Catholic schools teach physics

Homily
5th Sunday of Ordinary Time B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
5 February 2012

Thank goodness we have Mario's miracle to sustain us at KU.  Denmon's multiple miracles in last night's game would sting all the more if we didn't have our own miracles to fall back on, including our miracle that led to the national championship.  Missouri can have the last game at their place.  They hit big shots to win it.  But we have 7 straight championships, 17 out of the last 21 against them, and a miracle that led to a national championship to boot.  See you in Lawrence Tigers.

Of course when we talk about Mario's miracle, none of us actually believe it is a miracle.  It was nearly impossible, but not a miracle.  Mario's miracle is great aliteration, but not entirely accurate.  He hit a huge shot. Nothing more.

Which brings us to the miracles of today's Gospel.  Real miracles.  Yet are they?  Has our use of the word miracle become so loose so as to equate the improbable with the miraculous?  Were Jesus' healings and exorcisms real, or the wishful stories of the uneducated who lived before the scientific era?,

There are some who would throw each and everyone of us who come to Church today into this category of the naive, the superstitious, and those afraid to face reality.  Yet have those who accuse Catholics of such things looked at the science department of any Catholic school or university?  Have such people looked at the scientific analysis that takes place at the Congregation of Saints, which confirms miracles in our Church today?  Or are they themselves too naive or lazy to admit that the Church is not afraid of science, and instead welcomes her discoveries with open arms?  To hear some of them speak, you would think that the Church stopped teaching physics in her universities in the medieval area, or at the time of Galileo.  It's hogwash, and lazy prejudice to assert such things.

We should find it interesting that the same Church which confirms miracles like miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and countless others that confirm the sanctity of the Church's saints, teaches science at the highest levels in most all her schools and universities.  Anyone who wishes to say that there is a divorce between faith and science, between what God wishes to reveal about Himself, and what man is able to discover about created reality, has this to contend with.  For the Church, the question is never a simple either, or, but a profound both, and.  The Church seeks to understand both spiritual reality and created reality, both metaphysics and physics, with great vigor.  In looking into miracles, the Church uses the highest known standards of science, before confirming a miracle.

Still, the Church is able to confirm that real miracles still do take place. In fact, to be a Christian is not to believe that the miracles of Jesus were just for a time, but to believe that our Lord is as intimately involved in the world today through His Spirit as he ever was, including the time of great signs that we hear about in today's Gospel.  The Church of course is willing to listen to any scientist who thinks he can disprove the miracles presented, but the Church will not pretend that the miraculous intervention of God belongs to a superstitious past.  While the Church as no right to demand or control such miracles, nor is it her charism to say definitively why some miracles happen and others do not, it is her charism to teach against a deism which allows God only to be the author of the laws of nature, and disallows his miraculous intervention in the world.  Against this, the Church is proud to proclaim a God who is not distant but passionately in love with the world he created, and who both allows the laws of nature to do their work but also shows forth his power and care through miracles which can be confirmed.  The Church has always seen the miracles of her saints to be a sure sign of the Lord's presence and a confirmation that the Church though filled with sinners is also holy.

It is not hard to find scientists today who say that Newtonian physics which govern things in the macro will give way to quantum physics, which perhaps has greater promise of unlocking the mysteries of reality and the beginning of the universe.  Which is to say that what seems to be impossible by Newtonian physics may prove to be explainable by quantum physics.  You can take this two ways - first, that science has a long way to go before it will understand physics well enough to disprove miracles, or two, that the Church is going to have a harder and harder time proving her miracles in the face of a rapidly advancing science.  One thing is for sure, the standard of what is a miracle and what is not will not change.  A miracle is that which cannot be disproven by science, and so it is a reliable sign of the action and presence of God.  The Church's faith cannot endure forever on superstition, but only on God who is being and existence in Himself.   So the Church will continue to teach science to the chagrin of those who accuse her of naivete, and use science to rule out anything that is not truly miraculous, so that her faithful can put their faith not in the gaps, but in what remains - the good, the true, the necessary, the beautiful, the eternal; namely God himself.  Amen.

