Newtown and Christmas

Homily
Solemnity of Christmas - Mass During the Day
St. Frances Cabrini Parish Hoxie, Kansas
25 December 2012
Daily Readings

O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!

To adore the infant Jesus is to do nothing less on Christmas morning than fall in love with him again.  In former times, no one could see the face of God and live.  Yet beginning today, God has taken on a human face, and to adore Christ is to begin to truly live.  Since eternity has entered time, we all live in the fullness of time, where mankind is not moving toward its eventual destruction but onward and upward towards its highest dignity, destiny and glory!  Through Mary , the exemplar of our Church, we have come to fall in love with the human face of God, who shows himself in the circumstances of Bethlehem to be so madly in love with us!

We celebrate Christmas this year, however, while the flags of our country are at half-mast, mourning the loss of her children.  Christ’s victory over evil is real but not yet fully extended, especially when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable children among us.  The evil hit so hard recently that headlines immediately began asking the question ‘where was God?’  With all due honor to those grieving families that wake up this Christmas morning with a damaged faith and unspeakable sadness, the news media had only to go to the nearest church to see where God was.  There on display were thousands of candles proclaiming that despite the worst evil, life is worth living, and the darkness has not overcome the light.  There on display were nativity scenes, showing that God does not distance himself from the vulnerability of being a helpless child.  There on display in the Catholic Church was a crucifix, showing the broken and lifeless body of Jesus, who did not think it beneath him to place himself in the worst kind of evil.  There in churches was the answer that has been there since the first Christmas, and the answer that will always be there.  God is Emmanuel.  He is with us.  In every situation, especially the worst ones, God is with us.  He goes before us.  He walks beside us, even if life takes us to the very depths of hell.

The reality of the most invincible person, the one through whom all things were made, allowing himself to be born naked, outside, in the cold, and wrapped in swaddling clothes teaches us a lesson that we must never forget.  To become a human person is to remember where we came from.  Christmas is the time to remember that we never stop being children. We know deep down that to become a human person is not to grow up and to get the freedom of intelligence and will to create our own reality, as good as these are for many people.  No, to become a human person is to continue to find our true and best selves in the Christ child.  To become a person is to find a way to remain poor and vulnerable, so that our personhood is based on nothing except being known and loved and protected.  As we learned in Newton, this view of human personhood, the true and lasting view, can only ultimately be guaranteed by God, who knows us and loves us and protects us from the evil of the world in ways no one else, not even our parents and school teachers can, from the moment of our conception until our natural death.  The creation of the world the first time by the virgin Father, our Father, was a glorious creation.  Yet the new creation that appears today through the birth of the virgin mother is better, for it is a creation that starts in poverty but ends with riches, that begins with vulnerability but ends with everlasting goodness, which is first touched by death but ends in everlasting life.  This is the new creation that as St. John says, is not born of natural generation, but of God, grace upon grace.  The sign of this new creation appears for us today in Bethlehem. 

Christ appears as a helpless baby to try to win our hearts again this Christmas, to make falling in love with the new creation, with God, and with humanity irresistible.  Yet there are too many who refuse to remember where they came from, and these will reject Jesus, and allow what this child means to scare them instead of winning them over.  Never mind, Jesus is willing to do even more to win us over.  This morning he does even more than asking us to imagine ourselves at Bethlehem.  He comes to us perfectly, right here, right now, and allows us to receive him even more intimately under our roofs, through the Holy Eucharist.  That’s why every Christmas is ultimately judged by what happens in our hearts and minds and bodies in just a few moments, for the birth of Jesus into our world takes on its most radical extension and conclusion in the Eucharist we have come to receive.  Ultimately, there is no Christmas without Christ’s Mass, and what happens right now is the most important thing of all.  Amen.

Don't forget who you are!

Homily
Christmas Mass During the Day
25 December 2012
St. Frances Cabrini Parish - Hoxie, Kansas
Daily Readings

O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord!

We have come on Christmas morning to adore the infant Jesus.  Today we celebrate the morning when the world first saw the face of God, the true light of the world.  Born of the virgin mother, he is the firstborn of the new creation!  In former times, no one could see the face of God and live.  But now, with the appearance of the child Jesus, through whom eternity entered time, we live in the fullness of time where to see the face of God, which beginning today is also a human face, is to begin to truly live.  God who owes us nothing has shown us his face!  To see the face of God, to live in this light, represents the new highest dignity of man, and it is in this light that man truly finds himself.  We have come then, to adore this Christ child and all that he makes possible.  In him, mankind is moving decidedly not toward its eventual destruction, but onward and forward to its highest glory!  Through Mary, the exemplar of our Church and the first to see Jesus, we have come to fall in love once again with God, who in the circumstances of Bethlehem shows himself to be so deeply in love with us!

