Vigil and Midnight Mass

Nativitas D.N.I.C.

Vigil &Midnight Mass

 24-25 December 2019

 [Announce genuflection at Creed]

 When a woman is blessed to find out that she is pregnant one of the first things she and her husband learn is the expected due date for the child.  Much focus and planning goes into this due date so that the couple can be prepared for all the things they can expect with the arrival of a child.  The couple will announce a child is on the way.  They will prepare a room in their house and furnish it with things the baby will need.  They will have a shower and begin to collect clothing and items for the baby’s well-being.  They will pick a name.  There are so many things that can be expected and predicted surrounding the arrival of a child.

 However, any parent would tell you that those things you can expect about the arrival of a baby basically carry you as far as the birth date, and no further, because after the baby arrives … you have no idea what might happen next!  A whole series of things you can’t predict or expect await you once the child sees the light of day.  The child’s appearance, the sleeping habits, the early signs of its unique personality traits, its disposition, its likes and dislikes… these things you cannot expect or predict.  And beyond infancy, the child has an entire life still to be lived and you have no idea where it might go and what it might bring: the good and the bad, the joys and the sorrows, the triumphs and the defeats.  With the arrival of a child, you can plan for what you can expect but there is so much, much more that you cannot expect.

In the holy season of expectation that is Advent we have heard of and considered in prayer and worship the mysterious prophecies of the promised Messiah, the anointed one, called Christ.  But biblical prophecy also spoke of the coming of God Himself.  The first reading [of the Mass at Night] is an example of a prophecy about the Messiah that begins to take on more than expected.  Listening to the promise of the child born from David’s throne one gets the distinct sense that something more is going on than the promises associated with the Messiah who would be a king-priest.  One begins to hear something more, something divine.  The Prophet Isaiah said that this child to be born would be called “God-Hero and Father-Forever.”  There is something more going on in this prophecy.  This is important to note in order to catch something in the Christmas Gospel in the message of the angel to the shepherds.  The angel tells the shepherds that the one who is born is a savior who is “Christ and Lord.”  ‘Christ’ is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew word ‘Messiah.’  It means the Anointed One.  The word used over and over in the Scriptures to refer to God is what we have in English as ‘Lord.’  Notice the angel’s message to the shepherds.  The angel indicates the birth of Jesus fulfills both prophecies in one because the angel says that the savior born is both Christ AND Lord!  Our unique Christian contribution is that Jesus fulfills the prophecies of the Messiah, the Christ, and that he fulfills the promises that God Himself would come into this world and to His people.  I suggest that the angel’s message is a signal to the shepherds and to all of us to whom Jesus came to save that tells us that Jesus fulfills our hopes and expectations, but also that he does still more… he fulfills more than we dare to hope!  Like the birth of a child, we can predict and expect many things; yet, there is still so much more beyond our expectations.  The message that a savior has been born in the city of David points to the expected Messiah.  Yet, the comment that he is Christ and Lord points to so much more.  Jesus arrives in fulfillment of so many messianic expectations; yet, he is still more.  He is Lord.  He is God.  The arrival of God is so much more than one dared to hope in the stillness of a Bethlehem night.  God’s glory shone round the angel as he made the announcement to the shepherds.  Their natural reaction to God’s breaking into their time was fear.  Yet the angel reminds them to not be afraid and speaks to them of peace.

 The birth of Jesus fulfills certain expectations.  Perhaps that is why we come on a day like this.  We expect this day and come to celebrate a special birthday.  But a birth brings so much more than can be expected, so much more that carries you beyond the due date itself.  Maybe that is the part that should keep us coming back here well after today to draw near to Jesus who first came near to us in history at his birth and who comes near to us at each Holy Mass.  The shepherds learned that the arrival of Jesus was more than they might have expected or even dared to hope in the midst of their night watch.  Might that be our focal point for a spiritual lesson this Christmas?  What do we dare not to even hope for from God?  God wants to fulfill the promises that his Kingdom will be firm and last forever and that His anointed one will lead His people in right relationship with God.  But He also wants entrance into what we dare not hope, where we still live in darkness and gloom and where unrest, burdens, and lack of peace still rule our hearts and minds.

 Discover and name the parts of your life – your family, your job, your struggles and sins, your joys and sorrows – those places where you dare not expect or hope that God can be present to do the unexpected for you.  Be not afraid to let the glory of God do the unexpected.  To permit Jesus entrance into all the expected and unexpected areas of our lives is what can keep, to borrow words of the second reading, the grace of God appearing in us well beyond Christmas Day.  I proclaim to you good news of great joy; a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord!

