The Nativity of Jesus Christ (Christmas)

Nativitas D.N.I.C.
25 December 2024
Midnight Mass Readings

 Throughout the holy season of Advent the Church has called us to give particular attention to a practice that, truthfully, should engage us all year long, no matter the season.  That practice, given special attention in Advent but warranted throughout the year, is the practice or preparing for the coming, for the arrival of the Lord.  The coming of the Lord has two specific reference points in history.  The first coming has already taken place in time and it is the reason we gather today, to observe the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The second coming of the Lord in history is the one we still await when Jesus will return in glory as our Judge and Judge of all the living and the dead.  We might call these two comings of the Lord his “physical” arrivals, or his arrivals in human bodily form.  In Advent, and truthfully always, we prepare to live anew the meaning of Jesus’ first arrival while, at the same time, we seek to live the truth of the Lord’s birth and salvation for us by preparing for the unknown day when he will arrive in majesty and power.  The second reading for this Mass makes reference to these two “physical” arrivals when St. Paul writes to Titus: “The grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ”.  St. Paul writes about a grace of God that has already appeared even while noting that we still await the appearance of the glory of God.  One coming, one appearance has happened; the second coming, the second appearance we still await.

While our Christian vocation and our efforts at responding to the call to holiness take place between these two arrivals of the Lord, spiritual authors have noted a helpful interpretation that God arrives in a third way.  There is, we can say, another arrival of the Lord who comes to us in a different form between these two physical arrivals.  That third way, though perhaps not physical or in human bodily form, is no less real.  Between the two historical arrivals of the Lord, he comes to us spiritually by his grace.  Yes, the Lord arrives and comes to us by his gift of grace in so many and varied ways.  He comes by grace most pre-eminently in the sacraments of our faith, most especially in the Holy Eucharist.  The Lord’s grace arrives to us each time we stop life to admit our sins and to be healed in confession.  The Lord comes to us in holy Baptism and Confirmation.  He arrives with his grace in the sacraments of vocation, whether marriage or holy orders.  The Lord arrives to us when we pray, committing both to personal prayer time daily and our communal gathering at Holy Mass, observing each holy day and each Sunday as the Lord’s Day, by which we prepare weekly for the Lord’s return.  He comes to us in that blessing to the spiritual life that is meditation and study of Sacred Scripture, God’s Word to us.  The Lord arrives by his grace when we seek to live appropriate moral lives and when we give up our selfish ways to serve others.  His grace comes to us when we let the sacred teaching of the Church form us as we benefit from the centuries-long reflection of the Church on the mysteries of our faith.  So many ways does the Lord’s grace come to us.

Perhaps is makes sense to say that how we live in awareness of that third arrival, that third way of coming, the arrival of God to us by His grace in our spiritual life… perhaps that is the key to how we can prepare to observe Jesus’ birth in a less secular way, and also the key to being prepared for that most important test still to come: preparing for the Second Coming of Jesus.  Said another way, if we aren’t living in such a way to experience the arrival of God’s grace to us in our spiritual life, making use of the various examples of grace I stated earlier, then we are more likely to succumb to a secular and commercial preparation for Christmas and, as a consequence of that, we are more likely to succumb to being ill-prepared, “unprayed”, and unconfessed when the Lord comes again as Judge.

So, what lesson can we take for how to actively live that third way that the Lord arrives, his coming to us by grace in the soul, grace in the spiritual life?  I want to highlight two practices for our spiritual life.  These two practices are reflected in what we see in the Scriptures and in the experiences of so many believers over centuries.  The bad news is that these two practices, while simple, are tough and they will stretch you beyond your comfort zone.  The good news is that these practices are entirely possible and they will save you.

