Love tests the self

Homily
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
3 February 2012
Daily Readings

You can't be a Christian without a prophetic dimension to your life.  You can't be a Christian without embracing the truth with all your heart, mind and strength, but perhaps most importantly, you can't be a Christian without proclaiming the truth and living the truth by what you say and do.  Like Jeremiah in tonight's first reading, each one of us, especially by virtue of our baptism, has a truth placed in us, a word of truth that comes from God, that must be spoken and lived.  It is a truth as unique to each one of us as our personhood itself.  We neglect this proclamation to our own peril, and all of us know this too well.  It is no fun to be false or duplicitous, to pretend to be something we are not.  Joy is found in authenticity, and in not being afraid to be truthful.

Still, the temptation to be popular or look better than we really are can easily take over our lives.  Most of us  confess our tendency to lie, or to gossip, mostly for the trivial reason of wanting to look better.  We know that this sin particularly gains momentum.  The adage that each lie needs seven more to cover it up rings true.  Most of all, we fail to speak up for the truth and for our faith particularly, when it is maligned.  Whether something blasphemous, immoral or untruthful is said, we are not usually ready to stand up. We can use the excuse that we do not know how to defend every inch of our faith, but not knowing everything does not excuse us from not saying anything.   The disdain for faith that we sometimes encounter can be discouraging, but we need to keep learning our faith, especially in this Year of Faith, and keep fighting.

The Lord encourages Jeremiah in today's first reading in his prophetic fight.  He reminds Jeremiah of something very simple.  He is not alone.  Neither are we.  In our prophetic witness, we should always remember that it is the Lord himself who wishes to speak through us.  It is he who has planted his word within us, who has given us this prophetic dimension of our lives, and who stands with us always.  Not only him, but the hosts of heaven, and the tradition of the saints, encourages us not to cower as if we are outnumbered.  At all times, we are on the winning side, and we should act like it.  Take courage, the Lord says to Jeremiah, and know that I am with you.

St. Paul in the second reading correctly tells us that this prophetic dimension of our lives, while essential, is not fundamental.  The vocation to love is fundamental to the life of a Christian.  Love is the reason there is something rather than nothing.  As we say in the Mass preface, love is our origin, love is our constant calling, and love is our perfection in heaven.  Compared to love truth is nothing.  Truth belongs to God, but love is his most central reality.  God is love, and he is nothing more and nothing less than love.

Pope Benedict XVI followed the lead of St. Paul when he released his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est.  Archbishop James Keleher, the bishop who ordained me, always told his priests that there is one thing you must never fail to say in every homily.  That one necessary thing is to tell people that God loves them.  It is necessary because we have such a powerful sinful tendency within us to equivocate what love is.  Love for french fries and love for God cannot be more different, yet we use the same word.  We have a powerful tendency to replace love with indirect egotism, and this must always be purified within us. Christians must never stop purifying how we understand and speak about love.

The Holy Father traces in that first encyclical the movement from eros to agape, from the addition of good things in one's life to the full maturation of love, which is addition by subtraction, for a falling in love that is agape is finding something worth dying for.  St. Thomas Aquinas says the ultimate definition of love is an act of the will, precisely willing the good of the other as other.  Love is falling so far so as to forget yourself, so much so that St. Paul says love can bear all things and suffer all things and endure all things.  Love allows a person to truly find himself through a disinterested gift of himself.  In the end, as St. Paul teaches, this is all that matters in life.  Falling in love and staying in love determines everything about human personhood, human dignity and human destiny.  The two essential questions that every person must answer at each moment of their lives are these:  who loves you the most and who do you love the most?  St. Paul is right on that nothing else matters.