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Dominica IV Adventus A

22 December 2019

 This holy season of Advent calls us to silent and patient waiting for the celebration of the birth of Jesus; it likewise calls us to expectation for his return in glory at the Second Coming.  The arrival of God in our flesh at Christmas and His promised return in our flesh at the end of time are truths of our faith that need our meditation.  The Collect, the first prayer of the Holy Mass today, is the very same prayer that concludes a devotion called the Angelus.  The Angelus prayer fosters our faith in the Incarnation.  I want to highlight it today in order to promote its practice as part of our Catholic culture.  The Angelus is a simple verse and response prayer, together with praying the Hail Mary three times, that highlights those moments of the Archangel Gabriel’s message to Mary, her yes to God’s plan, and the conception of Jesus in her womb.  The Angelus is traditionally prayed three times each day, at 6:00 am, 12 noon, and at 6:00 pm.  Church bells traditionally have a special ring at these three times to mark the praying of the Angelus.  Since our bell tower is in the city near neighbors we try to be a bit considerate and so our bell tower here rings at 8:00 am, 12 noon, and 6:00 pm.  If you have ever noticed and wondered why the ringing at those three times clearly stands out as different, that is the answer.  It is a call to us to pray the Angelus.  Any good Catholic prayer book would have the Angelus and I am sure you can find it online.  I encourage you to learn it and to pray it.

  Why is it important to foster devotion to the mystery of God’s incarnation?  To answer that, and in the briefest of summaries, I want to suggest three key elements in God’s plan for the salvation of the human race, creatures He has made as both body and soul.  Those key elements are (1) man and woman; (2) union; and, (3) flesh.  They are critical aspects of the plan for salvation and they are intricately related to one another.

  First, man and woman.  In the act of creation, the Book of Genesis speaks to us the truth that God made human persons in two broad categories.  He made them distinct yet complementary.  “Male and female he created them,” the Book of Genesis says (Gen. 1:27).  He made them for one another.  That is clear from the very design of the bodies of male and female and clear by the design of the dignity of sexual love that God made to be good as a participation in His own creative power.  The creation of male and female, and that God the Father employs it as well in salvation history by having the Savior enter the world as a man who learns from a father and a mother, tells us something of the truth and the irreplaceable value of the two sexes of mankind and their related gender identities.

 Secondly, union.  The story of salvation history shows a personal God who is madly in love with His creation and who, having made mankind in His image and likeness, destines us and desires us to have relationship and communion with Him.  He promises that time and again and the call to union is in the mouth of the prophets all through the Scriptures.  Being made in His image and likeness, then, we reflect and echo this relational capacity.  We are made for relationship and union.  We are made for union with God.  We are also made for relationship with one another.  We experience the importance of union in that we are not made to be alone (cf. Gen. 2:18).  We experience union in varying degrees on the large scale of human society and down to the smaller scale of intimacy.  In this category of union as part of the plan of salvation, I want to highlight only one very particular and specific type of union that is clearly used by God in His plan to undo the disorder ushered in by Original Sin.  This very specific union is the nuptial union, that of marriage, which has been enshrined as a sacrament in Holy Matrimony.  God makes use of the one flesh union of man and woman to be a sign of the permanence of His union with creation, to be a sign of His fidelity in His promises to us, and to be a sign of the fruitful, life-giving nature of His love.  This unique relationship of union between man and woman is used by God in salvation history such that His Son in the flesh is born within a holy marriage.  This teaches us of the truth and the irreplaceable value of marriage as a reality made by and received from God and not manufactured by man alone.

 The third critical aspect of God’s plan for salvation is flesh.  God indicates the dignity of human flesh made in His image and likeness by blessing Adam and Eve, and calling them to be fruitful and multiply.  This gives a clear moral itinerary for marriage and a clear guide for how spouses should live that vocation still today.  And most specifically, after the preparation of prophecy over centuries and the formation of a people, God would show the prominence of flesh in His saving plan by the mystery we ponder in this holy season and which we will celebrate anew in the Christmas season about to begin… that of the Incarnation.  ‘Incarnation’ literally means the taking on of flesh.  We profess belief that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the eternal Son of God, took on our human flesh in the fullness of time (cf. Gal. 4:4) as salvation history came close to its most climactic moments.  That God created flesh and called it good, that He told man and woman within marriage to be fruitful and multiply, and that He sends the Savior in our flesh tells us of the truth of the dignity of human flesh and the dignity of human life formed in the womb.