I think it can be said that the Scriptures show us an interesting pattern before some important action of God.  The pattern is that some important action of God is preceded by silence, often long silence.  I was doing some reading recently and I came across commentary about the long silence that enveloped God’s People Israel between the last prophet Malachi and the birth of Jesus.  In fact, some call this the “400 silent years” after the completion of the Prophet Malachi’s ministry.  I am not saying there were no godly events or no scriptural writings during those hundreds of years.  The point is that there was no prophet, no one whose commission from God was to say, “Thus says the Lord…”  Imagine being a faithful Jew, seeking to live the call to be God’s people in the midst of the world surrounded by people of many different beliefs and hearing nothing.  Some Jews, whole generations, would have never known what it was like to live in a time of a prophet.  Silence.  No new prophet’s word.  Four hundred years of silence.  Until, that is, the silence was broken, not by a new prophet, but by the very Word of God Himself.  An infant’s cry and coo in the still of a Bethlehem night broke the long silence.  So, the first practice that promotes God’s arrival to us by grace in the spiritual life is silence.  Depending on our vocation and our duties, we will have to be creative with this, especially in family life, depending on how much silence the kids will let you have.  Maybe instead of “silence” I could say, “quieting yourself”.  When was the last time your TV was turned off for a meaningful length of time?  I mean, during the day, not at night when you are asleep.  How about removing the ear buds?  We’re always ready to listen to someone else; we’re always somewhere other than where we actually are.  What freedom could you find by turning the ringer to off on the smartphone?  How often do you unplug from constant consumption of information, news, and – let’s be honest – silliness and total wastes of time online?  Silence, quieting yourself, is so necessary for prayer because we have to get all the words and messages and thoughts that are not from God out of our heads in order to make room to hear God.  It takes time to filter out all the competing ideas and thoughts and words that fill our heads and hearts.  If we rarely stop the noise, chances are we rarely quiet down enough to finally hear God – and to know it is God and not our own echo chamber.  Four hundred years of silence preceded and prepared the way for God’s own voice to break the silence on this night.  Silence is a critical precursor to God’s action.  While quieting ourselves takes discipline and is difficult, the good news is countless faithful over centuries know that it works.

And once we have quieted ourselves such that God can arrive by grace in our souls, once we have heard God’s voice, well, we then have something to say, something worth saying.  Here comes the second difficult practice.  We ourselves experience a new arrival of God’s grace, this third way of coming to us, when we share with others what we have received.  What do the Scriptures show us after the 400 years silence was broken by the Infant Word of God echoing throughout earth?  Immediately there is proclamation.  The angel of the Lord appears to shepherds in the stillness and relative silence of night and says, “I proclaim to you good news of great joy.”  A good news that is destined “for all the people”.  And following that proclamation, a multitude of the heavenly host joins the angel to break out in praise saying, “Glory to God in the highest.”  Thus, a disciple who is in the posture to receive the arrival of God’s grace is a disciple who knows his spiritual life is meant to be shared.  That doesn’t seem like it would be hard to do.  But it is.  It takes vulnerability to share your faith with others.  We do not hide our spiritual life or the ways God blesses us.  We do not boast, to be sure.  But, we are not called to hide what we have received under a basket.  We are called to break the silence of a world far from God with the proclamation of good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and what He has done for us.  We are called to share our faith and our blessings with those around us.  In so sharing our faith, others are blessed by the arrival of God for them and God’s grace in us is magnified for having been shared.

We more joyfully observe Christ’s birth, we are better prepared for his second coming, and we make ready the path for God to do something in us, to come to us by grace, when we follow that pattern seen in the Scriptures: fostering silence so that we make room for God to come to new birth in our souls by His grace, and then breaking the silence and the darkness by our own proclamation that “Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord.”

Third Sunday of Advent

Dominica III Adventus C
15 December 2024

 The change of vestment color for this weekend (from the darker purple to rose) and the permission to decorate the sanctuary with flowers serve as a visual reminder that 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 in Latin “Gaudete Sunday” or “Rejoice Sunday.”  That thematic title for this Sunday comes from the words of the entrance antiphon, which we chanted at the beginning of this Holy Mass: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.”  This weekend the Church calls us to step up our joy because we have completed 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 passage today is a continuation from last Sunday where we heard of the work of St. John the Baptist.  Last week’s Gospel told us that the word of God came to him in the wilderness and in response he went about “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Lk. 3:3).  There are a few verses between last Sunday’s and this Sunday’s Gospel that are not read in Mass, but I want to share them now.  John “said to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruits that befit repentance…. 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. 3:7-8, 9).  You brood of vipers!  I’d like to take a moment to welcome any visitors and newcomers.  We hope you’ll join the parish and get involved here.  What an Advent message!  No, but I think hearing those few verses between the two gospel passages helps establish a better sense of the full context of today’s passage.