The welcoming of the baby Jesus occurs this year, as we well know, while the flags of our nation are at half-mast, mourning the loss of her children.  Newtown is but the most recent and vivid  and terrible example of how Christ’s victory over evil has yet to be fully extended, especially when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable children among us.  The reality of this evil hit so hard that headlines immediately began asking the question ‘where was God?’  With all due honor to those grieving families whose faith was damaged by the horrible evil that took place, and who wake up on Christmas morning with unspeakable sadness, still the news media had only to go to the nearest Christian church to see where God was.  There on display were thousands of candles proclaiming that despite the worst evil, life is still worth living, and the darkness will never overcome the light.  There on display were nativity scenes, showing that God does not distance himself from the vulnerability of being a helpless child.  There on display in Catholic Churches was the crucifix, showing the broken and lifeless body of Jesus who did not think it beneath him to place himself in the midst of the worst kind of evil.  There in the churches was the answer that has always been there since the first Christmas.  There in the churches was the answer that will always be there.  God is Emmanuel – he is with us.  In every situation, especially in the worst situations man can endure, God himself is there.  He is with us.  He goes before us.  He walks besides us, even to the very depths of hell.

Christmas is a unique time to enter into the truth that we only know who we are when we remember where we came from.  By this I am not talking only of happy reunions and the exchange of gifts with family, as important as these are.  I am talking specifically about the need for us always to be a child, and to always find ourselves in our encounter with the Christ child, and of our society to always judge itself from the view of the child.  The reality of the richest and most powerful man ever, the Son of God, the one through whom all things were made, being born cold, outside, poor and bound in swaddling clothes reminds us of what is essential to being a human person.  Our sacred dignity as persons comes first of all not from our eventual freedom of intelligence and will, but most fundamentally because someone knows us and loves us and protects us from the moment of our conception onwards, where we cannot know and love and protect ourselves.  These secondary realities of freedom of intelligence and will, which emerge fully in adulthood, and the ability to shape our own destiny, are nothing really, are almost a mirage, when compared to the reality of being a child.  The Christ child reminds us that to be human is to be poor, vulnerable and dependent; namely, to let one’s self receive love.  If we know who we are, we know we never stop being children.  We forget this, and neglect it, to the peril of our own dignity as persons, for to forget where you came from, is to forget who you are.

So too in our society, our Holy Father urges us not to forget where we came from.  A person without memory loses much of his identity.  So too a society that constantly tries to manufacture its own reality, rather than receiving and discovering the true nature of what it means to be human, is a society destined to lose its humanity.  We have societies with millions of smart phones, for example, that are not smart enough to stop contracepting their society and economies out of existence.  It is fashionable to be more organic regarding our food and our energy, but less organic in what makes us even more human, our sexuality.  By eschewing natural chastity and natural family planning for artificial contraception and abortion, we run away from what makes us most human  - authentic natural, vulnerable, sacrificial and fruitful love.  We can run away from defining the family based on how it most naturally occurs in human nature, through the birth of a child to a man and woman who give everything to each other, including their natural fertility.  We can even seek to expand marriage by doing something insanely unnatural, by subtracting sexual complementarity from the definition, and to shift the definition away from the view of the child, and toward the will of the adults.  This to forget where we came from, to forget we are all children, and to deny who we really are.  A culture more afraid of babies and who seeks to artificially eliminate babies, and who does not see itself through the desire of its children to born, is a culture that has lost its humanity.

We have to stop trying to manufacture what we were meant to discover and receive.  The vulnerability of the Christ child teaches us the most important lesson we must never forget. To become a human person is to become known, and loved and protected.  It is to be poor and vulnerable.  To be human is to never stop being a child, and this sacred dignity of human persons can only ultimately be guaranteed by God, who can know us, love us, and protect us from the evils of the world in ways no one else can, from the moment of our conception until natural death.  The birth of Jesus from the virgin mother is the sign of the dawn of a new creation that begins in poverty but ends in riches, that begins with vulnerability to evil but ends with everlasting goodness, a creation that is first touched by death but ends in everlasting life.  This is the new creation that as St. John says, is not born of natural generation, but of God, grace upon grace.  The sign of this new creation appears for us today in Bethlehem.

