What do I want for Christmas?

Homily

Solemnity of the Incarnation

25 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church Prairie Village, Kansas

AMDG

What do I want for Christmas?  For the 5th year in a row now, it's equal part scandalous and pitiful to admit.  I want someone to hold me. When I first confessed this during COVID, people thought that celibacy and social distancing were getting the best of me.  I got a lot of pity hugs.  

Yet I'm not ready to give up on this Christmas wish just yet.  It's still what I want.  I know it's what you want to.  It's a primal need and desire for every baby born into the world.  I guess I'm still a baby, and so are you.  Jesus told us that unless we constantly turn around and become like newborn children, we will forget where we came from, what it means to be human, the meaning of life, and ultimately, our soul.  When we come into this world what we need and what we want are the same, and this never fundamentally changes.  I want and need someone to notice me, to choose me, to help me, to hold me.   

It's what you and I will always want for Christmas, if we're not too proud to admit it.

Most importantly, it's what Jesus wants for Christmas.  Today we celebrate Jesus' desire to share the human experience with you and me, and to redeem it.  He's just like you, and His first desire and need are the same, just like yours.   He comes into the world as a baby, just like you.  He comes at Christmas precisely to ask you a very intimate, personal question, the original, precise and ultimate question of Christmas.  Will you hold me?

The first Christmas turned on the answer of Mary, Joseph and the shepherds.  This Christmas turns on yours.  

If Jesus asked me what I truly wanted for Christmas in any other way, I would be afraid to answer him.  Fr. Mitchel, can I hold you where you are must afraid, alone, frustrated, rejected, numb, and skeptical?  Can I heal the place where you are the most vulnerable?  Of course my answer would be thanks Jesus but I'm good.  I can take care of myself.  I'm used to my fears and doubts, and I can manage them.  I'm spent my whole life trying to not need or want anything, but thanks for asking anyway.

In order to get past our defenses, which are elite, Jesus has to don a disguise.  He has to trick me.  He has to disguise his desire for me as need, or I'll get scared.  So He finds me by hiding, trusting my faith to find Him.  He loves me by begging my love.  He shows His power to get past my defenses by becoming powerless - cold, poor, naked, and homeless.  He makes sense of my life be becoming an absolute joke.  Instead of asking me the scary question of what I want for Christmas, He simply asks me to hold Him.

How does He ask me this question?  It's through the most surprising disguise of all.  In just moments, the cave of Bethlehem will give way to this altar, the manger to that place in your soul that only the Eucharist can reach.  You're about to put the Mass in Christ's Mass you see.  Your answer to His question comes precisely when you take His body into yours.  It's at that moment that you answer the original, precise and ultimate question that Christ asks you at Christmas - will you hold me?

I have no idea how your answer will save the world.  I just know that's what Jesus wants for Christmas, and that you were born and made for this moment.  The fate of Christmas turns on your answer, and your touch, if only you're not afraid.  

Do not be afraid, Mary, to hold me.  Do not be afraid, Joseph, to hold me.  Do not be afraid, little ones of St. Ann, to hold me!  It's my decision to bet Christmas on you, and it's all I want.

If you've ever held a newborn baby, you know that you're the one being held.  If you're scared to hold a baby, you've scared of Christmas.  You've forgotten who you are, and the meaning of your life.  

Jesus appears as a baby tonight just in case any one of us will not be afraid of the original, precise and ultimate Christmas question - will you hold me?  If any one of us dares say yes, a Christmas miracle will happen here tonight, and what you want for Christmas, and what Jesus wants for Christmas, will really come true.

+mj 

Must I be joyful?

Homily

3rd Sunday of Advent C2

Gaudete Sunday

15 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village, KS

AMDG

Must I be joyful?

The Church on Gaudete Sunday, Pink Sunday, Rejoice Sunday, forces the issue more than a little.  Everywhere we turn in this liturgy, there is a command.  Rejoice! Did you hear me?  Rejoice or else!  Rejoice no matter what!  Hey I'm talking to you, and I'll say it again, rejoice!

What gives?  Can the Church demand that I be joyful? Is that how this works?  What if I don't feel joyful this Christmas?  What good does it do to shout at me and demand that I rejoice?

Trust me, I wish it was this easy.  Sometimes when I come to Mass, I don't feel joyful.  I can be tired, skeptical, anxious.  Sometimes I wish I didn't have to bring the faith and energy every time.

