Christmas Midnight Mass

Nativitas D.N.I.C.

25 December 2018

One of mankind’s biggest challenges in relationship to God is making the time to consider God, to consider His ways, His teachings, to consider Him real, and real enough that He actually has a claim on my life.  We are busy and we focus on so many other things instead of God such that we train ourselves to give Him little focus.  This is a challenge even for self-professed religious people like you and me.  That puts us on a trajectory of having a tangential acquaintanceship with God or, at worst, keeping Him at a distance.  Whatever the case, we aren’t building a friendship with God when we don’t consider Him and work against the tendency to give Him little attention in the real time of our daily living.  If you want proof of the risk of this tendency, then look no further than the screen time report on your smart phone.  Compare the amount of screen time with your amount of prayer time.  Yes, it is a real tendency of ours to place greater focus on things that are not God.

So many other things about our life seem so much more pressing as compared to God.  That’s not a unique challenge.  It seems it was present surrounding the birth of Jesus in his time.  People were traveling, they were busy, they were figuring out what they had to do to comply with the requirements of the census called for by Caesar, and they were taking care of their real worldly and bodily needs.  And God was right there, hidden just beyond sight in Mary’s womb.  In the midst of this busyness and the focus on so many other things, the gospel tells us of this common human tendency to fail to make space for God by reporting: “There was no room for them in the inn.”  An outlying cave and a place for animals was all the room God could find.  The focus, the attention, the minds and hearts of God’s people were not focused on Him.

Recently after Mass talking to people in the narthex I was holding an infant.  The baby was calm and happy to be cradled in my arms.  I looked down at the baby and he looked up at me.  We locked eyes on one another for quite a while actually as I was standing there with his parents.  When you hold a baby don’t you also just naturally look at the baby?  You gaze at the infant and, if awake and calm, the infant gazes back at you.  As I was looking into this baby’s eyes I found myself wondering: What is he thinking? What is he seeing?  What is on his mind?  What is his mind able to perceive and process as he looks up at me?  What’s going on inside him, in his mind and heart, as he gazes at me?  He had my attention and my pondering, as I marveled at new life.

Reflecting later on about this experience the idea came to me that perhaps this is how we understand God’s method of breaking through our common tendency to be focused on other things and distant from Him.  Does this perhaps explain some of the divine logic in God’s choice and plan to enter as an Infant the creation He desired to save?  Perhaps to draw us naturally to Him?  Maybe we understand the birth of Almighty God in the smallness of human flesh as the means by which God could break through our distraction and self-centered thoughts such that in reference to God we too might wonder about Him: What is He thinking?  What does He think about me?  What is going on with Him?  What does He perceive in me?  What does He see when He looks at me?  Mary and Joseph had the very distinct privilege of holding the Infant God in their very arms.  Maybe they thought the same things I described in holding an infant.  Even though we live centuries after his birth and even though we don’t get to hold him physically in the form of an infant, we can however dwell on that common experience of the pondering that arises in us as we hold a child and find renewed focus to train ourselves to consider God and His ways.  That can be our response to the truth of faith we celebrate today, that God took human flesh and was born an infant in Bethlehem.  We can find in this day and this season renewed reason to train ourselves to act against that common tendency to keep ourselves so busy and full that in us too there is no room for them in the inn.  We can imagine what arises in us so easily while holding an infant and find in that a good lesson for needing to gaze upon and ponder God in such a way that He and His commands actually have a claim on our life.  This can be our response to the invitation that is deep in the mysterious infant eyes that Mary and Joseph gazed upon.

Our cynical world might want to accuse me of taking a human experience and simply placing it upon God as if the human explains the divine, as if the limited explains the infinite.  Fundamental error in philosophy, Father!  Don’t they teach you that in that seminary you went to?  But Sacred Scripture reveals to us authoritatively what God is like and I think we find there some reason to trust human experience as a lesson about God.  When you read throughout all the Scriptures, especially in the Old Testament, God’s lamenting of the distance and infidelity of His people you find strikingly emotional language and language that borrows from human relationships.  Listen to just a small selection of examples that I found that describe God’s lament at our distance and His desire to get our attention. 

From the Book of the Prophet Michah: “O my people, what have I done to you?  In what have I wearied you?  Answer me” (Micah 6:3)!

From the 81st Psalm: “But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would have none of me… O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways”  (Ps. 81:11, 13)!

From the Prophet Hosea: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.  The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing… and burning incense to idols.  Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms… I led them with cords of compassion, with bands of love” (Hosea 11:1-4).