To adore the Christ child on Christmas must mean nothing less than to fall in love with this new creation, with God, and with humanity once again.  Christ comes in the most irresistible of forms, as a helpless baby, to try to win us over to finding ourselves again.  Yet if we do not remember where we came from, we will reject him tonight.  To win us over, Christ is willing this morning to lower  himself even further than asking us to imagine ourselves at Bethlehem.  He comes to us right here, today, where we are, and allows us to receive him even more intimately under our roofs, through the gift of the Holy Eucharist.  That’s why the ultimate test of what this Christmas means for us, and for our world, is coming in just a few moments.  The birth of Jesus into our world reaches its most radical extension and conclusion in the Eucharist we are about to receive.  What matters most of all this Christmas is what is about to happen to my mind, and my heart and my body, as Jesus gives himself to me now, for this is truly Christ’s Mass.  Merry Christmas to all!  

Dancing at the ark

Homily
4th Sunday of Advent B
22 December 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings
Audio

It's hard to overestimate the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth.  The magnitude of what is happening is mind-blowing.  Meditation on the scene of this Gospel should complete our Advent preparation.  It can make us perfectly ready for Christmas.  That's why it's placed here, the 4th and final Sunday of Advent.

Mary didn't have a smart phone to text Elizabeth the great news.  But she got the news to her cousin as quickly as she could.  Newly pregnant, Mary nonetheless ran to share the good news.  Filled with excitement, she went in haste to the hill country.

The visitation was also the chance for John to meet Jesus in utero.  Yet the scripture passage is clear.  There is no interaction between John and Jesus.  John erupted at the sound of Mary's greeting.  He responds to the voice of Mary.

John the Baptist as we know will soon be the greatest prophet in Israel.  Yet the forerunner of the word is small compared to Mary.  She is no mere forerunner of the word.  She is the the bearer of the Word.  She will give birth to the word.  Her fiat is the most profound word ever spoken by a prophet.  Her Magnificat is worth more than all the prophetic words that John will ever say.  So at her few words, John the Baptist leaps for joy in the womb. John the Baptist was foretold to be greatest man ever born of a woman.  Yet he is small in the presence of the Immaculate Conception.

King David danced a thousand years before when the ark of the covenant was brought triumphantly from the hill country to the holy city.  So too, John the Baptist dances because of the closeness of the new temple that is Mary.  The promise made to David that a son of his would rule forever, haunted Israel until this day, for the David kingdom had done nothing but fade since the time of Nathan's prophecy.

These promises dramatically reappear in the angel Gabriel's announcement to Mary.  Just as the stump of Jesse, the least of shepherd boys in the forgettable town of Bethlehem, was chosen by the Lord to become the greatest King of Israel, so now in this time, the most hidden of all women, is chosen for the fulfillment of a promise that had seemed lost.  The angel Gabriel says to Mary.  Your son Jesus will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord will give him the throne of David his father, and of his kingdom, there will be no end.

Imagine the situation of Elizabeth.  Imagine telling the story of how she conceived in her old age, and of her husband Zechariah being struck dumb, and the prophecy of carrying in her womb the greatest baby ever conceived, and knowing the sex in advance without benefit of a sonogram!  Imagine telling the greatest story ever, only to find out it's the second greatest story ever.  Such was the incomparable good news shared by these two holy woman, our final Advent prophets.

If you've had a great Advent, let the scene just described to us be the perfect completion of this season.  If you've had a lukewarm Advent, let these ladies come to your rescue.  Ask Mary to give you just the tiniest piece of her Advent expectation.  Ask her to help you feel just a bit what was going on in her mind and heart and body in those final hours before giving birth to Jesus.  If Mary our mother will do that for us, we will be perfectly ready for Christmas.

Never stop rejoicing!

Homily
Gaudete Sunday C
16 December 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings
Audio

Call it what you will.  Gaudete Sunday.  Pink Sunday.  The Third Sunday of Advent.  Rejoice Sunday.  Whatever you call it, this Sunday is the Sunday we turn the corner in our Advent preparations.  We rejoice for one reason, and for one reason only - that the Lord is near!

