Carry the gospel with you

Gospel reading of the day:

Luke 2:41-52

Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.

Reflection on the gospel reading: The Feast of the Holy Family honors the life of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as a family. The Feast is not an old celebration; Leo XIII first instituted it in 1893 as a celebration that occurred within the octave of the Epiphany. Since 1969, we have celebrated the Feast of the Holy Family on the Sunday that follows Christmas, except in years when Christmas itself falls on Sunday, in which case, we celebrate the Holy Family on Friday, December 30.

Of course, we know very little about the life of the Holy Family. We can speculate based on the hints in the passages of scripture and on what we know about the life of a typical family in Palestine in the early first century. Mark and Matthew both suggest that Joseph was a carpenter, indeed, from the Greek, a very specialized kind of carpenter who built door sills; it was not a lucrative profession. This fact would accord with our knowledge that most people in first century Palestine lived lives of barest subsistence, just getting by, if that at all. Even so, the duties of faith required that boys be literate, and Israel enjoyed one of the highest rates of literacy in the ancient world. We know our Lord could read, because the gospels refer to his reading in the synagogue. So schooling for Jesus was a part of the Holy Family’s life. This was an age when little was known about medicine and hygiene, so ill health almost certainly afflicted members of the Holy Family, attended by the typical anxiety that occurs when a member of the family grows ill. The scriptures make no reference to Joseph during Jesus’ ministry, so it would seem that Joseph must have died by the time Jesus began to preach throughout Judea, and doubtless, he was grieved and missed by Mary and Jesus.

Several passages from the scripture show that the Holy Family maintained the piety of their people. For instance, the story we read from Luke’s gospel today tells us that they went up to Jerusalem to keep the Passover. Jesus at 12 must have been a boy on the typical developmental trajectory, beginning to spread his wings to his parents’ occasional consternation and confusion. Rather than returning with his parents to Nazareth, he remains in Jerusalem to converse with the learned men who talked and disputed at the temple.

In other words, when God entered human history, God occupied the ordinariness of human lives. The routines and sorrows and joys that attend the life of the world were blessed and sanctified and exalted by God’s embrace of them. Sometimes, the sameness and the difficulties of day-to-day life may overwhelm us, and we may grow numb at the ceaseless chores and dream of some world outside the one we occupy, but surely it can be a comfort to us to know that even if we don’t feel it, God has made all of it great and meaningful by God’s willingness to take part in it.

Spiritual reading: I wish to invoke the protection of the Holy Family of Nazareth. Through God’s mysterious design, it was in that family that the Son of God spent long years of a hidden life. It is therefore the prototype and example for all Christian families. It was unique in the world. Its life was passed in anonymity and silence in a little town in Palestine. It underwent trials of poverty, persecution and exile. It glorified God in an incomparably exalted and pure way. And it will not fail to help Christian families-indeed, all the families in the world-to be faithful to their day-to-day duties, to bear the cares and tribulations of life, to be open and generous to the needs of others, and to fulfill with joy the plan of God in their regard. (Karol Wojtyła)

Carry the gospel with you

Gospel reading of the day:

Matthew 10:17-22

Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.”

Reflection on the gospel reading: The Church is at pain in this week following Christmas to remind us that the child whose birth we celebrated yesterday comes with a purpose. We may imagine that the Prince of Peace has come to end divisions, and this is true. But along the way, he will be the source of many divisions. Let us remember in the Christmastide that the sentimental imagery of the Bright Babe is an isolated part of a much bigger and very rough story that includes suffering and death alongside incarnation and resurrection.

Saint of the day: All we know of Stephen is found in Acts of the Apostles, chapters Six and Seven. It is enough to tell us what kind of man he was:

At that time, as the number of disciples continued to grow, the Hellenist (Greek-speaking) Christians complained about the Hebrew-speaking Christians, saying that their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. So the Twelve called together the community of the disciples and said, “It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table. Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” The proposal was acceptable to the whole community, so they chose Stephen, a man filled with faith and the Holy Spirit…. (Acts 6:1-5)

Acts says that Stephen was a man filled with grace and power, who worked great wonders among the people. Certain Jews, members of the Synagogue of Roman Freedmen, debated with Stephen but proved no match for the wisdom and spirit with which he spoke. They persuaded others to make the charge of blasphemy against him. He was seized and carried before the Sanhedrin.