The Prophet Isaiah reports God telling His people not to fear because He has redeemed them, called them by name, and loves them…  God says, “Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you” (Is. 43:4).  Isaiah goes on to report the Lord saying: “ ‘Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?’  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Is. 49:15).

How in the midst of the crush of the demands of daily living (whether around 3 BC or 2018) does God effect the fulfillment of His plan and get His people to consider Him?  To think of Him?  To ponder Him and His ways?  Today we observe that God desires to provoke a focus on Him by being an Infant who can be held.  Mary ponders Him and all the things about Him in her heart.  She becomes the model for how His incarnation calls us to ponder Him.

Psalm 131, in a verse I chose for the window of our baptistry, expresses the calm and peace of a soul attentive to God: “Like a child quieted at its mother’s breast is my soul” (v.2).  God desires us to enter relationship with Him in regular worship, rather than giving our sacrifices to idols.  He calls us to rest in Him in regular time each day for prayer, by which we turn our attention and our gaze upon Him, so as to train ourselves to combat that tendency to focus on other, lesser things.  To highlight one type of prayer, Adoration is such a good training ground to combat the tendency to not consider God.  In adoration in our chapel we kneel and spend time before the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  He’s really there, God-with-us!  We look upon Him and we train our gaze to rest in His presence.  In so doing, we live lives of deeper friendship with Him now and we are prepared to gaze upon Him in the eternity of His blessing in Heaven.  God comes in our flesh, born as a baby, that our natural tendency to look upon, to ponder, and to wonder about a baby might draw us to consider Him and His ways as having a claim on our living.  As St. Paul wrote: “The grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires.”  And so with the Gospel, “I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.  And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”  Come, let us gaze upon Him!  Come, let us ponder Him!  Come, let us adore Him!

Third Sunday of Advent

Dominica III Adventus C

16 December 2018

The change of vestment color for this weekend and the permission to decorate the sanctuary with flowers serve as a visual reminder that over half of Advent is in the past.  The color rose – rose being traditionally associated with joy – and the repeated message of the Scriptures call us to rejoice.  And so this day has been called “Gaudete Sunday” or “Rejoice Sunday.”  This weekend the Church calls us to step up our joy because we have completed more than half of this holy season and are drawing near to the celebration of the source of our joy, the birth of Christ Jesus.

The gospel selection is the continuation from last Sunday of the preaching of that famous Advent figure, St. John the Baptist.  If you back up to the start of Chapter 3 of St. Luke, from which chapter the gospel is taken, you see the world scene into which St. John was sent to preach.  St. John the Baptist is preaching his message in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, while Pontius Pilate is governor of Judea, and while Herod ruled as tetrarch of the Jews in Galilee.  Each of these figures in St. John’s world has a checkered legacy.  If you find yourself lamenting how bad things are today (and they are!), and if by that you uncritically adopt the notion that it was easier in Jesus’ time (it wasn’t!), then you need to correct that thinking.  Tiberius is associated with adultery, murder, and political executions.  Herod’s life is associated with lavishness, jealousy, and sexual excess.  And Pontius Pilate.  We know that story.  St. John’s preaching was at times a seemingly non-threatening proclamation.  Things like: “I am not the Christ” (Jn. 1:20), “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Jn. 1:23), “He who is coming after me is mightier than I” (Mt. 3:11), “I am not worthy” to untie his sandal (Jn. 1:27), “Behold the Lamb of God” (Jn. 1:36).  These are the sorts of messages that are easy to hear from a preacher.  But St. John also knew how to deliver the hard truth.  Things like: “Repent” (Mt. 3:2), “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Lk. 3:7), “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Lk. 3:9).  St. John was a tough and wild preacher.  After all he wasn’t arrested and beheaded for failing to speak the truth.

When you think of the very different personalities who listened to St. John and who heard him preach – the powerful rulers, the religious authorities, the everyday people – what accounts for the difference in those who responded to his message versus those who did not?  I think an answer is that question that three different groups ask in the gospel.  “What should we do?”  In St. John’s time, and as now, some people are going to hell and are heading there with wild velocity.  Then, like now, some people are trapped in grave sin but perhaps various circumstances or personality struggles lessen their guilt.  Then, like now, some people are basically holy but are still working out the lesser sins.  Then, like now, our lives might be marked by some or all of this.  Then, like now, some are responding to God’s grace and making their way to deeper friendship with God.  What should we do?  It’s a question from those we hear about in today’s gospel, a question that shows a serious engagement with the message of St. John.  That serious engagement makes all the difference and leads to repentance.