celibacy is here to stay

Homily
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time B
St. Joseph's Shawnee and St. Lawrence Center KU
Daily Readings

In my business, the vocation business, I get a lot of "I don't know's."  When I ask young person after young person, especially the unmarried men of our Church, 'What is Jesus Christ asking you to do with your life?" I get a lot of "I don't know father. Why are you asking me?"  It used to bother me that more young guys didn't know the answer to this crucial question that is an obvious corollary to their faith, nor were many of them desperate to find the answer.  Now I expect this answer.  I don't think they are lying to me . Many of them truly don't know because they are still on the journey of encountering Jesus, before they can receive a holy vocation directly from him.

Moses tells the Israelites in tonight's first reading from Deuteronomy that it will not be God's long term plan to use 'scare tactics.'  It is not his plan to force us to do his will, for God is love, and love does not control, but it sets the beloved free.  God had flashed his glory and thundered his power at Horeb, in such a way that the Israelites thought they were going to die.  The same could be true of us, if in the discernment of our vocation God showed us in a single flash everything that his gracious will for us truly contained, we might easily die of fright, instantly.  Yet God has chosen a different path - not to scare us, but to serve us.  Moses tells of a prophet who will deliver God's message in a human way, by conversation and relationship.  It is to this prophet, ultimately, Jesus Christ, that we must be obedient through him to find our vocation.

As Paul notes in today's second reading, Jesus Christ still personally invites men and women to a different way of life, to be conformed especially to Himself and His Church through the gift of celibacy.  Yes, your heard me right.  Jesus gives the gift of celibacy to those he chooses.  Celibacy is most fundamentally a gift, moreso than a discipline and sacrifice, because it is a way of being with Jesus and conversing with Him, by standing in the world where he stood, and by relying more immediately on the uniqueness and depth of His divine love.  Celibacy seems perennially to be more than the modern world can stand, as it provokes disbelief and mockery, even though many men and women live it well.  The same media that promotes promiscuity in all its tv shows seems to delight in trying to prove through the unchastity of a few that celibacy is unnatural, harmful and impossible.  They have succeeded in getting great numbers of Catholics to be misinformed and embarrassed by celibacy.  But they will never succeed in disproving what St. Paul says in tonight's second reading.  For St. Paul tells us the truth, that celibacy is a real way of relating to Jesus.  The truth is that although our Church must always repent and make reparations for any way she fails to live up to her lofty ideals, that celibacy retains and will always retain the value that Paul gives it in the second reading.  It is good for men and women to take up Jesus on his word to trust in His love in an extraordinary way.  The world needs such a witness.  Men and women struggling with loneliness need such a witness.  Christianity does too.  Sometimes Catholics get a bad rap for paying more attention to our sacraments and devotions than to scripture, but where else but in the Catholic church will you find men and women living what Paul literally tells us about celibacy in today's Scripture, men and women joyfully and fruitfully banking their lives on the love of Christ, as the vast majority of priests and religious do in the Catholic Church?

The men that I get to work with as vocations director for our Archdiocese, the men who are answering the call to be your priests after Jesus' own heart, have responded to the call of Jesus that reaches the hearts of men just as surely today as it has for 2000 years.  Thank you for your prayers and support of our seminarians, who despite plenty of negativity and scandal will not let the evil one have the last say.  These guys are amazing.  They are not afraid of celibacy, even though many tell them the shouldn't do it or can't do it.  They choose instead to listen to Christ and to trust that his teaching is always new and that He teaches with authority.  Staying close to our Lord, and taking him up on his offer that his presence and love and call will be enough to sustain them, these men have cast out the demons of fear, anxiety and doubt to say yes to the Lord's call to be your priests.  They need and ask for your prayers. I ask for your prayers for them.  As we see in tonight's Gospel, the evil one wins when he can remain hidden  and can seduce us with his lies.  Yet when we take the Lord Jesus up on his promise, and don't water down what he says, then the impossible becomes possible again.  Young men today, even 2000 years after Jesus' Ascension, can welcome him into their lives and when they act with him, in him and through him, the evil one who takes away our chance to be a saint is scattered, and holy vocations can once again be heard and answered in our Church.  Pray God, let is continue to be so.  Amen.  

