage from the triumphant entry, into which we entered at the beginning of Mass, to the Last Supper, which we enter into on Holy Thursday evening, to Calvary, in which we participate on Good Friday at the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, to the empty tomb, proclaimed to the world at Easter.  But today, I want us to examine how God emptied Himself.

St. Paul uses that exact phrase, “emptied himself,” in our second reading today.  In this beautiful hymn which focuses on the divine kenosis, which is a Greek word which means “emptying,” St. Paul reminds us that, “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,…[and] humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Jesus, the full revelation of the God the Father, runs on empty as He saves the world.  He leaves nothing in the tank, but abandons Himself fully to the will of God.  And in this emptying, in this kenosis, God the Father exalts Jesus and glorifies Him.  

If we were to read the chapters of the Gospels that cover the time of the triumphant entry into Jerusalem through the crucifixion, we would not find Jesus holding anything back.  He accepts the praise of the people, who acclaim Him as the Messiah; He cleanses the temple; he fights back every verbal tussle with the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees; He washes His apostles’ feet as He calls them to serve; He gives His very Body and Blood for His Apostles at the Last Supper; He gives so much of His strength that He begins to sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane; He takes the mockery and cruelty of the trials before the chief priest and Pontius Pilate; He gives His last breath on the cross, and even the blood and water that filled His sacred Body are shed for our salvation.  And this is why God exalts Jesus: because He holds nothing back for the good of His people.  And this is why God will exalt us: if we hold nothing back from God.

This is one of the many paradoxes of Christianity.  It is only by giving ourselves away that we can gain what is most lasting.  It is only by emptying ourselves that we can truly be full.  Vatican II, in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, entitled Gaudium et spes, says it this way: “…man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”

In this life we can be scared of losing; we can be afraid of having nothing left, of running out of gas.  When we do it for God, however, we do not lose anything, but gain everything.  This week I invite you to participate in Jesus’ kenosis, His emptying.  After a long, hard day of work on Thursday, give God even the fatigue by participating in the Mass of the Last Supper; empty yourself, maybe even of some of your paid time off, by participating in the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion; empty yourself even of the time that you would normally sleep and participate in the new life of the Resurrection, the new life that will be given to the newly baptized at the Easter Vigil.  The Sacred Three Days, the Sacred Triduum, is our participation in Jesus’ kenosis, so that we can understand and live in our lives the paradoxical truth of Christianity that we learn from Christ: it is only by emptying ourselves that we can truly be full; it is only by giving ourselves away to God that we can find who we are truly meant to be.

Planning for Christmas

Second Sunday of Advent

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

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

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

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

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