Being the Best Man

Third Sunday of Advent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Today we are reintroduced to the person of St. John the Baptist.  We often do with the Precursor what we tend to do with other saintly personalities that startle us: we try to domesticate them.  We quickly skim over the more radical parts of their personalities and messages, and we go to the parts with which we are more comfortable and familiar.  With John, we may soften his facial features, and have him gently pointing out the Lamb of God along the Jordan River. 
    But a person who ate locusts and wild honey probably didn’t have the best complexion.  And I can’t imagine camel-hair clothing being all that fashionable, even back them.  John says that he fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah, to make straight the way for the Lord.  But as he does so, he calls out the Pharisees and scribes, and calls them a brood of vipers.  He prophesies to the religious leaders that any tree that does not bear fruit will be chopped down at its roots, and that God will burn the chaff, the useless bits of the harvest, “with unquenchable fire.”  John was not a wilting lily, but, in his own way, an extremist, who wasn’t afraid to call out those who needed to repent.
    But a later passage from the Gospel according to John, from whose Gospel we heard today, has St. John the Baptist also saying, “‘The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man, who stands and listens to him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice.  So this joy of mine has been made complete.  He must increase; I must decrease.’”  And since the liturgy wants us to rejoice on this Gaudete Sunday, this Sunday that our introit and epistle both center on rejoicing, it’s also important to meditate on the joy of hearing the voice of the bridegroom.
    When it comes to the image the Forerunner uses, that of a wedding party, we should make sure we have each character rightly understood.  The Bridegroom is Christ.  The bride is the Church.  This image can be difficult for guys, as we don’t think of ourselves as brides.  A bride is an altogether feminine image, and we men don’t readily attribute to ourselves femininity, which is proper to women.  But, it’s the flip side of the coin that we are all united and participate in the Son of God through baptism, which is a more difficult image for women, who probably don’t think of themselves in the masculine reality of being a son.  Still, as members of the Church, we are Christ’s bride, the one for whom He gives His life, His top priority and greatest love. 
    Because of the Incarnation, the Divine Bridegroom has connected us to Himself.  By His Passion He paid the price to free us from the dominion of sin and death, and liberate us into the free and elevating spousal union.  And this is certainly a reason to rejoice.  Of course, this Sunday we rejoice because we are more than halfway to the celebration to Christmas (in fact, this year, we only have 8 more days until Christmas).  But we rejoice because we will soon rejoice even more in the celebration of the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies where God promised to send us a redeemer.  And living in this post-Incarnation time, we rejoice that we are the bride of Christ, united to Him through Holy Baptism so that we can reign with Him forever if we stay united to Him throughout our life.
    But, in another image that may be more difficult for women, we are also the best man.  Yes, that term specifically refers to St. John the Baptist, but it can also refer to us, because we also are supposed to stand at attention for His return, and listen for His voice.  And when we hear that voice, it causes joy because our role as best man is to help the groom prepare for his wedding feast where he takes a bride for himself.  God calls us, as He called St. John the Baptist, to be ready and listen for how God reveals Himself, so that we can point Him out when we notice Him. 
    This is part of how we live as those who evangelize.  We should constantly keep our ears and eyes attuned to the working of God, not only in our own life and in the life of our family, but also in the lives of those whom we daily encounter.  We should be ready to point out to people how we see God working in their lives.  Do we have the courage to help others see how God works in their lives?  Can we recognize how God works? 
    In that way, we are all supposed to be like Precursor of the Lord.  Whether it is helping others through turmoil and difficulty because of their lack of the Lord, or when we experience what many call a “God-moment” where we sense that God has just done something, part of our mission as disciples is to point out God working in other lives so that it leads to deeper faith.  So often we can go through life just presuming that everything is a result of our actions and choices.  It can be so easy to live like a deist, who believes that God exists but that He doesn’t really interact with our world, He just lets us do our own thing while He watches from afar.  But we are not deists.  We are Incarnationalists.  We believe that God took flesh because He wanted to, ever more closely, interact with us and draw us to Himself.  And while Christ our Incarnate Lord did ascend into the heavens, He promised not to leave us orphans, but to send the Holy Spirit to continue His work and to lead us into all truth.  And that Holy Spirit is alive and powerful and can work great things through us, if we let Him.  And when we see that work of the Holy Spirit, we can be like Buddy the Elf, who, upon learning that Santa is coming to the mall says, “I know him!” 

    We should not domesticate St. John the Baptist because it domesticates our vocation to point out the Lamb of God in our daily lives.  And the domestication of that vocation means that we don’t bother to point out the Lamb because we are afraid, or we don’t think others want to know Him, or maybe even that we want to keep the Lamb to ourselves.  But if we wish to rejoice, and if we wish others to rejoice, then we must stand attentive to the voice of the Bridegroom, prepare the way of the Lord, and point Him out when He comes: Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen.