 Today we hear a question and answer session between John and the different groups in the multitude who heard him preach repentance and who came to be baptized.  And the burning question from each group is “What should we do?”  Could the lesson between repentance and faith leading to action and a changed life be any more clear?  Again, those unread verses: “Bear fruits that befit repentance…. 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. 3:7-8, 9).  We have today a lesson for us about faith and action, we might even use the oft misunderstood phrase of faith and works.  God alone saves us by faith in His mercy and generous love.  And necessarily related to that, is that one who receives that free and unmerited gift from God should live in such a way that demonstrates a life claimed for God.  That’s why John could confront those whose repentance was suspect by calling them a brood of vipers.  John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus Christ.  The message for us is even stronger since Jesus fulfills all of the promises and prophecies about God.  Conversion and repentance is naturally and necessarily followed by a change of behavior, by action, by living the new life we have been freely given.  Faith and action go together!  They must go together or else we are not bearing good fruit.  Faith and action go together in whatever vocation and in whatever profession is yours.  Faith and action go together everywhere we live our life or else… we are not bearing fruit.  Or else, we are like trees ready to be cut down.

 Those unread verses that I shared help us see how the message from last Sunday’s passage is continued today.  At the end of the passage today John references wheat harvesting, but it is an image that speaks of judgment as well.  John points to the One who is coming and he says “His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Lk. 3:17).  It’s a harvest image to be sure, but its meaning is the same as the previous call to bear fruits that befit repentance.  The One who is coming, who is greater than John, is expecting good wheat; he’s coming ready to gather the harvest.  Be the wheat, in other words.  Don’t be the chaff.  Think about the harvest imagery.  The winnowing fan, also called a winnowing fork, was used to thresh out the wheat grain from the lighter hull, like the wrapper around the wheat grain.  In ancient times the winnowing fork was used to toss grain up into the air.  The heavier wheat grain would fall downward, while the wind and the action of throwing the grain with the fork would cause the chaff to blow away and land elsewhere.

  To repent and to receive baptism in Christ Jesus is a call to also bear fruit, to be good wheat ready for harvest.  Since the fruit of a changed and redeemed life, since the wheat of such a life is heavier, I want to encourage you to… gain weight!  Okay, now you’re talking, some are saying!  This is my kind of religion!  I mean, what could be easier at this time of year, right?!  No, not cookies and holiday treats.  Better said, let’s be heavier or more weighty as Christians.  Let’s bear good fruit as a sign that our lives have been changed.  Let’s be the wheat.  It’s not just an idea.  It is necessary in order to endure the judgment of the Lord when he returns again.  Bearing good fruit and being more weighty is marked by a life lived in such a way that it reflects the meaning of the repentance I declare, and that reflects the baptism I have received.  How do we bear good fruit?  Well, I can’t say everything today about what is means to be a Christian who is living authentically the faith received, but we can stick with some ideas from the Gospel.  How did John respond in the Gospel when asked by the people of his time, “What should we do?”  He basically responded with the idea of almsgiving.  Do you have extra clothing?  Give it to someone who has none.  Do you have enough food?  Then do the same.  John also encouraged justice in our interactions with others when he responded to the tax collectors and soldiers.  Don’t cheat people or take more than you should.  Don’t make false accusations.  And be satisfied with what you have.  Stop seeking more, always more things.  It’s basically from John a call to do what we call the corporal works of mercy.