Through the gift of his son God has shown himself madly in love with us.  God is so in love with us that if we dare compare the love of Christ to any human love, we are the most pitiable people of all.  There is no point in being a Christian if the love of Christ is not the most unique and powerful love in the universe.  Yet if it is, we have to stop playing games with God, like those who encountered Jesus in Nazareth.  Love doesn't measure what's in it for me.  True love does not play childish games with another person.  You can't fall in love if you're still thinking like a child and acting like a child.  Love doesn't test the other, it tests the self by serving the other with all one's heart and mind and strength.  

Catholic family and tradition

Homily
3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
27 January 2013
Daily Readings

I'm not trying to rub KU's win over K-State on Tuesday in the noses of Wildcat fans.  Especially when it comes to KU basketball, I always try to keep it classy, and to act like we've been there before, which we have.  That being said, it's easy to tell the difference between KU and K-State basketball fans.  For one game, K-State fans become the angriest and loudest fans in the nation, turning Bramlage into ostensibly the 'Octagon of Doom.'  But it doesn't work.  Bramlage doesn't have the magic of Allen Fieldhouse.  And by magic I don't mean superstition or karma or phogginess, whatever that is.  By magic I really mean home court advantage.  A true home court advantage, as K-Staters learn, is not something you can just pull out of a hat when you need it.  It is an identity that you build up over time, bit by bit.  It needs consistency.  Again, I'm just using a metaphor that's available, not trying to pile on K-State, which has great fans.  Lord knows the chaplain at K-State could give the same homily about KU football fans.

St. Paul is talking in the second reading today about the parts of the body all being indispensable, as a metaphor for talking about what Christ's body, the Church, should be.  Allen Fieldhouse is consistently ranked as the greatest home court in the nation, even greater than Cameron at Duke, because this attitude that St. Paul talks about is the attitude of KU basketball fans.  Everybody plays a part.  Everyone is important.  That's the only way it works in the long term - if everyone shows up.  When you pack 16,300 not just for some games, but for every game, you end up with a home court advantage that is not a velleity or a gimmick, but one that is real.  That only happens if tens of thousands of people buy into the tradition that each person is important.  When that is real, it is powerful.  When people begin to doubt it, the whole thing crumbles.

Ezra and Nehemiah in the first reading are witnessing the aftermath of the loss of the city of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile.  The walls of the city are torn.  The tradition is gone.  A once proud people have been scattered and made weak.  What did they do?  They began telling the tradition again.  They started reading their story, beginning with Abraham and then through Moses, as a way of telling the family story once again, of bringing the family back together.  The people were so overjoyed at hearing their story again, they wept and listened for six hours.  Think of what it would feel like to win a game at Allen Fieldhouse after losing every game for many years, and you get the picture.  More accurately, think about what it would feel like to re-enter your hometown after it had been occupied by foreigners for many years.  That is the scene that is being described.

I don't know if this happens in your family, but when my extended family gets together to hang out, it is a big deal who is there and who is not.  Nothing makes my grandparents prouder that to say that everyone came - all the grandkids, all the cousins - everybody!  You know you have a family when everyone plays a part, when everyone feels important, when everyone comes together.

So it is with Mass every Sunday.  This is our huddle.  This is our family.  Before we enter back into the world, we gather to hear our story, to share a meal, to make a gameplan for bringing the truth and love of Jesus Christ into the world, which is our mission.  Mass is not a drive-through and we are not customers.  We are family and we are owners, and the only way this tradition, which has lasted longer and produced more Hall of Famers than even Allen Fieldhouse, will keep going, is if everyone decides to play their part.  So let's huddle.  Let's hear our story.  Let's pray together.  Let's win!

Supersmart Magi

Homily
Solemnity of the Epiphany
6 January 2013
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings
Audio

At any university like KU, the interplay between faith and reason is essential.  A university should be called a trade school if it is anything less than a community of learners where the search for truth is not fragmented, but is shared.  It makes little sense for a university to house both a religion and physics department, without getting the conversation right between the two.