Maybe I Got it Wrong?

 Second Sunday of Advent

St. John the Baptist

     

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  It is generally a bad idea to try to get into the head of a saint and analyze his intentions, unless one is a saint oneself.  The saints operate with the will of God at the first and foremost of their minds, and for those who don’t operate that way, what they do can seem crazy or other worldly.  
    Having said that, and with the very real knowledge that I am not a saint, I was wondering what St. John the Baptist was thinking in the Gospel passage we heard today.  You have John, the cousin of our Lord, who pointed Him out as the Lamb of God, and who saw the dove descend upon Him at His Baptism, as the voice of the Father was heard, “This is my beloved Son.”  John says that he has found the bridegroom, and so rejoices.  It seems like John knows exactly who our Lord is.
    And yet, today’s Gospel, some time after the baptism having passed, it seems like John starts to question what had happened earlier.  “‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?’” John says.  And, at least from an earthly point of view, John’s confusion seems very rational.  After all, John is in prison, and little does he know, he’s about to lose his head.  This is probably not what John had in mind when he thought of the Messiah coming.  
    What did John think would happen?  Biblical scholars say that there were four expectations that Jews had about the Messiah: he would gather the tribes of Israel; he would cleanse the temple; he would destroy Israel’s enemies; and he would reign as king of the Gentiles.  So far, none of that seems to have happened from what John knows.  So John questions (we can say that because the evangelist says it) if maybe Jesus was a special person, but not the Messiah.  
    Of course, we know that our Lord is the Messiah.  We hear in the Gospels how Jesus not only cleanses the temple, but raises up a new temple, His Sacred Body, in the Resurrection.  In His Death, He destroys sin and death, the great enemy of God’s people, forever.  He gathers the Twelve as the new patriarchs of the tribes of the new Israel, the Church; and, as St. Paul talks about in our epistle, the Gentiles are gathered together under the reign of Christ the King.  
    But I’m willing to bet that we have had times where we can sympathize with John the Baptist.  We have recognized Christ as the Lord; we have felt His presence in our life; perhaps we have even seen miracles that He has worked for us or for friends and family.  But then something goes wrong; and then another something; and then life doesn’t happen exactly the way that we expect it to go.  And all the sudden, those experiences we have with the Lord get questioned, perhaps even doubted, and we’re wondering if we bet on the wrong horse.  
    To these questions, we can look to our Lord for the answer.  How does our Lord respond to John’s disciples?  Look to what He has done.  The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the poor have the Good News proclaimed to them.  God gives us clues that He is who He says He is, and it’s in what He accomplishes day by day.  We have only to be attentive to what is happening.
    God is not detached from our life.  It is very easy to fall into the deist view of God, that God is like a grand watch-maker, who put everything together and wound everything up, but then just lets it all go.  But God still interacts in the life of His People.  He does not simply watch from afar, but changes individuals lives.  In the house explosion that happened just six houses down from St. Pius X on the Monday before Thanksgiving, there is a story about a woman and her boyfriend who lived next-door to the house that exploded.  The boyfriend wanted to go out and do something fun, but the woman didn’t want to go out.  After her boyfriend kept asking her, she relented and they went out and about, only to find out minutes later, that the house next to theirs had exploded, and their home was destroyed.  The woman noted in her recounting that she just had this little voice telling her to go out, so she did.  And it changed her life.
    Sometimes we get so busy that we fail to hear that voice, or we hear it and act on it, but then forget that our conscience is the voice of God in our hearts.  We fail to recognize the works of God that are happening everyday.  Sometimes they get mentioned on the news, like with the woman who left her home shortly before it burned up, but more often than not they are not famous stories or publicized, but are in the daily moments of our life.  Advent is a perfect time for quiet reflection on those ways that God intervenes in our life in ways that can only be seen and heard for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
    During this Advent season, we should be making time for God in silence.  It could be in our Monday times of Adoration, or simply in a prayer corner in your home.  But wherever it is, we need silence, even just a couple of minutes, to be able to hear the voice of God and see how He operates in our life.  That may seem especially difficult with kids, but even kids need to nap, and that can be a perfect time to catch some quick time with God.  God knows you’re busy; He knows that you have family and work responsibilities.  But He asks for even just a few moments so that He can share His love with you, and help you to see what He is doing in your life.
    We all can have moments where we wonder what God is doing.  We don’t understand why something is happening in our life.  Do we pay attention to what God has done for us in the past, and what He promises for us in our future, beyond the present struggles?  Do we still trust in what has been revealed by God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

Son of God, Madman, or Something Worse

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            Sometimes we can come across Scriptural passages that are difficult to understand.  I think today is one of those passages.  This account of Jesus doesn’t seem to jive with the mental picture most of us have of Jesus.  This is why, when we read the Scriptures, we should always have some sort of guide with us, whether it’s a book, a website, or a person.