Pope Benedict XVI in his new book commenting on the infancy narratives of Jesus says that joy is the distinctive mark of the new creation begun in Jesus.  The new creation's first word you might say is the word angel Gabriel said to Mary.  Hail, Mary!  Rejoice, Mary!  Be glad Mary!  The new creation's first word is rejoice, our word for the weekend. This Sunday is for us a particularly intense and precise meditation on why we are joyful, and why joy must be distinctive in Christians, if we are living our faith correctly.  Joy to the world.  The Lord has visited his people.  Rejoice! That is our Christmas anthem.

The joy of the new creation is the joy of knowing that Jesus is coming with his power to remake the world from the inside out.  The new creation is unlike the first, for the first creation begins in life but can end in death.  It begins in goodness but can be touched by evil.  It starts big but can end up really small.  The first creation remains overwhelmingly good, but as well know all to well, it is broken from the inside out.  The second creation is distinctively different, and the cause of much rejoicing.  It is a creation that begins in baptism, with a death to self, but ends in eternal life.  A creation that begins with the healing of sin and ends in everlasting goodness.  It is a creation that starts small but ends big.

The rejoicing that is proper to a Christian is that the Lord is near.  Jesus Christ has come.  He is coming.  He will come again.  His coming to be with us, the gift that He is to us, is the foundation of the reason why we continue with greater joy and fervor and generosity to visit each other, and to give to each other, in this holy season.  His coming is why we rejoice!

The truth of the new creation does not mean, as we know well, that external circumstances are about to get better.  They might, but they may not.  We all know that in many ways the new creation is still too small, is only beginning to take hold.  It does not mean that things are about to go my way.  Yet the new creation mysteriously can take hold even in times of great trial or distress.  Especially confusing and saddening and disheartening is the terrible tragedy that happened in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday. Children usually are some of our best prophets for Christmas.  They know the time and hour of Christmas.  They are fraught with anticipation and joy for all the visiting and giving of the season.  Indeed, can we imagine Christmas without children?  Tragedies like the one in Connecticut rightfully make people wonder if God is really close, or whether evil has taken hold in a more powerful way.

We can feel confused, guilty and discouraged by evil.  It is not the way things are supposed to be.  So evil will never make any sense.  Yet I must insist that our joy remain undiminished.  For the Lord's coming means that we are visited even in our discouragement and sadness.  We are not alone.  God weeps too.  Yet woe to us if we fail to participate in the process of evil being definitely conquered, and we must not stop fighting.  As John the Baptist the great prophet reminds us, we prepare room for the Lord's coming, and the time and space of our lives become instruments of the new creation in the Holy Spirit, when we take evil seriously, and when we repent of our sins with a perfect hate and have a true passion for righteousness.

There is Christian joy in not giving into discouragement and complacency, no matter how many times we have to pick ourselves up, and hold each other tight, in our fight against evil.  The response to evil is not to despair and not to doubt, but to fight.  John the Baptist teaches us this, and reminds us that while indeed we are engaged in a great cosmic battle against evil, the battle lines are most distinctively drawn in each of our hearts.  The helplessness brought on by encounters with evil must be met with prayer, and at the very least, a stronger commitment to winning the battle against evil in my own heart and in the time and space of my own life.

We become real instruments of the new creation when after true repentance, we allow ourselves to be visited by the Lord, who comes with the Holy Spirit and fire to transform us into the saints we deeply long to be.  This alone, the Lord's coming, is the cause of our joy.  Rejoice! Again I say rejoice! The Lord is near!

greater signs

Homily
Wednesday of the 1st Week of Advent I
5 December 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

In today's Gospel we see the fulfillment on the mountain of Isaiah's prophesy.  The sure sign of the Lord's arrival will be the removal of tears, the healing that is done by Jesus on the mountain.  Then there is the superabundance of food.  The circumstances on the mountain are humbler maybe, than the majestic prophecy of Isaiah, but the fulfillment is there, at least in part, through the miracles of healing and feeding.  The time of fulfillment has arrived.  The Messiah is here.

The story on the mountain told by Matthew follows beautifully the pattern of the Mass.  There is a gathering, a listening to teaching, a healing, an offering, a transformation and then a superabundant feeding delivered by the disciples.  The signs experienced by those on the mountain eventually give way, especially in the Gospel of John with its Bread of Life discourse, to the sign of the Eucharist.  Signs that lasted for a day gave way eventually to a great sign, the institution of a Sacrament; in this case, the central sacrament of the Eucharist that we have come to experience.