In his speech, Stephen recalled God’s guidance through Israel’s history, as well as Israel’s idolatry and disobedience. He then claimed that his persecutors were showing this same spirit. “[Y]ou always oppose the holy Spirit; you are just like your ancestors” (Acts 7:51b).

His speech brought anger from the crowd. “But [Stephen], filled with the holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God….’ They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him….As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit….Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (Acts 7:55-56, 58a, 59, 60b).

Spiritual reading:

Man altered was by sin from man to beast;
Beast’s food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh.
Now God is flesh and lies in manger pressed
As hay, the brutest sinner to refresh.
O happy field wherein this fodder grew,
Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew.
(“The Nativity of Christ,” Stanza 4, St. Robert Southwell, S.J.)

Carry the gospel with you

Gospel reading of the day:

John 1:1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.

But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God. And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. John testified to him and cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’” From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace, because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.

Reflection on the gospel reading: I did an MA in American Literature, and my thesis was on James Agee’s novel A Death in the Family, a book that narrates the events of several days in May 1915 in the life a closely-connected family that loses in a car accident the man who is husband and father in the family. In Part II of the novel, the new widow’s brother Andrew and their elderly parents gather at her house to share their helpless grief. At the end of the night, Andrew accompanies his parents back home, and the Christmas hymn Silent Night winds through his mind as he walks along with his parents:

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. The words had always touched him; every year they still brought back Christmas to him, for some reason, as nothing else could. Now they seemed to him as beautiful as any poetry he had ever known. He said them over to himself very slowly and calmly: just a statement. . . . The silent stars go by, he said aloud, not whispering, but so quietly he was sure they could not hear. His eyes sprang full of tears; his throat, his chest knotted into a deep sob which he subdued, and the tears itched on his cheeks. Yet in thy dark streets shineth, he sang loudly, almost in fury, within himself: the everlasting light! and upon these words a sob leapt up through him which he could not subdue but could only hope to conceal. . . . The hopes and fears, a calm and implacable voice continued within him; he spoke quietly: Of all the years. Are met in thee tonight, he whispered: and in the middle of a wide plain, the middle of the dark and silent city, slabbed beneath shadowless light, he saw the dead man, and struck his thigh with his fists with all his strength.

The scene in the novel, like the gospel narrative of the Christmas events, joins together the imminent and transcendent aspects of living. The celebration of the birth of Jesus anticipates the end of his life on the cross, and the Church’s commemoration of his birth recalls to the minds of believers the aim of Jesus’ life lies in his death and resurrection. As Andrew, his heart full of pain for the loss of his brother-in-law, accompanies his parents home, he remembers a hymn that places singers at the scene of the Savior’s birth in their imaginations. A still night, the solicitude of members of a family for one another, the gnawing raw presence of death, and the Christmas narrative knit together in Andrew the solitary, sinful, broken, and fragile lives that the birth of the Christ child encapsulates in all its anticipated grief. A Death in the Family, in this passage, points to the element in the Christmas story that includes the fragility of human existence.

As we enter into the mystery of the Word made flesh, let us not forget this day of days that the Baby who comes, comes with a purpose.

Spiritual reading:

Gift better than himself God doth not know;
Gift better than his God no man can see.
This gift doth here the giver given bestow;
Gift to this gift let each receiver be.
God is my gift, himself he freely gave me;
God’s gift am I, and none but God shall have me.
(“The Nativity of Christ,” Stanza 3, St. Robert Southwell, S.J.)

Carry the gospel with you

Gospel reading of the day:

Luke 1:67-79

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; for he has come to his people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty Savior, born of the house of his servant David. Through his prophets he promised of old that he would save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us. He promised to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant. This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to set us free from the hand of our enemies, free to worship him without fear, holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life. You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Reflection on the gospel reading: The passage that we read today is Zechariah’s canticle. Luke reports that John the Baptist’s father regained his speech after he consented to the angel’s request that the baby would be called “John.” When he regained his speech, he broke into a song of praise for birth not just of his own son, the one to go before the Lord to prepare his way but also for the long-awaited messiah, a mighty Savior, born of the house of his servant David.