   So why am I highlighting these three aspects of (1) man and woman, (2) union, and (3) flesh as key elements in salvation history and key realities of the Incarnation, of which we are reminded in the prayer of the Angelus?  Because if you train your eyes on spiritual realities as we must, and if you avoid the tendency to think of reality only from a secular and non-spiritual perspective, then you note that these three key elements of salvation history are precisely things under attack most violently today.  And if we admit that, we can’t help but remember that we are in the midst of a spiritual battle.  Those three key elements of salvation history reveal three places of critical attack from secular and demonic forces in our time.  (1) The first key element of salvation history, God dignifies and makes use of the reality of man and woman.  Today, elitists and those they mislead think that sex is purely a social construct and they insist that biology and anatomy are not determinative or stable.  They want to obliterate all meaningful distinctions about sex while claiming that people of faith are the ones who are unscientific.  Change and mutilate a body all you want but the truth of its biology and chromosomal make up bespeaks the lie of modern gender ideology.  (2) The second key element of salvation history, God makes use of the exclusive union of husband and wife in marriage.  Today, everything that promotes violating that union or severing it, or manufacturing same-sex unions as equivalent, or any other construct that does not uphold the truth of the exclusive union of one man with one woman… these are violent attacks at the root of God’s creation and attempts to disfigure what God has done in salvation by means of marriage and family life.  We are in a spiritual battle.  (3) The third key element of salvation history, God creates human flesh and he uses it to send us a Savior, His Son, who will carry our human flesh into the saving sacrifice that brings salvation to us.  The hatred of human flesh that is at the root of viewing pregnancy as a disease to be prevented, that is present in the promotion of contraception, that is literally active in the destruction of unborn human life, and all the other modern means of manipulating vulnerable human life… here we see another critical theatre of battle for the soul of mankind and the soul of our world.  These places of attack, so common, popular, and viewed as enlightened in our society, have spiritual and eternal consequences.

The Gospel passage today gives us a glimpse of each of these three key elements of salvation: a man and woman, Joseph and Mary, distinct yet complementary; the union of marriage (betrothal was real marriage in Jewish culture; we need to dismiss the silly interpretations that Joseph and Mary were only engaged); and the flesh, for Mary was found with child by the Holy Spirit.  We are called to be witnesses in a battle that is leaving the good world God made more and more disfigured.  Our faith and our advancing of the truth has value in this battle.  Don’t underestimate the value of a devotion like the Angelus, for it trains our eyes, our hearts, and our minds, away from the tendency to think only of this world and of material reality. It helps us marvel with wonder and child-like joy at the presence of God and His activity in our midst, and with our cooperation, to renew the world!   And the Word was made flesh; and dwelt among us!

Third Sunday of Advent

Dominica III
Adventus A

15 December 2019

 St. John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come?”  On its face value I have some real struggles with this Gospel passage.  I’m intrigued by John’s question and on its face value it doesn’t make sense to me.  “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”  Did St. John the Baptist NOT know the answer?  The Precursor of the Lord…is unsure?  The last and the greatest of the prophets…doesn’t know?  The one who lept in his mother’s womb when Jesus was present in his own mother’s womb…is unsure?  The zealous prophet dressed like Elijah, who endured the harsh desert and ate locusts and honey, he doesn’t know?!  How can he now be asking this question as if unaware of Jesus’ identity?  St. John is in prison awaiting certain execution.  Are we perhaps to assume that St. John is being worn down by the hardship of prison and that his prior knowledge about Jesus’ identity is now maybe lacking?  On its face value this Gospel passage seems out of place.  It needs more than face value understanding; it needs closer scrutiny.

  To dive more deeply into the intrigue of this passage we need to suspend an easy and natural assumption we make as Christians when we hear this passage.  So many centuries now after Jesus walked the earth, we know and accept that Jesus is BOTH the promised Messiah (the anointed one) and that he is God Himself.  It can be very easy for us to so link the “Messiah” and “God” in the one person Jesus such that we end up thinking the “Messiah” and “God” are synonymous terms or notions.  But this was not the mind of the Jewish people and so Messiah and God were not automatically linked by people like St. John.  The Messiah is the one who would redeem God’s people from their suffering and would be an anointed king and priest who would lead God’s people.  This notion developed in time to be an expectation that this anointed king-priest would be from the line of King David.  But God Himself is an entirely distinct notion.  Suspending our automatic Christian linking of Messiah and God we can then, I suggest, understand the great revelation of this passage and why John seems to be asking a curious question.  So, let’s hear St. John’s question again while also keeping clear that the promise of the Messiah and the promise of the coming of God Himself are not automatically assumed and linked by St. John in the one person of Jesus.  St. John asks, “Are you the one who is to come?”