encounter Christ, find yourself

Homily
3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time B
Holy Trinity Parish, Paola and St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
21/22 January 2012
Daily Readings

Those who have wives should act as not having them.  This line from St. Paul is perhaps the most striking of all the lines that hit us this weekend.  Even more striking than learning that the prophet Jonah was able to convert the entire city of Ninevah with the word he received from God.  Even more incredible than seeing Peter and Andrew, James and John drop everything and respond to the Lord's call to follow them.  Those who have wives should act as not having them, for time is running out.  The world as we know it is passing away.  Strange words from the great apostle.

We've been through enough cycles of apocalyptic predictions, despite our Lord telling us clearly that we do not know the day nor the hour, not to succumb to the superficial meaning of Paul's words.  When he says those who haves wives should act as not having them, this is not a call for men to abandon all responsibilities to make sure they are individually prepared for the rapture, wives and children be damned.  Paul in Ephesians, in the great treatise on marriage, says quite the opposite, that a real husband should love his wife as Christ loves the Church, and should hand himself over to his wife so as to love her into holiness.  So Paul can't mean an abdication of responsibility.  Rather, he points to a responsibility and a vocation that is prior to the marriage of a man and woman; namely, the responsibility to be married to God before we dare to be married to each other.  Paul's urgency is directed toward what we name the universal call to holiness.  It is the same call that Jesus gave to Peter, Andrew, James and John, urging them to leave their livelihoods as well, to become fishers of men.

This eternally fruitful marriage between Christ and His Church is perfectly accomplished in the Holy Eucharist we are about to celebrate.  Here the two are made one - Christ and His Church become one body, one spirit, in the communion celebrated.  It is because this marriage of Christ and His Church is the most real and enduring marriage, and is the source and perfection of married love, that Paul can say that those who are not aware of Christ's love for them, should act as if not having a wife.  Paul rightfully creates an urgency in responding to the love of Jesus Christ, the love of a Creator for his creation and the love of a savior for sinners.  It is because the love of Christ is greater than any human love, for He knows us better than we know ourselves, and as our Savior loves us where we cannot love ourselves, at the point of our greatest sin, that Paul can say what He says and Jesus can call as He calls.  Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.

Without a true encounter with Jesus Christ, without a realization on our part that it is encountering Him that I will find myself and without a confession of the uniqueness and depth of His love for me, then the accounts of vocation and discipleship in tonight's readings are absurd.  Mary's last words in recorded scripture are 'Do whatever He tells you" and her words, as we would suspect, represent the perfect way for a Christian to receive His vocation from Jesus.  Do whatever He tells you.  But why would I trust Jesus more than I trust myself?  Why would I do only and precisely what He tells me, when I can respond to my own desires?  Why is following Him freedom and not slavery?

Christian discipleship and vocation is much different than how the world tells us to find ourselves.  The world challenges us to find our uniqueness in isolation - what makes me special and different than anyone else?  Only after answering this question can we find our mission in life, so says the world.  A Christian instead is called to find his uniqueness not in isolation but in relationship - we find ourselves insofar as we dare to encounter God, and by how we respond to Jesus' invitation to fall in love with him after the pattern of his falling in love with us.  It is only if this falling in love has taken place, and only if it is taking place as we encounter an ever more mysterious person who in the end desires not to be my boss but to be my friend who unlocks my greatest potential, that obedience to His voice, and doing only what He tells me, becomes my greatest freedom and joy, and my sure path to happiness and eternal life.  