May joy and peace be to each of you and all of us.

Saint of the day: Saint Charbel Makhluf was born on May 8, 1828, in Lebanon, he was the son of a mule driver. He was raised by an uncle who opposed the boy’s youthful piety. The boy’s favorite book was Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. At age 23, he snuck away to join the Maronite monastery where he took the name Charbel in memory of a second century martyr. He professed his solemn vows in 1853 and became a priest in 1859.

He lived as a model monk but dreamed of living like the ancient desert fathers. A hermit from 1875 until his death 23 years later, he existed on the barest essentials of everything. He gained a reputation for holiness and was much sought for counsel and blessing. He had a great personal devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. He celebrated Mass at noon so he could spend the morning in preparation and the rest of the day in thanksgiving.

He briefly became paralyzed for unknown reasons just before his death on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1898. His tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for Lebanese and non-Lebanese, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Spiritual reading:

O dying souls, behold your living spring;
O dazzled eyes, behold your sun of grace;
Dull ears, attend what word this Word doth bring;
Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace.
From death, from dark, from deafness, from despair:
This life, this light, this Word, this joy repairs.
(“The Nativity of Christ,” Stanza 2, St. Robert Southwell, S.J.)

Carry the gospel with you

Gospel reading of the day:

Luke 1:57-66

When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her, and they rejoiced with her. When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said in reply, “No. He will be called John.” But they answered her, “There is no one among your relatives who has this name.” So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called. He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,” and all were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed, and he spoke blessing God. Then fear came upon all their neighbors, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. All who heard these things took them to heart, saying, “What, then, will this child be? For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.”

Reflection on the gospel reading: God constantly is drawing us to God’s self, calling us out to become the people that God wants us to be. God pulls and God tugs, sending us a thousand messages about where we might go to become most fully who it is that we are. The question that the people ask about John, “What will this child be?” is the question we always can ask about ourselves. No matter our age or condition, we always are being drawn toward something. It is incumbent on us to seek that still small voice within to discover who and what that is.

Saint of the day: Born June 23, 1390, John of Kanty was a Pole. A brilliant student at the University of Cracow, he became a priest and a professor of theology at University of Cracow. Falsely accused and ousted by university rivals, at age 41 he was assigned as parish priest at Olkusz, Bohemia. He took his position seriously; terrified of the responsibility, he did his best. For a long time that wasn’t enough for his parishioners, but in the end, he won their hearts. After several years in his parish, he returned to Cracow and taught Scripture the rest of his life.

John was a serious, humble man, generous to a fault with the poor, sleeping little, eating no meat and little of anything else. He took a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and hoped to be martyred by Turks. He made four pilgrimages to Rome, carrying his luggage on his back. When warned to look after his health, he pointed out that the early desert fathers lived long lives in conditions that had nothing to recommend them but the presence of God.

At the time of his death, John was so well loved that his veneration began immediately. For years, his doctoral gown was worn by graduates receiving advanced degrees at the University of Cracow. He died December 24, 1473 at Cracow, Poland, of natural causes.

Spiritual reading:

Behold the father is his daughter’s son
The bird that built the nest is hatched therein,
The old of years an hour hath not outrun,
Eternal life to live doth now begin.
The Word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,
Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep.
(“The Nativity of Christ,” Stanza 1, St. Robert Southwell, S.J.)

Carry the gospel with you

Gospel reading of the day:

Luke 1:46-56

Mary said:

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my savior.
for he has looked upon his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
and has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.”

Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months and then returned to her home.