  This does not simply and only mean, “Are you the Messiah?”  Notice, St. John doesn’t use that word, he doesn’t ask if Jesus is the Messiah.  He asks “are you he who is to come?”  This is an allusion to Old Testament prophecies about the coming of God Himself.  A prime Old Testament location of the prophecy of the coming of the Lord God is found in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 35.  And… no surprise the Church chooses Isaiah 35 as today’s first reading.  In responding to St. John’s question, Jesus indicates his own accomplishments that trace right back to Isaiah 35, from which we heard today: “Here is your God, he comes with vindication;… Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing.”  Jesus is making a direct allusion to Isaiah 35 where we find the prophecy of the coming, not of the Messiah alone, but the coming of God Himself!  In addition to that list of prophecy Jesus adds more that is not in Isaiah 35; I’ll comment on two of them: Jesus adds “lepers are cleansed” and “the dead are raised.”  In the Second Book of Kings surrounding the story of the leper Naaman we find the assumption that curing leprosy was something only God could do.  Likewise, in a rare Old Testament prophecy about resurrection, we find in Isaiah 26 that the dead being raised would happen when God Himself arrives.

  Are you the one, he, who is to come?  Jesus’ response causes St. John to see not only the fulfillment of what he clearly already knew – that Jesus is the Messiah – but also to see that Jesus fulfills the signs that accompany the arrival of God Himself.  And thus, it makes sense that Jesus goes on in this passage to tell the crowd about St. John using an allusion from the Book of the Prophet Malachi.  Jesus says that St. John is more than a prophet and indicates that the words of Malachi (Mal. 3:1) apply to St. John: “Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way before you.”  That entire context in Malachi is about the messenger that would come to announce, not the Messiah, but the coming of the Lord God.  I suggest that St. John clearly already knows that Jesus is the promised Messiah.  But from prison St. John learns in this passage that Jesus is more than the Messiah, but a Divine Messiah, that Jesus is the one who is to come, that He is God Himself.

 On this Sunday the change of color and the liturgical theme call us to rejoice!  We are invited to rejoice by receiving what St. John learned in Jesus’ response: Namely, the great revelation that in the advent of Jesus God Himself is with us!  We are nearing the annual celebration of the birth of our God.  We still await His final return in glory at the Second Coming.  It is time to rejoice for He is near to us.  It is time to lift to Him our blindness, our lack of vision and spiritual sight, our deafness, our flagging speech, our lameness, our leprous impurity and afflictions, our deadly sins and the prospect of our bodily death.  It is time to live the rejoicing that God is near and that His presence means something for how we live.  “Blessed is the one who takes no offense” at Jesus.

Second Sunday of Advent

Dominica II Adventus A

8 December 2019

 God has no grandchildren.  We are accustomed to hearing that we are, by faith and baptism, sons and daughters of God.  We are, as we say, God’s children… but God has no GRANDchildren!

 What does that mean?  It means that a person does not have a relationship with God, at least not the kind that He desires and invites us to, the kind that transforms and saves, because someone in your family has, or once had, a relationship with God.  In other words, relationship with God is not inherited.  The relationship with God that transforms and saves requires an intentional decision.  It is something immediate and direct, not something based on nearness to someone else who has that relationship.  That’s the lesson of aphorism: That each person has a personal decision to make to turn from sin and to live as a disciple of Jesus.  Relationship with Jesus is not cultural or inherited.  God has no grandchildren.  We pray, do we not, “Our Father,” not “Our Grandfather, who art in heaven”?

 In his preaching in his time St. John the Baptist seems to recognize the call to personal decision, personal responsibility, in being a person of faith.  He says to the religious Pharisees and Sadducees: “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?  Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.  And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’  For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.  Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”  St. John highlights the same truths about each person being intentional in the life of faith.  He preaches the requirement of producing good fruit.  He requires evidence of repentance, of each person’s turning from old ways in response to the advent of Jesus.  Standing there at the River Jordan St. John blows out of the water the notion of an inherited, familial faith.  “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’.”