What should I do?  Are you willing to hear the call of God across the ages to repent and prepare for His day, culminating in His arrival in our flesh to save us?  Or are you here but sort of coasting through the drama of salvation?  It is time to listen to the call of God and to seriously engage with the need to repent and to engage with the generous offer of God’s loving mercy.  What should I do?  It’s a question we should ask ourselves.  The answer, like it was for the crowds, for the tax collectors, and the soldiers, is not too high, lofty, or impossible for us.  If you have two cloaks and enough food, give some to the person with none.  Like the tax collectors heard, stop cheating and do your work well and fairly.  Like the soldiers heard, don’t use your power to lie and to take advantage of others, but be loyal and satisfied with what you have.

When we engage seriously with the call to repent and to foster life with God we stop treating the Gospel we hear as simply a collection of faith stories from the past serving purely to remind us to be religious.  When we engage seriously with the call to repent we allow the drama of salvation to be something alive and active within us who are still being saved by God’s grace.  When we engage seriously with the call to repent we are willing to be moved out of our stagnation and to ask that uncomfortable question that betrays that I need to change.  “What should I do?”  It is the willingness to ask that question of ourselves day in and day out of our earthly journey that permits us to live the joy and rejoicing encouraged by this Gaudete Sunday because repentance, confession, and conversion lead us away from a relationship with God’s wrath and instead to a relationship with the Father who saves us by placing the irreplaceable gift of His Son in our midst.  What cause for our rejoicing!  As we heard in the first reading, “Shout for joy…. Be glad and exult…. The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a mighty savior; he will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in his love.”

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe

12 December 2018

Today we observe with great joy the miraculous event 487 years ago by which the Blessed Virgin Mary made herself known as Holy Mary of Guadalupe.  Her appearance is referred to as “mestiza,” meaning someone of mixed race.  The description of her beauty tells us of the harmony in the mix of her Spanish and Indian features.  With the beauty and the harmony of that mix in mind, I want to make a simple observation about a lesson for us on this feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Mary is the woman of faith who said “yes” to God the Father.  Her “yes” resulted in the fulfillment of God’s plan to come close to us, to “mix” with us in our very flesh.  Mary is the example to us of how to live in harmony with God such that our humanity and divine grace mix to create beauty and praise to God.  Mary appeared in a place marked by the error of false religions and the brutality of human sacrifice offered to false gods.  Thus, we can say her appearance also places in contrast the ugliness that develops when we fail to live in harmony with the beauty of God’s image, an image and likeness He made to be reflected in us.  The appearance of the mestiza beauty of the Virgin of Guadalupe reminds us that we are not made to mix with sin, which deforms our appearance and our dignity.

The Prophet Isaiah says, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings” (Is. 52:7).  My brothers and sisters, to honor the mestiza beauty of Mary who appeared in Guadalupe we must not stand here to honor her with our lips while our feet stand and remain in the filth of sin.  If our feet carry us here today, then we must complete our journey by moving our feet to deeper life with Mary’s Son, our Savior, Jesus.  We must move away from sin and refuse to mix with it.  We must move our feet to confession and to worship Jesus at least every Sunday and holy day at Mass.  We must live in harmony with God such that we may carry the Good News, the tidings of salvation, and draw others to conversion by the beauty of our harmonious mix with divine life.

Hoy observamos con gran alegría el milagroso evento de hace cuatrocientos ochenta y siete años por el cual la Santísima Virgen María se dio a conocer como Santa María de Guadalupe. Su apariencia se conoce como “mestiza,” que significa alguien de raza mixta. La descripción de su belleza nos habla de la armonía en la mezcla de sus rasgos españoles e indios. Con la belleza y la armonía de esa mezcla en mente, quiero hacer una observación simple sobre una lección para nosotros en esta fiesta de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.

María es la mujer de fe que dijo “sí” a Dios Padre. Su “sí” resultó en el cumplimiento del plan de Dios de acercarse a nosotros, de “mezclarse” con nosotros en nuestra propia carne. María es el ejemplo para nosotros de cómo vivir en armonía con Dios, de modo que nuestra humanidad y la gracia divina se combinen para crear belleza y alabanza a Dios. María apareció en un lugar marcado por el error de las religiones falsas y la brutalidad del sacrificio humano ofrecido a los dioses falsos. Por lo tanto, podemos decir que su apariencia también pone en contraste la fealdad que se desarrolla cuando no vivimos en armonía con la belleza de la imagen de Dios, una imagen y semejanza que Él hizo para reflejarse en nosotros. La aparición de la belleza mestiza de la Virgen de Guadalupe nos recuerda que no estamos hechos para mezclarnos con el pecado, lo que deforma nuestra apariencia y nuestra dignidad.