Reflection on the gospel reading: Mary comes to her cousin Elizabeth as a young pregnant woman. Her yes to God well may have caused her a loss of face among some members of her community: for instance, Matthew’s gospel tells us that Joseph doubted her. That someone believed her and credited her story, as Elizabeth did in yesterday’s gospel, must have been an immense relief to a very young woman in a difficult situation. The Magnificat reflects her joy that she was understood. It is an experience that all of us have had, that is, relief when someone has understood our situation when other people have not. The Magnificat is an expression of joy at being understood.

There are many lessons we can draw from this gospel passage. When we recognize that someone truly understands us, our joy is best experienced as a sign of God’s presence and expressed as thanksgiving to God. Even more, we always can strive, as Elizabeth did, to understand the circumstances that cause people to do the things they do and give them the benefit of any doubt we have. It is a kind of gift-giving all of us can afford to do.

Saint of the day: Frances Xavier Cabrini was born in 1850 at Sant’ Angelo Lodigiani in Lombardy, Italy. One of thirteen children raised on a farm, she received a convent education and training as a teacher. She tried to become a religious at age 18, but poor health prevented her. A priest asked her to teach at a girl’s school, the House of Providence Orphanage in Cadagono, Italy, which she did for six years. She took religious vows in 1877 and acquitted herself so well at her work that when the orphanage closed in 1880, her bishop asked her to found the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to care for poor children in schools and hospitals. She came to the United States to carry on this mission.

Mother Cabrini and six Sisters arrived in New York in 1889. They worked among immigrants, especially Italians. Mother Cabrini founded 67 institutions, including schools, hospitals, and orphanages in the United States, Europe, and South America. Like many of the people with whom she worked, Mother became a United States citizen during her life, and after her death, she was the first US citizen to be declared a saint. She died December 22, 1917 at Chicago, Illinois, USA of malaria and is interred at the very northern tip of the island of Manhattan at 701 Fort Washington Avenue in New York City.

Spiritual reading: Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it – because he is out of place in it, and yet must be in it – his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected because they are regarded as weak; and with those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, and are tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. (The Time of No Room by Thomas Merton)

Fr. Ron’s Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family, Year C

Today we celebrate the family of Jesus.  We hear a lot today about the “family,” especially among conservative churches who even have organizations to make sure that the family models they promote are not diminished or destroyed.  The unfortunate reality is that the highest rate of divorce in the United States comes from some of these fundamentalist groups.

If we believe Luke, Jesus’ family was not the usual model family either. Mary was betrothed to Joseph, a formal ceremony for the Hebrews – much stronger than an engagement is today, but still not allowing the sexual union of the partners which was reserved for marriage – when Mary was found to be pregnant.  This event could have precipitated a break in the betrothal, and in fact, Mary would have been looked upon as a great sinner, worthy of being stoned to death. Luke’s Gospel rather ignores Joseph’s reaction to any of this, and the next we hear of the couple is when they are on their way to Bethlehem.

In between, however, Mary has gone to visit Elizabeth and Zechariah, and with Luke’s great interest in and development of the women of his story, we spend a great deal of time learning about both Elizabeth and Mary’s reaction to the miraculous births. And then we get the beautiful description and story of John the Baptist’s birth, followed by our traditional Christmas story and the birth of Jesus.

So the family we are celebrating today is a mother, father and child – but again not the typical family of the period.  Nor is what happens in today’s Gospel typical either. After Jesus is presented in the temple, 40 days after his birth as required by law, we don’t hear another word about him until he is 12 years old. This is kind of like the jump that was made in Desperate Housewives when the next season skipped 5 years in every characters’ lives. The Temple in Jerusalem is the frame for this 12 year jump. He is presented in the Temple and then in the next scene he is brought to Jerusalem, he runs away and ends up back in the Temple.

And it seems that Jesus at 12 years old is very precocious. He went to the Temple and sat with all the teachers and listened to them and asked questions. When he himself answered questions, the teachers were amazed at his understanding of the Scriptures.  He was just a boy – though a twelve year old would be considered almost an adult – the so called-teen years didn’t exist for that culture.

In any case, even in this Holy Family we find there was anxiety.  That should give hope to those of us who recognize anxiety in our own families or those of us who have deal with a rebellious child. The answer Jesus gives to his mother would appear to our culture to be smart-mouthed as well. Remember, Mary and Joseph had not been able to find him for three days! Three days – words that somewhat foreshadow Jesus’ later disappearance in the tomb!