            Because it looks today like Jesus is being mean at best, and at worst, racist!  Why won’t Jesus heal the woman’s daughter who is tormented by a demon?  Is it just because she is Canaanite?  Didn’t Jesus come to free captives, especially those who were entrapped by the Devil?  Our first reading from the Book of Isaiah seems to say that anyone who tries to follow God will be welcomed, and the sacrifices they make will be acceptable to him. 

One way to approach this passage is to take the Thomas Jefferson approach.  He was a Deist, that is, he believed in God, but not a personal God.  He believed God just set the world in motion and is now letting it run its course, without any personal involvement.  So, when he came to any miracles (a very personal involvement by God to suspend the laws of nature), he just eliminated them from the Bible.  It made his life much easier.  But, such a view, of course, treats the Scriptures as just another old piece of literature, and not as Divinely Inspired.  Treating the Scriptures as if we can pick and choose which parts we like makes us the masters of God’s revelation, rather than the recipients.

So, if we’re going to be recipients of what God is telling us, how do we deal with this passage?  How do we deal with, “‘It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs’”?  Well, let’s start by actually looking at the whole passage.  Yes, the woman is a Canaanite.  This means she is a pagan.  She does not believe in the true God, but worships many false gods.  She is not part of the Chosen People, Israel.  She also truly has a daughter who is possessed by a demon.  This is not very surprising, because when we deal with false gods, we’re often times dealing with demons.  That’s still true today.  When we mess around with astrology, tarot cards, Ouija boards, and false gods, we’re opening ourselves up to demonic activity.

But look at what Jesus says.  He doesn’t actually say no.  When the disciples want Jesus to send her away, He replies that he was sent “‘only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’”  She continues to plead for help.  The Lord has what sounds like a very cutting line, “‘It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.’”  Things sound pretty bad.  But then the woman pleads still more, “‘Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.’”  And then Jesus seems to do a 180: “‘O woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.’”  Jesus wasn’t trying to put her down, or deny her daughter freedom from the Evil One.  Instead, He was searching out her faith.  He was trying to see if she was just coming to Him because he had done some pretty amazing things, like any other wonder worker, or if she truly had faith that He was Lord.

Of course, we should ask ourselves: who do I believe Jesus is?  Spoiler alert: Jesus will ask his disciples the same question next Sunday.  But we should start soul searching now.  Do we have faith in Jesus?  Or is Jesus just another wonder worker in our life?  Is He one of many gurus?  Who do we go to more for guidance in our life decisions: Jesus, our horoscope, our yoga instructor, or any other false gods we set up in our life? 

It’s probably not news when I tell you that, in the United States, only 25-30% of baptized Catholics attend Mass on a regular basis.  I know you’ve experienced that in our own parish.  I’m personally happy so many of you are here today.  I’m not happy because it means that we’ll make our budget for our weekly collection (though I hope that happens and it does make my life easier).  I’m not happy because our numbers may be getting better than the national average.  I’m happy that you’re here today because it means you have an opportunity to encounter Jesus in the Word of God and in His Body and Blood, and that encounter will help strengthen your faith.  Why do Catholics feel attending Mass each Sunday is optional?  There are a lot of reasons: an unpopular priest; music not to their taste; boring homilies.  But at the heart of them stands the reason that Jesus is just one among many.  The conviction that Jesus is Lord is absent from their lives.  Jesus is more like Santa Claus: if we’ve been good, He gives us what we want.  If not, we go to Hell.  We want good things, so we come to Mass, to extort the blessings of God in a religious quid pro quo.  But if Jesus is not Lord, then it is a waste of time to come to Mass.  Only if Jesus is God–the way we figure out how to live–does coming back each Sunday make sense.

C.S. Lewis puts it this way in his book, Mere Christianity:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic–on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

Maybe, right now, you’re thinking that Jesus is just one great moral teacher, like Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, or Gandhi.  Right now, Jesus is searching out your faith.  And the good news is that Jesus wants to help you have faith that He is Lord.  By coming here, you at least have the chance to affirm that Jesus is Lord, and you want to form your life around Him.  By coming here today you can make your own the prayer of the father who came to Jesus: “‘I do believe; help my unbelief!’”  And if you have faith, not just because you’ve been a good boy or girl, Jesus wants to heal you, to strengthen you, to bless you, and to stand with you, even in life’s difficulties.  Let us proclaim, with our hearts and our lips and our lives, that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.