bishops need prayers

Homily
Friday of the 2nd Week of Ordinary Time II
20 January 2012
Danforth Chapel at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Today we listen from the Gospel of Mark about Jesus choosing the first apostles.  Upon hearing the reading, I immediately begin praying for our local bishop Archbishop Naumann, the pope and all bishops.  It is easy to forget when you become friends with your 'boss' and spend so much time with him, that he carries with him the full responsibilities of the apostolic mission of the Church.  The Holy Father Pope Benedict is a 'first among equals' but each bishop is a true successor of the apostles, chosen by Christ through the vehicle of the Church, to be sent out to teach, forgive, and sanctify.  It is an impossible task, being responsible for the unity and salvation of so many people, not only Catholics but all those in the Archdiocese.  Were it not truly Jesus himself active in and through ordinary, fallible men, the leadership of the bishops would have long ago fallen apart.  Bishops make many mistakes.  They would be the first to admit that.  Yet they have been called by Christ to a mission that they cannot shrink from.  They deserve and need our prayers.

St. Fabian was one of the first bishops of Rome, who bravely took up this unique responsibility of being a successor to the apostles, and suffered martyrdom because he would not shrink from the challenge in front of him.  May his powerful prayers and witness on his feast day give courage to all bishops, and their closest helpers, the priests and deacons of the Church.  Amen.

For the Church, especially for our local bishop and his intentions, and those of the Holy Father, we pray to the Lord.

For the world in which we live, that all people would have the courage of their convictions, and that lasting peace and justice would spring forth, we pray to the Lord

For the mission of St. Lawrence to the University of Kansas, that the truth of the Gospel would find a good hearing here, and all learning by perfected by charity, we pray to the Lord

For the intentions we bring to this Mass, especially for those who are lonely, sick, scared or doubtful, and those who have no one to pray for them, we pray to the Lord

For the humility and faith to respond generously when we are called by the Lord to a holy vocation within the Church, we pray to the Lord.

Heavenly Father, look with kindness upon the cries of your children, and grant us only those things that are truly good for us, and in accordance with your gracious will, for we ask everything always through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Quick Takes for today

• Blessings and prayers to Archbishop Naumann, Mike Scherschligt and all those from the Archdiocese embarking on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land - 101 in all!  Pray for us!
• The same to Fr. Steve Beseau and all those attending the FOCUS national leadership conference in Baltimore this weekend and/or going on the March for Life, especially the two KU buses!
• I'll be in Paola this weekend preaching on Call to Share!  This will be my first visit there as vocation director.
• The Jayhawks and Longhorns always play epic games against each other; here's hoping KU keep rolling Saturday at 3pm in Austin.  Rock Chalk.
• I'll be saying the 12:10pm Mass at Danforth Chapel today on campus, followed by the hearing of St. Thomas Aquinas confessions, and a Mass for their senior Kairos retreat at Savior Pastoral Center this afternoon.  Then hopefully catch a little of the Saints Classic where my friend Fr. Brian O'Brien will be watching the Bishop Kelley boys team do battle.  Fr. Brian is the president of that high school in Tulsa.

don't be afraid of this baby!

Homily
Solemnity of Christmas
Mass at Midnight
St. Frances Cabrini Church
Hoxie, Kansas
24 December 2011
Daily Readings

We might be more afraid of babies today than Herod was at the birth of Jesus.  Granted, Herod had some reason to be alarmed.  There were signs in the heavens that this new child had armies of angels in his corner that could make even the most fearsome armies of Caesar panic.  Still, Herod was afraid of a baby.  He felt threatened by a helpless little baby!  But what about us?  Are we afraid to be changed by the baby Jesus tonight?  Have we truly come here tonight not out of fear or indifference, but out of love?  We have to admit that sometimes we are changed more by the society that we live in than we are by the newborn Jesus. 

We live in a society that seems to spend more energy manufacturing or aborting babies than in seeing children as the miraculous gifts that they are.  We spend more time arguing about the redefinition of marriage and the family than in forming young people capable of the sacrifice of marriage that will make the babies that will secure our future more secure themselves. The same societies that are smart enough to build ever more impressive smart-phones are not smart enough to stop contracepting and sterilizing their economies and themselves out of eventual existence.  Herod might have been afraid of a single child.  We are in a society afraid to admit that babies are our future, and to welcome them accordingly.