Especially important is the elimination of any imaginary dichotomy between faith and reason, between science and metaphysics.  Western universities were founded historically by the Catholic Church's search for ultimate truth, and a unified truth.  There was no divorce between faith and reason, and every Catholic university had a physics department, as they do today.  There are too many today who think the Church's difficulties with Galileo prove that the Church exists to keep science down, and yet nothing could miss the bigger picture more.  Name me a Catholic school or university that doesn't teach science.  What is more, long after Galileo's case was reconciled, Catholic thinkers continued, as they do today, to make some of the greatest advances in science.  The founder of modern genetics, which led the way to modern Darwinism, and the original proponent of the Big Bang theory, which some posit now will eliminate the need for God, were both devout Catholic priests. The Catholic Church, especially her last two pontiffs, write some of the deepest and most fruitful reflections on the interplay between faith and reason.  Anyone who thinks the Catholic Church is the enemy of science has their head in the sand.

On Epiphany specifically, it is important that we do not allow a certain scientism or disdain for religion to denigrate the example of the magi.  We should reject outright a storyline that shows the magi to be fools, those willing to trade-in the sure knowledge of astronomy for the old myths of those too naive to be scientific.  No, the magi were the smartest persons of their time, for they understood something that we still need to get right today, that the science of the universe derives its efficacy from a theological worldview.  Specifically, science only makes sense if two things are true - if the world is not divine and if it is intelligible.  Yet it is theology, a reflection on God's revelation of himself, that delivers these two truths.  Specifically, theology the highest of sciences saves science from being a circular and futile exercise of matter and energy seeking to encounter matter and energy. No, it is because of its grounding in theology and metaphysics that science can and does make real and important distinctions between what is real and necessary and eternal, and what is not.

The magi were smart for another reason.  They were especially astute because they realized that the most precious knowledge one can obtain is knowledge that enhances what it means to be a human person.  Knowledge of stars is great, and amazing, and inspiring, but insights into persons are better, because we, the ones obtaining the knowledge, are persons, not stars.  The magi knew this.   The mere possibility that the force controlling the heavens could have a human face was enough to make them run in haste.  That the most powerful force in the universe was also powerful enough to allow himself to enter into the vulnerabilities and contingencies of time, space, and the human condition, was a revelation worthy of their finest gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  Far from being an embarrassing vestige, the magi represent the wisdom of mankind welcoming the light of any truth, scientific AND theological, physical and metaphysical, that enhances an understanding of human personhood, human dignity, and human destiny.  For these are the most important truths of all, the truth of who we really are.

It is not embarrassing for science and religion to both confess together that in making progress toward these understandings of human personhood, dignity and destiny, there is still more we don't know that what we know.  They mystery of God and of his universe are still mysterious to us in every sense, and to do anything but stand in humble awe of these mysteries is foolish.   Both disciplines, theology and science, have plenty of work left in front of them, without any unnecessary and artificially inflated antagonism.  The Church can and should continue to support and welcome the advances of science, that shine light into reality and truth.  Yet the Church should focus even more on producing saints, who are the fruit of true religion.  Saints are those stars of humanity, who even without scientifically certain knowledge of who they are and where they came from and what they should do, still are able to most perfectly emanate the light of personal transcendent love that has been revealed as the ground of all reality.  Long before theology and science complete their work, many of us will have to live the light of faith that teaches us the truth of what we must do to fulfill our destiny: namely, that there is no greater love than this, than to lay down one's life for one's friends.  