It should happen almost automatically that those of us who have access to the greater sign seek a greater transformation than than experienced on the mountain.  For sure, this greater sign must be assisted by greater faith, for this greater sign is more mysterious.  Yet the greater sign of the Eucharist leads to a greater gift, the coming of the Lord in more places, feeding and healing more people in more remarkable ways; in every way, the greater sign leads to greater superabundance.  If we leave here then, less changed by this greater sign than those who were present to the signs on the mountain, then we have much Advent work to do.

Let us pray for the Church, that the Lord may receive an eager welcome at his many comings among us, especially in this Advent season of preparation, we pray . . .

For the world, that it may recognize the time of its visitation, and get over its fear of the Lord's coming, we pray . ..

For the mission of St. Lawrence, especially for the piety of students wishing to observe Advent in the  midst of their many concerns, we pray . . .

For the healing of those who are sick and the feeding of those who are hungry, that charity might guide the actions of Christians and all mankind, we pray . . .

For for the perseverance of all those in holy vocations, and for new vocations to the priesthood, religious life, and the sacrament of marriage to be realized through the Lord's coming, we pray . .

Heavenly Father, help us to know that the fulfillment of desires comes less from the arrangement of circumstances and more from your Son's coming.  Help us to accept the good things that come to those who place their trust in Him.  We make our prayers known to you through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Happy New Year!

Homily
1st Sunday of Advent C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
2 December 2012
Daily Readings


Check this out on Chirbit


The countdown on New Year's Eve.  Mario's 2008 miracle falling out of the air.  A critical exam about to start, a project deadline bearing down on you.  The powerball drawing.  That first kiss.  The birth of a baby. All these human moments, and many more, are filled with anticipation and excitement.  Such is the spiritual attitude of Advent. The countdown is over.  The new year is here.  Happy New Year!

A new year is always fun because of the feeling that through vigilance and resolution, the past no longer determines the future.  Of course, things are only really new if something has fundamentally changed, only if something substantial is happening.  New Year's is just a party that like everything in life, quickly fades, unless we are doing more than playing make-believe.

We are challenged not to turn the 1st Sunday of Advent then, into a make-believe New Year's Eve.  The Church's challenge comes to us from Luke's apocalypse, tonight's Gospel.  Jesus offers through his telling of the apocalypse what deep down, each one of us wants, an unveiling of how we can escape getting older and older with the world, until we fade away, and a chance through the Lord's coming to get younger and newer.

Yet Jesus tells us rightly that we are not prepared for what we want.  Indeed, all of us would die of fright if the world as we knew it crumbled.  We are prepared not for new things, but for holding on tightly to old controls and securities.  Our spiritual drunkenness and material attachments cause us to fear what we most want.  We fear the coming of the Son of Man, who brings the only thing that does not pass away - newness of life.

If you plotted the liturgical year on  the face of a clock, our first Sunday of Advent would happen not when most New Year's celebrations happen, not at midnight, but at about 9 o'clock, by my estimate.  We've held onto the light of last Easter's celebration as long as we could, and that light was not in vain and has not passed away.  Yet as the order of our redemption mirrors the order of nature, now is the time for us to stop looking at the light from yesterday, and to start looking for the light of tomorrow.  In Advent we are to begin looking east to the new Easter light of 2013.

You heard me right, and no, I haven't gone insane, at least I don't think I have.  Advent anticipates Easter.  It isn't enough to remind everyone to quit celebrating Christmas too early.  No, Advent begins a long night of vigil that will continue through next Lent to Easter morning.  Christmas will be a stop on the long night's journey, a celebration of a critical moment.  Christmas happens at midnight of our new year, when the light that is powerful enough to scatter every darkness begins to glimmer at the darkest hour of the darkest night.

Just at the time, 9 o'clock, when many people are reaching for a beer and the TV remote, thinking the most important part of the day is over, it is then, it is now, that Christians are called to become more vigilant.  Christians delight in the God who plans small surprises that come when many people are least expecting them.  Just as scientists look to smaller and smaller particles to help unlock the mysteries of the universe, so Christians look for small beginnings that change the world in radical ways.  We begin Advent by remembering that only a few people made it to the manger, while the rest of the world was asleep.  Even fewer made it to the empty tomb.  Whether or not anyone was there, these two events changed the cosmos more than the Big Bang ever could.

The same incarnation and paschal mystery of Jesus are fully present to the few of us who have come here tonight.  Who among us tonight might dare to let the old pass away, and be ready to recognize the Lord's coming in the hidden surprise that is the Holy Eucharist.  Come, Lord Jesus.  Come.