Humility and Poverty

Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity

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

The Shepherds

Nativity of the Lord: Mass at Night
    Merry Christmas!  As we assemble tonight to celebrate the birth of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, we do so at the same, or at least a similar time, as the shepherds just outside of Bethlehem.  Luke records that the shepherds were “keeping the night watch over their flock.”  And yet, in the midst of the darkness, “the glory of the Lord shone around them” as they witnessed angels and heard one of the first proclamations of the beginning of the Gospel, that, “‘today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.’”

Painting of the shepherds from Shepherds' Field in Bethlehem

    I started a tradition when I became a priest to add, each year of my priesthood, to a Fontanini nativity set.  In the first year I had to buy the basics, and besides Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, and the angel, the only other figure who was included was a shepherd and two sheep.  There’s something about the shepherds that belongs at the heart of the nativity, just slightly behind the necessary figures of the Holy Family themselves.
    Perhaps part of their importance connects to how many times in the Old Testament God refers to shepherds.  Psalm 80 states, “O Shepherd of Israel, lend an ear, you who guide Joseph like a flock!  Seated upon the cherubim, shine forth.”  Probably one of the currently most popular psalms, 23, states, “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack.”  God appoints Joshua, son of Nun, “that the Lord’s community may not be like sheep without a shepherd.”  God likewise calls David as the king to shepherd God’s people by ruling over them. 
    God also condemns bad shepherds.  In Jeremiah he states, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the flock of my pasture…I myself will gather the remnant from my flock…and bring them back to their folds.”  Through Ezekiel God says:
 

Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!  […] I myself will search for my sheep and…I will bring them back to their own country and pasture them….In good pastures I will pasture them….I myself will pasture my sheep; I myself will give them rest…The lost I will search out, the strays I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, and the sick I will heal.

Shepherds hold an important place in the Old Testament, both as an image of God who cares for His people, and as a warning for those who have authority but do not exercise it well.
    Many have also noted that shepherds were poor.  They did not, beyond their flock, have much to their names.  They recognized their dependance on God, and relied on Him to provide for their livelihood.  And so it is the poor, those who not only lack material goods, but also who recognize their need for God, who first hear the message of the Gospel, and are drawn to worship the newborn king, “‘wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’”
    Tonight the Lord invites us to come before Him like the shepherds, no matter what our adjusted gross income.  We come in our poverty of spirit, our recognition that we need God, and bow before the Shepherd of Israel, the one who leads us to good pastures, who rules over us, who seeks us out when we are lost, and places us upon His shoulders when we are injured.  As Psalm 100 states, “we are his people, the flock he shepherds.” 

Door of Humility

    Poverty in spirit is an exercise in humility.  At the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, there is a door, which was added in the sixteenth century, that was built purposefully with small dimensions.  Practically, it kept people from bringing horses and cattle in the church.  But that was quickly theologized and the door was called the “Door of Humility,” because each person, no matter how rich or how poor, how powerful or how insignificant, had to bow down to be able to enter.  As we come before the Lord, we bow down in the presence of our God and King.  While not required, kneeling when we receive Holy Communion, is a beautiful expression of our humility and poverty in spirit as we receive the same Jesus who was born in Bethlehem in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.  And during the Creed, we usually make a profound bow from the waist when we mention the Incarnation, but tonight, the day we came to know it happened, we genuflect, lowering our very bodies in each case which is meant to remind us to humble our souls as well. 
    Lastly, while not part of tonight’s Gospel passage or pericope, verse seventeen of this same chapter states, “When [the shepherds] saw [the infant lying in the manger], they made known the message that had been told them about this child.  All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds.”  This great celebration is not something that the shepherds could keep to themselves, nor should we be able to keep this great celebration to ourselves.  When we appreciate God as our shepherd; when we recognize the great humility that God first showed us by taking on our human flesh, with all its limitations and weakness, we should share that news with others.  So many celebrate Christmas, but they have forgotten what it means, beyond presents and big meals with family and friends.  Christmas, at its heart, is about the Lord, our Shepherd, seeking us out, and taking us upon His shoulders so that He can carry us to the verdant pastures of repose in heaven.  God did not have to do this.  God would not have lost anything in Himself if He had let us pay the price for our disobedience in Adam.  But so much did He love us, that He got rid of the bad shepherds who only cared for themselves, and shepherded us rightly, taking us to Himself in love and truth. 

    Tonight, may the lights of this great temple shine like the angels in the heavens.  May our celestial hymn of “Glory to God in the highest,” not only ring out in the ceilings of this church, but re-echo outside and in the witness of our lives, so that others may also come to adore our newborn King, and find the life that God desires for all His sheep.  