Perhaps this battle first fought by Mary and Joseph, to find a place to have a baby, will be the defining struggle of our generation.  Being born in 1974, one year after Roe v. Wade, abortion in the civil-rights struggle of my generation, the struggle for the the right to be born,a battle that has yet to be won in favor of the baby.  Yet this struggle goes hand in hand with finding a real definition of what a human person is, and this is a question that our society gets more and more confused about.  We know a lot more stuff than we used to, but we are getting dumber at being able to say what a human person is.  That is why the celebration of Christmas, the welcoming of the baby Jesus into the world, is the best chance the world has to remember what it is in danger of forgetting - who we really are. 

We have a saying that to forget where you came from is to forget who you are.  How a societytreats its most vulnerable like her babies is a sure sign of whether that society still knows and serves the dignity of human persons or whether human persons are becoming less and less valuable.  For us personally, to be able to see ourselves, and to remember where we came from, when we hold a newborn child, is the key to remembering that a human being becomes a person precisely when he is recognized, remembered and loved.  And this simple but profound and irreducible definition of a human person is more evident when we are vulnerable, dependent and poor; in short, when we are like a baby.  To remain a human person, to remember who we are  by remembering where we came from, is to always be able to see ourselves as poor, vulnerable, and dependent, like a baby.   To remain focused on the one thing that matters - that we are created in love, that love is our constant calling, and that love is our perfection in heaven, is to remember that as we go through life, that to stop being a child - poor, vulnerable and dependent, is to forget who we really are.  This my friends, is what the Christmas mystery has to continually re-teach the world.  It is how the Christmas mystery gives the world hope, by teaching us that babies are the key to everything.

Tonight in this sacred liturgy we welcome no ordinary child, but the Christ child, into our lives.  We simply go through the motions, and pretend that God is close to us, unless we truly adore this Christ child, which means to literally and really 'fall in love' with this new baby.  Christmas takes its name, of course, from Christ's Mass, and it is at Mass only when we receive this beautiful person of Jesus into our lives in the most perfect way imaginable.  It would be absurd then to base my definition of a good Christmas by any other standard other than what happens to my heart, when I receive the Holy Eucharist on this holy night, for to take the Lord Jesus under my roof, into my body and soul, is a more intimate experience than holding the this baby in our arms. Which of us, even the most crusty of us, could hold the baby Jesus in our arms, to have the privilege given to Mary, his mother,and fail to fall in love with him.  The Eucharist is nothing less than this privilege, and is perhaps even more, as the baby Jesus first born poor and in the cold humbles himself even more beautifully in the Eucharist so he can truly be here tonight.  We simply go through the motions, then, if we think that our experience here tonight is any less dramatic than what happened on that first holy night.  .

Jesus' perfect closeness to us at Mass is the reason that we can never give up on trying to be close to each other, and the perfect gift we receive here tonight is our reason to keep giving.  We gather at the darkest hour of the darkest night of the year to welcome with incomparable faith and joy Jesus who is the light strong enough to scatter every darkness.  The birth of Jesus from a virgin mother is the sign that the first creation of everything out of nothing by the virgin Father has reached its completion in Jesus, the new Adam.  Because he takes on our nature in the incarnation, our nature is capable of elevation to real participation in eternal, uncreated reality.  We rejoice on Christmas because we live in the fullness of time, when nothing is impossible for a God who never stops wanting to fall in love with us and be married to us, when the re-creation of the world is really taking place whenever a human person is not afraid to be visited by Jesus.  The angels tell the shepherds - do not be afraid!  We know deep down that we cannot afford to let this Christ's Mass pass with fear or indifference.  If I resist Christ at this moment when he makes himself perfectly irresistible, when will I ever receive him?  If not now, when?  Living in a world that is oftentimes afraid of babies, may I not be afraid to fall in love again, and to be visited and changed, by this most irresistible of babies, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laying in a manger.  Amen.  