  Interestingly enough, doing these things, bearing good fruit, connects us back to idea of rejoicing today on Gaudete Sunday.  You know one way to be more weighty as a Christian, one way to demonstrate the authenticity of your Christian life, one way to find joy… is to get out of ourselves and all the things we are wrapped up in and to give to others, to serve others.  This time of year is so hectic and so stressful for so many.  Maybe in part that is due to focusing excessively on our plans, our wants, our desires.  So, in the midst of all that this season is let’s remember to be more weighty as disciples of Jesus.  Let’s remember to be more weighty throughout the whole year.  To be clear, we don’t bear good fruit to make ourselves feel good, or for the purposes of some secular utopia in this world.  No, we seek God and we seek to bear good fruit because it is necessarily connected with the faith we proclaim.  We seek to bear good fruit because it is the right thing to do.  We seek to bear good fruit to draw others into the same call to repent and to believe in the Gospel.  We seek to bear good fruit because it will find us better prepared to stand before our Judge when he returns with his winnowing fan.  We seek to be good wheat ready for harvest, the wheat that, being heavier and having fallen to the ground in death, is ready to rise again to the kingdom of light and rejoicing!

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe
12 December 2024

 Today we observe with great joy the miraculous appearances, by which the Blessed Virgin Mary made herself known as the “ever virgin Mary, Mother of the true God through whom all things live” (cf. Office of Readings, Report by Don Antonio Valeriano).   The appearance of Mary sparked massive numbers of conversions to the true faith in the one Catholic Church established by Jesus.  Her appearance resulted in hundreds of thousands of souls leaving behind the falsehood of pagan worship and false religion.  Her appearance resulted in souls believing in the love of God shown in Jesus Christ, who is the Savior of the world.  To celebrate the Virgin today, and to do so in a way that pleases her and gives to Jesus what he is owed as God, means we must put behind ourselves false idols that get more attention that our soul and more attention than living our Catholic faith.  To celebrate this feast day today in a way that is good means we must stop making excuses for living a weak life as disciples of Jesus.

 Our Lady of Guadalupe has become so closely associated with the history of Mexico that, as one song says, to be Mexican is to be Guadalupan as something essential.  But even beyond Mexico, this appearance of Our Lady has transformed our continent and our world, such that she belongs not only to Mexico and to Mexicans, but is the Empress of All the Americas.  The number of conversions to Catholicism that resulted from her miraculous appearance in Mexico has led her to also be called the Star of the New Evangelization.  This means she is invoked for the new proclamation of the Good News that must be made in our time since so many souls who once were Catholic have fallen into darkness and sin as they leave the Catholic Church, or as so many other souls still have never heard of the true Church where salvation is found.

 To be clear, any time we honor Mary, like we do today on this great feast, it is never enough to stop with Mary.  Mary’s role is to point us to her Son, Jesus the Savior.  If we stop with Mary, or if we focus only on her or exclusively on her, then in fact we are not listening to the whole message of the gift that comes from God when some miraculous appearance takes place.  To say this another way, if we think that the popular song means that it is enough to be Guadalupan, then we are not listening to what Mary wants us to hear.  To be devoted to Mary means we must see that she leads us to Jesus.  To be devoted to Mary must lead us to the One she points to: to Jesus the Son of God.  We might add some words to that popular song and say: To be Mexican is to be Guadalupan, which is to be Catholic as something essential!  If one thinks that it is enough to be Guadalupan, to simply honor Mary without reinforcing and building our life with Jesus, then we are making a catastrophic error that will not lead to our salvation in heaven.  If one thinks that it is enough to be Guadalupan and simply to appear devoted and catholic on December 12, then we are missing the entire message of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  We would be causing the Virgin sadness if we honoring her did not result in living more fully the catholic faith.

 Two simple ideas come to my mind from the story of the appearance of the Virgin to St. Juan Diego.  When Juan Diego first saw Our Lady of Guadalupe she called him “the humblest of my children” and she said that it was her ardent desire that a temple ber built on the hill.”  And so, the two ideas are the virtue of humility and the construction of a temple.

 First, we recognize that everything we have is a gift from God.  And we owe Him everything in return.  Humility, being humble like St. Juan Diego, means that we listen to the ways God speaks to us and comes to find us.  He comes in our humble dedication to prayer.  He comes in our commitment to attend and participate in all Sundays and holy day Masses.  He comes in our moral living and in the way we work to remove sin from our lives.  He comes with His grace in living a proper sacramental life, including following the important practice of marrying according to Christ in his Church.  This humility to live marriage and family life as a sacrament places our entire life and our future on the solid foundation of Christ.  In the humility of service to others, especially the poor, God comes to us with His blessing.