El profeta Isaías dice: “Qué hermosos son los pies de quien monta las buenas nuevas en las montañas (Is. 52:7). Mis hermanos y hermanas, para honrar la belleza mestiza de María que apareció en Guadalupe, no debemos estar aquí para honrarla con nuestros labios mientras nuestros pies permanecen en la inmundicia del pecado. Si nuestros pies nos llevan aquí hoy, entonces debemos completar nuestro viaje moviéndolos a una vida más profunda con el Hijo de María, nuestro Salvador, Jesúcristo. Debemos alejarnos del pecado y negarnos a mezclarnos con pecado. Debemos mover nuestros pies a la confesión y a adorar a Jesús al menos cada domingo y día santo en la Misa. Debemos vivir en armonía con Dios para que podamos llevar la Buena Nueva, las noticias de la salvación, y atraer a otros a la conversión por la belleza de nuestra armoniosa mezcla con la vida divina.

First Sunday of Advent

Dominica I Adventus C

2 December 2018

Our word “advent” comes from the Latin “adventus,” which is a translation from the Greek word “Parousia.”  Parousia means “arrival” or “coming.”  Our use of “advent” refers not only to the coming of Christ at his Incarnation and birth at Christmas, but it also refers to his second coming at the end of time, his coming as Judge.  In fact, it is this second coming that is most commonly associated with the word “Parousia.”  Advent is the start of a new Church liturgical year.  It is a time of year that is hectic and exciting in holiday anticipation.  It is a time of year that is tender with family gatherings, parties, rich memories, and holy songs.  Given how this time of year is spent by us, it is safe to say that perhaps the gospel selection today sounds almost strange to us, as if it doesn’t fit.  And perhaps that raises a critical question: What is truly strange?  Is it the Church’s liturgical focus and scriptural selection that is strange and doesn’t fit?  Or is it how we live that risks not fitting with Christian preparedness and vigilance for the moment when the Lord comes again?  If the gospel is almost like a disappointment or sounds strange to us then we have a good opportunity to catch our error and to make change so as to prepare for the coming, the advent, the Parousia of the Lord!

The gospel is from Jesus’ discourse on the Mount of Olives where he speaks of his second coming.  He speaks of dramatic cosmic signs that will accompany his return in glory and he alludes to a prophecy from the Book of Daniel that the Son of Man will come in the clouds.  These signs are disturbing.  People will be in dismay and perplexed.  In fact, “people will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world.”  Considering this, Jesus’ instruction is hard to swallow.  He says when you see these things “Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”  When we are assaulted by things that cause dismay, leaving us perplexed, and which may even cause one to die of fright – I don’t know about you, but my inclination is to duck for cover and to keep my head down.  Imagine a battlefield riddled with violence and bullets flying.  Ducking and putting your head down seems to be the best policy.  And a battlefield is nothing compared to the signs of the Second Coming.  But Jesus tells us to stand up.  Almost like a football coach teaching tackling method, he tells us to raise our heads, to face the cosmic signs we can’t control or understand because it means our redemption is arriving.

How are we possibly supposed to face the final advent?  Jesus tells us that our responsibility is to be prepared.  And he tells us some things NOT to do in order that we are prepared.  Jesus says, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life.”  Jesus warns us to take care that our hearts not be weighed down by things that will prevent us from being ready to stand erect and to raise our heads.   In particular, we must be on guard not to become drowsy from carousing.  Other translations of this passage use the word “dissipation.”  That’s a word commonly used of the young son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  The word in Greek translated as dissipation or carousing refers to “unbridled indulgence.”  Carousing then is unbridled indulgence in all the pleasures of the flesh: money, sex, power, the things of this world and how the world evaluates a noteworthy or successful life.  These are the things that we fall to so easily in our fallen nature, making them our focus and, in so doing, becoming weighed down with an earthly, lower focus that obscures our true dignity as God’s children and impedes our ability to be ready to stand up and to raise our heads with what me might call the “lightness,” the levity of freedom.  To respond to Jesus’ call to be vigilant for his second coming, we have to guard our hearts so that we do not let them fall in love with a disordered and unbridled attachment to lower things.