How to be a Holy Family

Feast of the Holy Family

            A few weeks ago I had the great pleasure to visit Lansing Catholic High School and talk with the sophomores in Theology class.  Part of the class was spent talking about how I had discerned that the Lord was calling me to be a priest.  The other part of the class was answering prepared questions that they had penned anonymously.  One of the many great questions they asked was why marriage and family isn’t talked about more.  And so, here we are, at the feast of the Holy Family, the day after Christmas, when we get to focus on family life, including marriage.

            Having a holy family, based upon the example of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, is often thought of as impossible.  After all, Jesus is fully God and fully man, Mary was conceived without original sin, and Joseph kept getting these dreams from God to tell him what to do to care for the Blessed Mother and the Christ Child. 

Statues of the Holy Family in Flight to Egypt,
in Bethlehem, the West Bank

            But what made the Holy Family holy?  It was that, in every circumstance, they were obedient to the will of the Lord.  They were always ready to say “yes” to God, even if it meant leaving home and family to go to Egypt, so that Jesus would be protected from King Herod’s murderous decree.

            The life the Holy Family led was not easy!  Following the will of God included challenges, real and monumental challenges. But still, despite the trials and tribulations, they were resolute in saying “yes” to God.

            Things have not gotten any easier for families in the two millennia since Christ walked the earth.  Too many mothers feel forced to kill their unborn child because there is no support from the father of the child or from the mother’s family; marriage as it was created by God, between a man and a woman for life, seems to be under constant attack from the secular culture in the name of a false view of compassion and diversity; too many children do not have enough to eat or drink because of underemployment and unemployment; families, especially in our own State, have had to leave their homes and families in search or a stable job in other States.

            How hard it is to say “yes” to God these days! To choose life in a culture of death; to take seriously the call of every husband and wife, not just to be open to life and have children, but to raise them and form them in the faith, starting with the life of faith lived out at home, but also including trying to make sure that children receive the best education and religious formation possible; to stand up for the indissolubility of the marital bond between a man and a woman.  While many of the challenges are different now then they were in first-century Palestine, striving for holiness as a family, striving to say “yes” to the will of God in all circumstances, is no easier.

            In the midst of these trials, and many others that I have not named, the Church stands behind you!  While we need priests to bring the sacramental life to the People of God, most especially the Eucharist, we also need families to fill the culture with the Gospel; to preach Christ crucified and raised from the dead; to pass on the faith to their children.  From these holy families will come holy priests, and more holy families to continue to prepare the way of the Lord and make straight His paths.

            How does the Church stand behind you?  First and foremost through the Sacraments which give you the grace to be holy families.  It is impossible to be a holy family without the grace, the inner life, the love, of God in you.  And so we stand ready to impart that grace to you through the Sacraments.  We also stand with you to help you through the tough times, whether they are financial or emotional.  Through the work of so many great services that the Church offers, we can help you to choose life, even if no one else wants to support you in that choice; to find a way to provide for your children; to talk problems out and find counseling for the times when families are struggling to simply be civil in dialogue; to give your children the full benefit of a quality academic and religious formation, especially in our Catholic schools, so that they can become, not only good citizens of the City of Man, to quote St. Augustine, but more importantly good citizens of the City of God. 

            I could spend hours talking about all the ways that we as a parish community help each other out to be holy families.  Our St. Vincent de Paul Society works tirelessly, not only to provide clothes, but also to help with utility payments, and other basic necessities, especially after one or two members of the household have lost their jobs and are coming up a little short to keep a roof over their heads. 

            Our students do great work with Alternative Spring Break, and so many members of the permanent community here help them in many ways, to provide basic necessities for the underprivileged members of our nation and in other countries.

            Our Right to Life committee works hard to make sure that new mothers and fathers know that there are people who will support them in bringing their child to term and providing for the needs of the family during pregnancies.

            Our school children provided a vast amount of presents to families that otherwise would have gone without this year, spreading their own blessings out to those who are struggling.  And our pastor, teachers, and family members of the school are very generous in ensuring that, if a child of our parish wants to attend our great school, and receive the quality education and formation which it provides, money will not be the issue that prevents that desire from becoming a reality.

            The Holy Family had challenges in living a holy life, and families today have challenges in living a holy life.  But the basic ingredient in the Holy Family’s life, and in any family’s life that wants to be holy, is saying “yes” to God: in the big things and in the small, seemingly insignificant things.  But remember, you are never alone.  We as a Church: the saints in heaven like Mary and Joseph, and those still struggling here on earth to make it heaven, are behind you 100% so that you can say “yes” to God.