Never forget where you came from

Homily
4th Sunday of Advent B
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
18 December 2011
Daily Readings

I have four brothers.  They are all pretty good hunters.  I am not.  I decided a few years ago, after about four hours of conversation about hunting, during which I had nothing to add, that if I was going to be an active member of this family, that I needed my own hunting stories, that I had better at least go buy a shotgun and some camouflage.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  And I've enjoyed the last couple of years hunting with my dad and brothers and extended family. I don't get to hunt very often, but the times I have, have been great.  In a way, it is remembering where I came from.  I grew up on the plains of western Kansas.  That's an important thing to know about me, and an important thing for me to remember about myself.  It's important no matter where you're from.  I'm 37 years old now, and I've traveled all around the world, but the one question that remains the same, no matter how old I get or how many people I meet, is the question - where are you from? 

This question, if we care to look at it, is of greater value than just being a conversation starter.  It can be that, and it can be fun to see how small the world really is, by comparing people that you know and places you've been.  It's a good way to meet people, talking about where you're from.  Yet the question holds a deeper value, a spiritual value you might say.  Knowing where you're from is important to knowing who you are.  Forgetting where you're from is the equivalent of saying that you don't know who you are. 

Enter the story of David, who after his many heroic accomplishments enjoyed a great amount of wealth and security, and a nice cedar house to dwell in, yet felt guilty that the ark of the covenent dwelt in a tent.  For a moment, David felt more secure than the Lord.  Boy was he wrong.  For a moment David thought that he was in a position to do something for the Lord, and forgot until corrected by the prophet Nathan that the Lord still stood ready to do something for David.  The Lord reminded David of where he came from and who he was, Jesse's smallest and least significant shepherd boy.  The Lord reminded David of all that he had done through David, with David and in David, and promised again what yet was to be accomplished, if David would only stand at the ready, and not pity the Lord.  The Lord reminded David that not all that much had changed.  He was still the Lord, and David was still David, that poor shepherd boy, if only David would remember who he was and where he came from.  David needed reminding that it was the Lord who chose David, not vice versa.

Enter Mary, who as we hear in today's Gospel, inherits the great promise made to David and his posterity, who while still a little helpless girl not unlike the insignificant shepherd boy David when he was first chosen, is made greater than any good king like David or any imperfect king like Caesar ever was or ever will be.  Mary is great because she remained poor, vulnerable and dependent.  When the angel greeted her, Mary was as poor, vulnerable and dependent as the day she was born.  Mary had not great worldly victories that we know of.  She was a nobody.  She was no great religious figure.  She was young in a culture that valued age and a woman in a culture that offered women little security apart from men.  Yet because she remained poor, vulnerable and dependent as the world sees, Mary was always aware of the most important thing:  she knew who loved her the most and who she loved the most.  That is what we learn from Mary.  For those of us called to communion, not isolation, for those of who who have love as our origin, the reason we are here instead of not here, who have love as our constant calling, the reason we keep going instead of quitting, for those of us who have love as our perfection in heaven, where the deepest desires of the heart promise to be filled, we need to learn from Mary how to stay centered on this one question we can't afford to get wrong.  Who loves me the most and who do I love the most?  This question is best answered when we are poor, vulnerable and dependent - it is in these circumstances only that we have the chance to learn the most important thing we have to learn.  It is in these circumstances only - poor, vulnerable and dependent, that we learn where we are from and who we really are.  Nobody remained in these circumstances more perfectly than Mary.

David was disappointed that the Lord dwelt in an unworthy tent.  Mary remembered what David forgot, that she was most unworthy, and had nothing to offer the Lord, which is why she welcomed the Lord under her roof more perfectly than David.  David, for all his greatness and accomplishments, still saw the Lord as dwelling over there, under the tent.  Mary surpasses David in listening to the angel declare - the Lord is with you.  He is under your tent.  She received the Christ child, then, not as the world receives him, not as you and I receive him, with fear or indifference, but with joy and expectation. 