 In the Gospel “Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan” were at fever pitch because of St. John’s preaching.  So many centuries of prophecy had been made and everyone expected a new exodus, a new event of God’s saving work.  To that end it is noteworthy that St. John is at the Jordan, the very place where the first Exodus had ended as God’s people crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land.  Standing in that spot signals God is doing something new.  We each have a decision that only we can make.  God has no grandchildren.  Choose to be, and give evidence that, you are a child of God.  “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”

First Sunday of Advent

Dominica I Adventus A

1 December 2019

 This annual season of Advent is a gift from the Church that reminds us to wait and to prepare.  Our waiting and preparation focuses on the two main arrivals of Jesus.  We wait and prepare to be renewed by the annual observance of Jesus’ first coming when he was born at Bethlehem.  We also wait and prepare for Jesus’ second coming, a coming which we begin to experience on the particular day of our death, which will be fulfilled more generally at the Second Coming at the end of time.  Both main arrivals of Jesus get our attention in Advent.  However, since the first coming at Jesus’ birth has already happened in history, we should give a priority to our preparation for the Second Coming, which we still await, and which will have specific consequences for us.  We give attention to the far more important preparation that each of us must do to be in a state of grace and ready to meet Jesus at his second advent, his second arrival; we do this all the more because in this time of year the Second Coming we await is so easily eclipsed by an exclusive focus on the first coming in that event we call Christmas.  If we lack this proper priority of focus on the Second Coming of Christ then the Scripture selections might seem odd to us this weekend.  We’re beginning Advent, the start of a new Church liturgical year, but we are still hearing about the end times and the final judgment when Christ will come again.  That might seem odd if our priorities are out of order.

 First, I want to dismiss a notion popular among some Christian groups that this Gospel passage speaks of the idea of the “rapture,” that is, a secret coming of the Lord when the faithful will be taken and others left behind.  This is not a Catholic teaching and is not supported in the Scriptures.  If you back up several verses from the start of the Gospel passage it is clear that the entire context here is that of the end times and the final judgment, in other words, not a secret coming of Christ, but the very public return of Christ to judge the living and the dead.  And in this proper context it is clear then why the analogy of the “days of Noah” serves here: Because that too was a very public, dramatic, and sudden end while people were occupying themselves about their daily, ordinary activities.

We begin this new Church liturgical year with a focus on our end.  It reminds me of a Latin motto: Finis noster, principium nostrum, which means “Our end is our beginning.”  The lesson transmitted in that motto is that we begin with our end in mind.  We have a clear goal.  And this translates into our spiritual life as well.  With a clear goal or end in mind, we can then travel toward that end with far greater focus and success.  The opposite is also true: If we travel without a goal or an end in mind, we are far more likely to wander aimlessly, and who knows where we might end up?  We believe that we will meet the Lord when he comes.  Our end or goal is that we should be ready for that meeting so that we can attain the offer of eternal life in his Kingdom.

 Jesus said in the gospel: “For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”  One of the biggest mistakes we can make for our soul is to think we will always have enough time to get ready to meet the Lord.  If we think we know with certitude that death is still far away from us or that we can accurately predict its arrival and have time to be ready, we are making a risky gamble.  And even if death is still far away, such a gamble  will likely breed a laziness that will not bode well for our spiritual growth.  This attitude inclines us to become spiritually lazy, lax in confessing sin, absentminded in prayer, and unconverted to Jesus.  And then we are ripe for the plucking to spend eternity in the kingdom of darkness.

This is exactly what the gospel teaches us.  Jesus told his disciples that on the day of his coming people will be about ordinary tasks, thinking it just like any other day.  He compared it to the days of Noah when folks were about their ordinary lives, thinking nothing was different, and then came the flood.  Jesus said, “they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.  They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.”  Some activities are good and some are bad.  Some lead us to Christ.  Some are sinful, making us poor friends of Christ.  And some sins lead us to Hell.  What things are on the list of your activities when you examine your life?  Which are good?  Which are sinful?  Which things need to be removed so that you are not like someone in the days of Noah, likely to be swept away in a sudden flood?  What things need to change so that you are not like someone asleep as his house is broken into?  In the second reading St. Paul spoke of some examples: works of darkness, he called them, orgies, drunkenness, promiscuity, lust, rivalry, jealousy, the desires of the flesh.

 Jesus says, “you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”  In Advent we prepare ourselves to more sincerely celebrate Christ’s birth.  Advent also focuses our attention to a task we must never set aside: namely, to prepare to meet the Lord when he comes.  We will not know for sure when that will be.  So, we can only prepare and live each day ready to meet him.  St. Augustine wrote: “Let us not resist his first coming, so that we may not dread the second” (Ps. 95, 14. 15: CCL 39, 1351-1353).  The Lord Jesus loves us and has come to save us.  Our preparation must be to love him in return and always the more.  We must love him more than our sins.  More than works of darkness.  We must love him more than worldly pursuits.  Then on whatever day he comes, we will be prepared to meet him, for the Judge who comes will be the One we have longed for with Advent focus and with loving hearts.