The second bit of advice from Jesus is much more immediately clear, but perhaps even more stark to us given how simple and confrontational it is.  He highlights the grave sin of drunkenness.  Deliberate inebriation is a serious sin that Jesus singles out as something to be avoided if we are to be vigilant for his return.  Why might the Lord highlight this issue?  Because deliberate inebriation or carelessness in drinking serves as a symbol of someone who has become so wrapped up in the pleasures of this world that the person has lost control of him- or herself.  Someone who is drunk does not have control of his faculties.  He or she has lost the control of the mind and the will.  We all know that drinking, especially excessive drinking or drunkenness often results in one’s guard being down, in the loss of inhibitions that might otherwise tell us to straighten up and choose moral good.  In other words, drunkenness is to deliberately enter into a state where we are lower than we are made to be, where we are less than our dignity.

The final advice for vigilance is that we must beware of the anxieties of daily life.  This harkens to the Parable of the Sower where the seed of God’s Word is planted but thorns, which Jesus says are the anxieties of life, choke it off and smother the seed of God’s Kingdom.  To be prepared for his second coming Jesus tells us we must avoid letting our hearts be weighed down and consumed by anxiety.  We might ask ourselves if we lose sight and hope in the seed of God’s Kingdom planted in us?  Do I focus on the anxieties and the problems of life to such a degree that I actually give little attention to – or even forget – God’s Kingdom?  It is the kingdom that is like yeast in a batch of dough or like a mustard seed that starts as the smallest thing but then has impact well beyond the worldly measure of its size.  Do I forget that?  In the face of my worries and preoccupations do I let myself remember this truth and this promise of Jesus?  Or am I weighed down?  This advice might be the most interesting of the three.  Why?  Because here Jesus isn’t talking about avoiding a specific sin, like the other two (indulgence and drunkenness).  Here he expresses the danger of being too worldly focused, putting too much stock in this life and our estimations of our progress such that we lose an other-worldly focus, a focus on his kingdom.

So, how do we avoid these things?  How should we prepare this advent for Christmas and for the final advent at the Second Coming, such that that day not catch us by surprise like a trap?  Jesus says, “Be vigilant at all times and pray.”  This refers to the spiritual advice of staying awake and praying, especially in the night time hours.  This spiritual discipline of vigilance is perhaps less considered than something more familiar like fasting, but it is just as much part of the Jewish and Christian traditions.  Monks get up while it is still dark, late at night or very early in the morning, to pray.  That time of prayer – not surprisingly – is called “vigils.”  This call to be vigilant, to stay awake and to pray, helps us understand and appreciate key Catholic practices.  Ever wonder why we have a Midnight Mass at Christmas?  The older I get, I sure do!  To keep vigil, to stay awake and to pray ourselves into the dawning of light on Christmas Day.  We keep vigil on Holy Thursday night after the Mass, praying before the gift of the Lord’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament.  We do that all night until midnight.  We have an Easter Vigil that is always held in the darkness of Holy Saturday night so that we keep vigil as preparation for the arrival of Easter Sunday.  Maybe hearing about these practices today gives us some added push to make the effort to attend these Masses in the coming year.  The spiritual practice of vigilance can also be grown in the devotion of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.  When we come to an adoration chapel anywhere in the Catholic world we are coming to be vigilant, to stay awake and to pray before and with the Lord.  Perhaps the message of Jesus on this First Sunday of Advent might drive you to take up this practice, to commit to adoration, and to let the Lord prepare you for his return.  The Lord tells us to be vigilant, to stay awake, and to pray that we may have strength to escape what comes and to stand before him.  Physical strength will do us no good at the Second Coming.  We need spiritual strength.  Train yourself in that spiritual discipline that we perhaps unwisely leave only to the most dedicated monks.  Stay awake and pray.  Avoid the drunkenness and the carousing so often associated with secular “night life” and “the weekend.”  Stay awake and pray with the Lord in adoration so that you remind yourself of his Kingdom already present here and now, whose fullness we await in the next life.  Train yourself in prayer and adoration to desire that Kingdom more than daily anxieties.  And as you pray before the Lord now let him help you identify the sins that need confession.  Let him raise your head and cause you to stand secure in his love such that when that day with disturbing signs comes, you may see it not as a day of fear but as the arrival, the advent, of the gift of God’s love and desire for you: “Your redemption is at hand!”