When my daughter was 14, she was also very precocious. Like many teens, she felt that she was an adult and knew everything.  I was the assistant principal of the Catholic school where she went to school, and when I saw the absentee list for the school and saw her name on it, I got worried because I knew she had headed out to school that morning. I called home and she hadn’t come back.  This led to two full days of not knowing where she was. We got reports that someone had seen her walking toward the river. All sorts of things went through our heads, even though we thought we knew our child and felt we would have known if there had been anything wrong.

The story ended on the third day much like Jesus’ story.  My daughter had jumped on a bus and gone to Toronto, thinking that she was old enough to strike out on her own. Once there, she got frightened and searched for the one person she knew that lived there – the nun that had run her Montessori School, now living in a convent in Toronto.  The good sister took her in and called us to let us know that she was all right. My daughter’s reaction to us was similar to Jesus’: What were you worried about?

If Mary and Joseph were anything like me, I didn’t know which I wanted more – to slap her for what she did, or to hug her because she was okay. Both emotions warred inside me! When the Evangelist says: And Mary “kept all these things in her heart,” I think I understand all too well what is meant by that.  It is still in my heart and I still ponder that event: the overwhelming fear for one’s child, and the overwhelming relief that she is well, frosted with the overwhelming need to get angry with her so she would never do it again.

Like Jesus, my daughter came home and “was obedient” to us – mostly.  And we never had another frightening event like that.  But every time I hear this story of Jesus, I wonder whether their reaction mimicked mine. In many of the commentaries on this reading they suggest to us that Jesus was not rebuking his parents, but telling them that their parental role must come second to God’s will. I don’t think Jesus was much different than my daughter, however, and he was feeling his teenage oats and testing the waters. Jesus may have been God, but he was also human, and I think he had to grow into his self-awareness. This may have been a first step.

The first reading today was chosen not so much because it also concerns a similar Jewish family – Elkanah, Hannah, and Samuel, father, mother, and son – but because it talks about the dedication of a child to God’s will.  In this case, the mother Hannah had prayed for and was given a child. She did not, as Mary did, present the child to the Temple after 40 days, but waited until the child was weaned, brought him to Eli, a priest in the Temple, and left him with Eli to be raised as a child dedicated to the Lord.  This kind of love of God and thankfulness to God seems very wrong to us today.  Can we even imagine a mother bringing her three year old to a convent, and leaving him there for the nun’s to raise, because you wanted to thank God and have the child raised in a religious setting, dedicated to God. We would ask, what kind of mother could leave her child? In our Gospel it was not Mary who made that decision to do the Father’s will, but Jesus himself.  Yet the story of Samuel is almost foretelling what will happen in the New Testament.

Finally, the second reading today, a beautiful description of love and what God has done for love, presents us as God’s family.  We are the children of God. And we are a family because we are loved.  God has sacrificed his Son just as Hannah did hers. And as Mary will eventually do this as well, seeing him on the cross. We have two things we are asked to do: believe in Jesus, the Son of God and love each other. And so we come full circle:  What binds a family together as seen from the readings today is love of God and love of each other. And from my point of view, family is a group that loves each other and God, cares for the needs of each other and respects each other. And that the makeup of a family can take many different forms. What is important is the quality of that relationship and the loving commitment of each of the members.  That is what we need to strive for, and not conformity to unrealistic ideal of what the physical makeup of the family should be.

And that love, care and respect is the challenge of the Good News I bring you today.

Carry the gospel with you

Gospel reading of the day:

Luke 1:39-45

Mary set out in those days and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

Reflection on the gospel reading: Through a coincidence in the calendar for the Sunday and weekday lectionaries, the gospel reading from yesterday’s Mass is also the reading for today’s Mass. Luke’s description of Mary’s visitation to her cousin Elizabeth follows the text we read on Saturday concerning the annunciation to Zachariah of the coming of his son, John, who would be the forerunner of the Lord. Elizabeth asks the question that goes to the heart of the gospel reading, “How does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” How indeed is it that this happens to any of us, that the Lord should come and hunt us down? Yet, indeed, this is exactly what God does in each of our lives: come to find us to bring us to God’s self.