On Epiphany Christians are especially encouraged to shine the light of Christ into dark places, into the land of the Gentiles.  The world needs the light of Christ, and is meant to walk in its light, but can only do so if and where that light is shone by the lives of real Christians.  On Epiphany, we are to contemplate that the world would be much darker indeed if only reason is allowed to purify faith, but faith is prevented from purifying reason.  The light of Christ can bring clarity in areas where our reason has obfuscated the truth.  Specifically in our western world, the light of the Christ child can teach the world how to see itself again through the eyes of its most precious resource, its children.  The light of Christ child can make a difference in our schizophrenic morality regarding abortion.  The light of Christ child can show where cultures with millions of smartphones might not be smart enough to not contracept themselves out of existence.  The light of Christ can show us that it might not be a smart thing to be more organic in our selection of food that in what makes us most human, our sexuality.  By eschewing natural chastity and natural family planning for artificial contraception that makes the body malfunction, we are running away from what makes us most human - authentic, natural, vulnerable, sacrificial and fruitful love.  Instead of following the light of the Christ child, we make ourselves less personal, and less human, by forgetting where we came from, and trading the true view of the world from the eyes of children to the powerful and selfish will of adults.  In these areas, the light of faith can and should purify our reason, and can keep us from running away from who we really are as human persons.

Anyone who thinks the world needs the light of Christ any less today than we did 2000 years ago is a fool indeed.  The magi, far from being mythological vestiges from the past, represent a fresh hope for not forgetting the wisdom of the past, and being ready to welcome the scientific and theological wisdom of the future.  Most of all, they give voice to the Church's proclamation each epiphany - that wise men still seek Him!  Amen.

Jesus prayers

Homily
Christmas Weekday
Optional Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus
3 January 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

St. John tells us something remarkable about sin.  Sin is the commission of evil or the omission of good by the will of a person who can and should do better.  Yet St. John gives us a deeper, spiritual and relational concept of sin.  Sin is the lack of the presence of Jesus.  In Jesus, whose name means salvation from sin, there is no sin.  Therefore, sin exists wherever he does not, and vice versa.  That is why John is able to say that anyone who remains in sin has neither seen him nor known him.

These words might seem discouraging to those of us who live a confusing mix of trying to have a sincere relationship with Jesus while at the same time still being sinners.  What St. John says might seem to be too black and white, in or out, saved or not saved.  Our human experience can be different.  We experience salvation not only as a once and for all but something that must be reclaimed and relived every day.  Most of us live not in the either/or but in the both/and category.

Yet what St. John tells us should not be discouraging, but tremendously encouraging.  He simply tells us that the victory over sin belongs to Jesus, not to us, and that it will be accomplished in us more by Christ acting in us, with us, and through us, that by anything we could do.  That is why surrendering to the reality and power of his love and grace, made present whenever we call upon his holy name, is the surest path to holiness, more sure than any self-improvement plan we might have in the new year.  Make it your pledge to call upon his holy name, especially in times of temptation and doubt, for his name, as the Catechism says, is the only name that makes present the reality that it signifies.  Amen.  

Review Christmas in slow motion

Homily
Christmas Weekday
Memorial of Sts. Basil and Gregory
2 January 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

John the Baptist, as the last and greatest prophet, is the best at teaching us the fundamentals.  Specifically, he is the best at preparing us to recognize and to receive the Lord.  Today's Gospel may seem out of place, for the time of Advent preparation has given way to Christmas joy, Advent expectation to Christmas celebration, and yet the fundamentals of the Christian life always stay the same, and we can never stop practicing them. In other words, we need John the Baptist as much now as we needed him two weeks ago. In the liturgy too, just because we started celebrating Christmas does not mean that we skip the penitential rite of preparation, the baptism of repentance, at the start of Mass.  No, it is still important to prepare to celebrate the sacred mysteries, for as we learned especially with the birth of the King while the world was sleeping, the presence of Christ and of the kingdom may come in small packages, and there is a strong likelihood that we will miss his coming, even in the great Christmas season upon us now.

For those of you who are addicted to watching sports, you know that the replay has become indispensable.  Now that we know we can review what just happened, there is an insatiable desire to see what we just saw, in slow motion and from a different angle.  Maybe the preaching of John the Baptist can cause us to review our Christmas celebration, to see what just happened, from a different angle, and in slow motion, so that we can appreciate the reality and beauty of Christmas even more!  Amen.

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!