Thank God, then, that Mary is the first member of our Church!  Thank God that she is with us.  For we are not poor, nor vulnerable, nor dependent.  When we look at the Christ child we rarely see ourselves, and even more rarely remember who we are or where we are from.  But Mary is with us!  She is on our team!  She is the last and greatest Advent prophet, and she will prepare room in Her Church for the coming of the Lord.  We are not ready for Christmas, but she is.  So let us be with her, and pray that her Fiat might find an echo in us.  Amen.

real rejoicing

Homily
Gaudete Sunday
11 December 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Rejoice in the Lord always.  Again I say rejoice!  The Lord is near!

Welcome to Pink Sunday.  Gaudete Sunday.  Rejoice Sunday.  We light the pink candle.  We turn the corner toward Christmas.  We rejoice for one reason, and one reason only.  The Lord is near.

The joy proposed to us Christians on this 3rd Sunday of Advent is a distinctive joy.  It is available here, and nowhere else.  It is not the joy of improved external circumstances.  It is not the joy of having things outwardly go better for us.  It is not the joy of beating Ohio State or hiring Charlie Weis.  No, as great as things like that are, and as thankful as we might be for such blessings, we rejoice today for a different reason, and for one reason only.  The Lord is near.

Today's joy is born of knowing that since for our Lord, a thousand years are like a day, that we have no right to expect a gift like Jesus Christ to come into the world, and yet we rejoice because we know for certain that he is coming.  We rejoice that he is coming not later, but now.  We rejoice that he has come, that he is coming, and that he will come again.  Those of us who sit in darkness have no right to anything but to sit in darkness, yet we rejoice that those of us who sit in darkness have seen a great light.  We have no right to take Christmas for granted, but have every responsibility to imagine a world without Christmas.  We have a duty to wonder if the Lord has not come to visit us if we would have long ago given up on visiting each other with His redeeming love.  For this reason, taking nothing for granted, we rejoice.  And we rejoice for one reason only, the Lord is near.

The coming of the Lord into the world brings something that nothing else can bring.  He alone through whom all things were made, has the power to remake everything.  This does not mean, as we have come to realize, that everything is about to go my way, or that things will turn out the way I think they should.  No, it means something else - that an outwardly imperfect world is being made perfect from the inside out.  Starting with the smallest and going to the greatest, the world is being made perfect from the inside out, and so are we.  This is the joy, the distinctive joy, the incomparable joy, that we are invited to contemplate and enter into.

It is a joy that perdures whether or not I am outwardly ready for Christmas, whether or not finals week goes the way I think it should.  It is a joy of knowing that there is one active inside of me that does more than I can ever do, one more interior to me than I am to myself who loves where I could never love myself, one closer to me than I am to myself who takes away any excuse I have not to be close to others.  I rejoice, because the Lord is near, and he is ready to visit me, and to change my life from the inside out.  I rejoice, then, because His coming brings nothing but joy, love and peace to my life, and that by his coming I am about to change more than I have ever changed before.  I rejoice  in this new hope, as surely as I can know that holding a newborn child can melt my heart.

John the Baptist as the greatest prophet tells us with great alarm that there is every chance that we will miss the Lord's visit again this year.  Because the Lord wishes to visit us beginning as a vulnerable child, we have every reason to expect that he will visit me at my weakest and most vulnerable point, at my smallest point.  It will take a pure faith, a faith unadulterated by the pride of sin and a faith uncluttered by the desire for things outwardly to go my way, in order for me to recognize the time of my own visitation.  St. Johnthe Baptist tells us that there is no option but true repentance from the depths of our heart.  For if we do not say with our Lady in her Magnificat that 'he has looked upon the lowliness of his handmaiden' then we are sure to miss Christmas again this year.

As St. Paul urges as well, let us look east and make ourselves as ready as we can be.  Still, we rejoice not that that we are ready, not that we can ever be ready, but because He is ready.  We rejoice for this reason, and this reason only.  He is ready.  And the Lord is near.