Saint of the day: Born May 8, 1521, Peter Canisius was educated in Cologne, Germany. An excellent student, he received a master’s degree by age 19. He became a Jesuit after attending a retreat conducted by Peter Faber, S.J. A preacher, writer, and teacher, Canisius traveled and worked with Saint Ignatius of Loyola. During prayers, he received a vision of the Sacred Heart, and ever after offered his work to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He led the Counter-Reformation in German lands. His catechism went through 200 editions during his life and was translated into 12 languages. Ordained a priest in 1546, he was the founder of colleges. He addressed the Council of Trent on the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. By the time he left Germany in 1590, the Jesuit order in Germany had evolved from almost nothing into a powerful tool of the Counter Reformation. Canisius spent the last 20 years of his life in Fribourg, Switzerland, where he founded the Jesuit preparatory school, the Collège Saint Michel, that prepared generations of young men for careers and future university studies, and under cantonal administration continues to exist as a coeducational preparatory institution. Canisius died December 21, 1597, that is, 412 years ago today.

Spiritual reading: If you have too much to do, with God’s help you will find time to do it all. (Peter Canisius, S.J.)

Fr. Ron’s Homily for Christmas, Year C

We seldom get tired of hearing the Christmas story, and St. Luke is such a good storyteller! Of the two narratives of Christ’s birth, his is the more imaginative and theological. He chooses his details carefully making them memorable, but also reflects on the Old Testament prophecies and places Jesus in the political context of his day.  In Roman times, the Roman Emperor was seen to be a god, and they spoke of him in much the same religious way that Christ was spoken of. Caesar Augustus was to usher in a time of peace, so Luke makes sure that one of the messages we get from the birth narrative is that Jesus will also usher in a time of peace, but a different and more important kind of peace. Luke was not above inventing ‘facts’ for things he did not know.  That was very customary in his time.  So he may not have known the birth place of Jesus, but the Old testament said the savior would come from Bethlehem, so Luke had to find a way to get Mary to Bethlehem to give birth.  Even little details reflect the theology that had developed by the time of Luke.  Jesus was placed in a manger, a trough used to feed animals, but theologically he would be the food for the world through the Eucharist. Isaiah says he will be visited by shepherds, so Luke has the shepherds as the first to hear about the birth of Jesus. This story is now so familiar to us all, but, even if some of the facts of the story are inventive, it is a story that touches all of us each year and warms our hearts.

We do tend to glamorize Christmas though. The stable where Jesus was born seems warm and inviting to us today.  It probably wasn’t.  Imagine a baby being born in a garage behind someone’s home in an alley in downtown DC. That’s probably closer to the truth.  The first visitors were shepherds and we get these cuddly images of the little shepherd boy beating on his drum.  In actuality shepherds were rough and uneducated.  They probably smelled quite bad, too. And we tend to think of Jesus as our Savior, and we romanticize his life in such a way that the human qualities often disappear in our minds. But God sent his Son to a lowly carpenter and his wife, and didn’t come as a mighty warrior but as a helpless child.  Some of you remember Bishop Sheen on television.  He liked to tell this metaphor of Christ’s coming. He asked if anyone loved his dog enough to be willing to become a dog him or herself to save it. Probably not – it even seems absurd to us. Yet God did more than this even.  The distance between God and us is much greater than a pet is to us. An ant might be closer. And yet, God became a man, but as a little helpless child.  He became a human being in order to give us hope and to heal us.  He raises the value of being human by taking on our nature and entering this hard world of ours.

I found this story which might illustrate this point a little better.

Once upon a time, there was a man who looked on Christmas as a fraud, a lot of humbug.  He wasn’t like Dickens’s Scrooge, though, because he was actually a really good person – kind, considerate to his family and just in his dealings with his neighbors and business associates. He just didn’t believe in all the nonsense about God becoming man which all the churches celebrate at Christmas. He didn’t believe in an Incarnation. He was much too honest even to pretend that he did believe in it.