 And God comes to us, His humble children, with a call to engage is some work.  We are called to build a temple.  But perhaps not exactly the same temple we think of on Tepeyac Hill.  By humble living of our faith and the commitment of holy baptism, we are building ourselves into a temple!  In baptism, the Holy Spirit is given to us to take up residence within us.  And so, we should recognize that we are temples of the Holy Spirit.  We are called to be beautiful temples dedicated to Christ.  We honor God and the Virgin Mother when we guard and care for our soul and live as the temples we have been made to be.  How senseless it would be to celebrate the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe, how senseless it would be to make visits to shrines (like the shrine in Mexico City or Oklahoma City), how senseless it would be to take the time to come here to church if we do not recognize ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, in humility, we seek to guard this temple of the soul and body and we seek to make sure our children do the same.

 May the intercession of the Virgin of Guadalupe encourage each of us to be more fully alive in her Son and to focus our efforts and attention where the Lady points us: to Jesus Christ and to fuller living of the gift of our Catholic faith.

First Sunday of Advent

Dominica I Adventus C
1 December 2024

 Our word “advent” comes from the Latin “adventus,” which is, in turn, a translation from the Greek word “Parousia.”  Parousia and adventus mean “arrival” or “coming.”  Our use of the word “advent” refers not only to the coming of Christ at his Incarnation and birth at Christmas, but it also refers to his second coming as Judge at the end of time.  The Catholic faith believes in these two comings of Christ: the Incarnation and the Second Coming, as we clearly profess each time we state the Creed.  Advent is a time of year that is hectic and exciting in holiday anticipation.  And so, the gospel selection today may sound almost strange to us, as if it is out of place for Advent.  Where is John the Baptist?  Where is the tender story of the virgin with child?  And if we think this gospel passage is out of place for Advent, perhaps that teaches us a critical lesson about how we view life and faith.  What is truly strange?  Is it the Church’s focus and the scriptural selection that is strange and doesn’t fit?  Or is it rather how we tend to live that risks being out of step with Christian preparedness and vigilance for the moment when the Lord comes again?  As we look ahead to celebrate the birth of Christ, which has already happened in time, we must remember that we can never pause our ongoing preparation and looking ahead to that coming of the Lord that we still await: the advent, the Parousia of the Lord, at his Second Coming!

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 seems counterintuitive.  He says when you see these things “Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”  He says that we are to be vigilant in our belief that the coming tribulations are imminent.  We can add to this the lesson from the second reading that we do even more to be ready for the Lord’s return.  St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “Finally, brothers and sisters, we earnestly ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that, as you received from us how you should conduct yourselves to please God – and as you are conducting yourselves – you do so even more”.

How are we possibly supposed to face the final advent, the final coming of the Lord?  Jesus tells us that our responsibility is to be prepared.  I want to offer two general categories of how we prepare: (1) Some things not to do; and then, (2) Some things to do.  The things not to do.  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 younger son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  The word in Greek translated as “dissipation” or “carousing” refers to “unbridled indulgence.”  We become drowsy and unprepared when we give in to unbridled indulgence in all the pleasures of the flesh: money, sex, power, food, recreation, sleep, and material goods.  These are the things that we cave 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 to meet the Lord when he comes.  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 that weigh us down and keep us from being prepared.

And then, the things to do.  Jesus tells us that our responsibility is to be prepared.  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 a more familiar spiritual discipline 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?  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 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.  If you don’t already do so, you might consider whether you can attend those special Masses.  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 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.  We always need more parishioners to commit to participate by taking time in our chapel, especially in the night time hours.  Let this be a call to you to participate in quiet time with the Lord.  I hope you will learn more about adoration and commit to time in our chapel.  You won’t regret it!  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 of vigilance that we perhaps unwisely leave only to the most dedicated monks.  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 life to come.  Train yourself in prayer and adoration to desire that Kingdom more than daily anxieties.  And as you pray before the Lord 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!”