Yet in commanding joy, the Church is simply asking me to live in reality.  I am here to recognize the truth that my Savior is near.  The command to rejoice is never asking you to feel differently than you do. Feelings can't be commanded.  It's not wishing upon a star, for joy is not a shifting emotion nor a naive optimism.  Joy must be something else.  It's an objective reality.  It is a truth.  It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit, a love that endures and conquers all things, that is dwelling near me and indeed in me.

Must I be joyful?  Only if I want to live in reality, the reality that I am wheat, not chaff.   Must I be joyful?  If I embrace the truth of who God is, joy will certainly result.  For if God was not closer to me than I am to myself, I could not exist.  Still more, if there is not a mercy greater than sin, evil and death, that is coming to visit me, then I am doomed.  My days are numbered.

John the Baptist is the greatest true prophet, announcing the good news of reality!  Jesus wants to be born for you and in you, precisely as you are on Christmas, 2024.  The shifting circumstances and cocktail of emotions you are experiencing are as nothing compared to this truth.  If Jesus is asking you intimately and personally to hold Him in your heart this Christmas, you have nothing to fear.  Living in this reality, has only one response, which the Church command on Gaudete Sunday.

Yes I command you, because I have to tell you the truth, and I say it again, rejoice!

+mj

What have I learned from my worst travel mistake?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent

8 December 2024

St. Ann Catholic Parish - Prairie Village

AMDG

What did I learn from my worst travel mistake?  My Christmas may depend on my answer.

I have too many mistakes to count.  I'm a terrible traveler.  I arrive at the airport usually just 30 minutes before my flight.  I run my tank on empty a lot of the time, and yes I do occasionally run out of gas.  Everyone wishes me a safe trip, but I'm never as careful as I need to be.  I drive all night sometimes just so I can maximize my time.  I need to tip my guardian angels big time!

Yet two mistakes trump the rest.  I've been caught in blizzards twice.  The first one was before smartphones, in 2001.  When I left Hoxie for Colorado Springs, the sky was blue.  When I got to Goodland, Kansas the Interstate was closed, but I had no idea why.  I hadn't listened to any forecast.  I though maybe it was just a detour and took a country road until I could get back on the interstate.  

Before I hit Limon, I was in big trouble.  My life was perhaps saved by a truck that jackknifed in front of me, blocking the interstate.  I had to stop, which was good for my two-wheel drive car.  Thankfully I had a cell signal so I could stay in touch with my dad by phone, and enough gas to idle the car every once in awhile so I could stay warm.  I sat on the interstate for 8 hours until the blizzard passed and the road cleared. making a 3.5 hour trip in 14 hours.  

Why I was going to Colorado Springs that day is another story, and one that you'll have to try to get out of me by persuasion.  Suffice it to say it was a trip motivated by pride that made me rash and blind!

I didn't learn my lesson from that blizzard though.  In early 2020 I took an epic trip through Phoenix, Vegas, Zion, Salt Lake, Palm Desert, San Diego, LA, Sequoia, Yosemite and Napa Valley in my two-wheel drive Ford Fusion.  All was well until I needed to pass through the Sierra Nevadas and Tahoe on my final way home.  An atmospheric river was heading east but I thought I would be ahead of it.  Stuck for hours in traffic while dropping a friend at the Sacramento Airport, the atmospheric river got ahead of me.  I had to drive in torrential rain until I got to Tahoe, where the rain turned to blizzard conditions.  I had been warned I would never make it home on this epic journey in January in a two-wheel drive car, and I was too proud to admit defeat or spend an extra four days or more in Tahoe that I didn't think I had time to give.  So I put myself and others in danger, white-knuckling through the chain law signs until I got on the other side of the blizzard infally.  Again, my pride go the best of me.  I heard later that several people died in avalanches while skiing the massive amount of snow I had just driven through.

Today's Advent scriptures beg us to learn from our travel mistakes.  Please learn better than I have.  Your Advent depends on it.  If you are going to have your best Christmas, there has to be a smooth and level highway to your heart, so the Lord can arrive and find a place to be born there..  You need to improve the travel conditions to your heart, and you can.

The valleys are my sins.  The mountains are my pride.  The rough and windy roads are my stubbornness, my insistence on controlling things my way instead of following 'the way' that Jesus marks out for me.

What have I learned from my worst travel mistake?  My Christmas depends on the answer.

+mj