His wife, however, was a believer, and was a churchgoer, and loved Christmas. And so, when she would go off to church with the children to Christmas services, he would apologize for not going with them. “I would feel like a hypocrite,” he said. “But I will stay up and wait for you all to come home.”

So his wife and children left for church just as it began to snow.  He watched them leave and stood looking out the window, watching as the snow fell harder and piled up on the ground. He thought that if there was going to be a Christmas, it was nice that it would be a white one. A little later on, when he was sitting by the fire waiting and reading his newspaper, he heard a strange kind of thudding sound. Then he heard it again. And again. Was someone hitting his house with snowballs, he wondered. So he got up and went to the door. But what he found was that a flock of birds trying to navigate in the storm has flown right into his picture window. They were on the ground, kind of huddling from the cold, and a bit stunned. He felt sorry for them and wondered how he could help them.

Behind his house he had a small lean-to that he stored his outdoor equipment in, and that had once been a shed for a goat that they had. If he opened up the wide door of it, they might go inside and at least find shelter from the snow and wind. He quickly got on his boots and coat and trudged out to the shed. He opened the door and lit the lamp he had there. The birds seemed to barely notice what he had done.

So then he thought I will go and get them some bread crumbs and maybe they will come in for that.  So back he went to the house and tore up some bread and went back to the shed and distributed it, making a trail to the shed.

The birds totally ignored him and continued looking stunned and flopping about in the snow. Maybe they are afraid of me, he thought.  How can I find a way to get them to trust me?  If only I could become a bird for a few moments and lead them to safety!

As he had that thought, the church bells began to toll midnight. He stopped in the snow to listen to the bells and suddenly he knew… it all made sense to him.  He sank to his knees in the snow, looked up to the heavens and addressed his God for the first time in years: “Now I know..Now I understand why you had to do it, and become human for us….” (Story is from Fr. Tommy Lane)

The Incarnation is a great event. You may notice that the priest bows in the Creed when we get to that point – and he “became man”.  This is what we celebrate at Christmas, and despite all the other trappings of Christmas – the gifts, the food, the well-wishing, the cheer – if it hadn’t been for this event – this God, lowering himself to become a helpless child – there would be no Christmas, we wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be saved, we wouldn’t be led from the hard cold winter snow into the warmth of heaven, the shed prepared for us by our Savior.

And this is the Good News that came into the world today. Merry Christmas to you all.

Carry the gospel with you

Gospel reading of the day:

Luke 1:39-45

Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

Reflection on the gospel reading: This passage from Luke prepares us for the great and solemn commemoration of the Lord’s birth which we shall celebrate in several days. At the very outset of Luke’s gospel, the message that we receive is that Jesus comes not to be served but to serve. Elizabeth does not come to serve the needs of Mary and Jesus: God is with Us comes, and truly it is he, the Lord; but in the womb of his mother, he travels with his mother to serve the needs of Elizabeth.

In this passage, the Baptist stirs in his mother’s womb when he hears the voice of Mary. Babies in their mothers’ wombs, of course, are always twisting and turning. But Elizabeth, herself full of the Spirit and prophetically recognizing who comes to her, interprets the baby’s movement as joy at Mary and Jesus’ arrival.

We know how much our mothers imprint themselves on us. Jesus lives a life of service, going out and looking to be available to those in need. The Baptist lives a life of prophecy, living in the desert and speaking truths at the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Where indeed do you think these men got the things that so profoundly characterized their lives? God works in human ordinariness to bring about great things.

Spiritual reading: The mystery of Christmas therefore lays upon us all a debt and an obligation to the whole created universe. We who have seen the light of Christ are obliged, by the greatness of the grace that has been given us, to make known the presence of the Savior to the ends of the earth. This we will do not only by preaching the glad tidings of His coming, but above all by revealing Him in our lives. Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us. This one day is the day of His birth, but every day of our mortal lives must be His manifestation, His divine Epiphany, in the world which He has created and redeemed. (Seasons of Celebration by Thomas Merton)