Tag: Advent

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Today we lit the last of the advent candles. Our wait for the coming of the Lord is almost complete. Whether the One who came and is to come is with us on Christmas day and the days to follow depend on whether we see the light, the light in the window, the window of our hearts. We desperately need that light to guide and console us through the storms of life. We need the light of Christ to guide us on our way with hope.

Some years ago there was an article in Catholic Digest about a Native American on a reservation here in South Dakota remembering when during a winter blizzard he had to go out to get wood. He had tied ropes from the house to the wood pile, but the wind had blown them down. On his way back he stumbled away from the house toward the open prairie and likely death. Confused for direction, he turned in circles and then saw a light. His wife had placed a kerosene lamp in the only window of the house. He recalled: “It was hard to see through all the snow – kind of shimmering light that seemed to be dancing. The woman hung it there for me to see in case I got lost. It saved my life, that light. All that was between me and the big dark.”

When Advent begins, it is dark. Slowly one by one the candles are lighted, the light becomes brighter, and the Light of the World comes closer. God sent his Son, that light, for us, in case we get lost, to save us. But do we see it? There are blizzards in our lives, real ones – war, terror, violence, persecutions, natural disasters, sickness, loss of loved ones, and blizzards within us – doubt, guilt, fear, sin. To avoid falling out into the open and facing the big dark, we need to find that light in our window, our heart. It is represented by the lighted candle and the Christmas star. But to do so we must truly believe that Jesus is that light, the Son of God come into the world to save us, the love that came down at Christmas.

Is the Christmas story too nonsensical for us to really believe? Or has it become simply a memory or a story? Is it real to us? There once was on the Church calendar, December 18, the Feast of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a time for prayerful reflection on the reality she was experiencing in anticipating and bearing the Christ child. There is a beautiful song in this year’s Christmas at the Cathedral concert entitled Real (Nordeman/Stevens) in which one pondering an outdoor crèche offers these poetic reflections:
“Frozen statues in the cold washed in moonlight, blue and gold, Mary’s babe in plastic hay, quiet wonder on her face. Mary you look so serene, far too pretty, much too clean. We might think we know you well, but what stories would you tell? Of all the dirt and dust and shame, every burning labour pain? And as I turn to walk away, I hear you say: “I am real. Don’t turn me into memory or myth. Let me be real, and I’ll show you what it means to love like this.

“Shepherds bending to the ground Bethlehem is safe and sound. Joseph you look brave and true. Do we know what it was like to be you? How many sleepless nights awake found you desperate and afraid. And as I turn to walk away I hear you say: “I am real. Don’t turn me into memory or myth. Let me be real and I’ll show you what it means to love like this. . . More than a memory, more than a story.”

These last days of Advent we might ask ourselves: Is the birth in Bethlehem as the prophet Micah foretold real for us; are Mary, Joseph and Jesus a memory, a myth, a story or real to us?

There is a song that says Christmas is for children; it’s for children people say. Many in our culture declare that Christmas is only about make-believe, about fantasies, and so the decorations become ends in themselves. But as incredible as it sounds and seems, it is true; it is real. God intervened in the world in ways that we cannot explain, but for our good. Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit to become the light of the world to guide us in the Father’s love. That same Holy Spirit has planted that light within each of us at our baptisms.

One of my favorite paintings is of a lighthouse on the coast of Maine, so stark in its simplicity. Among my favorite stories is that of an old man who sat watching the sea, the ebb and flow, the crash and splatter of the waves. He had spent most of his life as a lighthouse keeper. He would tell stories of the sea, of ships caught in storms, threatened by hidden rocks and more, stories in which the light of the house was always the hero. “You see,” he said, “my mother always left a light in the window. It was there when I was a boy in Maine coming home from school in wintertime and the snow was blowing almost horizontal. When I was away in service, fighting overseas, she kept it burning still, like some kind of altar light to show the way back home. Later, when my wife died so sudden, and I was thinking about walking out there into the sea and being taken to wherever she might be, the memory of that light stopped me. A person needs a light in the window, something to show that he’s still expected, that someone is waiting for him. Because not being expected is about the worst thing there is, being left by yourself in the storm. There’s got to be a light somewhere or you’re lost.”

Jesus is that light, the light of the world, the light in our window, the light that tells us we’re expected, we’re loved, we are not alone, we are not lost. Nowadays we have so much glare surrounding us in sight and sound and movement that the light of Christ can seem dim amidst all that glow. The truth is that other lights eventually lose their power and go out. The light of Christ always burns for us even when we do not notice, waiting for us to see him, see him as real and present not just in history but today.

As we enjoy the fun and festivities of the holiday, let it also be a true holy day. May we take a moment to focus on the truth of what we celebrate. If we forget or miss it, come December 26 we can become lost again in the storms of life. ”A person needs a light in the window, something to show that he’s still expected, that someone is waiting for him. There’s got to be a light somewhere or you’re lost.” Friday we celebrate the fact that God the Father has gifted us with that light: the love that came down at Christmas in the person of the Christ child who wants to light our way every day.

Merry Christmas to you all and those you love.

Third Sunday of Advent

Gaudete Sunday

There is so much in this Sunday’s gospel that should give us pause for reflection. Among them is the humility of John the Baptist to declare that he is unworthy to untie the sandal straps of Jesus. And there is the clear description of the time of judgment when the wheat will be will be gathered in the barn but the chaff will be burn in an unquenchable fire. And then there is the attestation that John preached good news to the people – the good news of the coming of our Lord.

Yet, the one phrase that challenges me the most is the question asked of John the Baptist three times by the crowd, by the tax collectors and by the soldiers: “What should we do?”

His answer was not earth shattering, not impossible to achieve. To the crowd he said: you have two coats, give one to someone without one; give your surplus food to those who are hungry; share your blessings, show mercy. To the tax collectors he said: take nothing more than is required by law; be honest and fair, show mercy. To the soldiers he said: do not be bullies or falsely accuse; do not abuse your power, show mercy.

What should they do, what should we do? The answer is to live good moral and ethical lives. Or as the theme of this Jubilee Year of Mercy frames it so well: be merciful as the Father is merciful. John the Baptist did not ask them to try to become people they could not be, though it would require change. He called them to become the very best selves they could be; living witnesses of God’s love and presence. We are challenged in the same way to be the very best we can be, living proclamations of Christ’s love and mercy, whatever our work or place or crosses.

St. Paul’s answer to what should we do is to rejoice in the Lord always. When we are joyful in the Lord, we gain perspective, the strength to be living proclamations of Christ’s love. Too often the pressures of the culture or our own expectations separate us from seeing the beauty and blessings in our lives.

Some years ago I was at the mall doing Christmas shopping and in a hurry, trying to move quickly amidst the crowd. The number of shoppers made that impossible and I became anxious.” Let’s get moving people,” I thought. I have a lot to do. Then I noticed the family walking in front of me moving so slowly. There was a young one in a stroller bouncing up and down. Another small child was pulling on the father’s hand pointing in different directions. Both were excited, both had big smiles. They reminded me of the joy that should be part of this season. I was ashamed of my self-centered impatience. Children with their great simplicity anticipate the coming of the Lord at Christmas and so should we. Joy to the world, the Lord is coming, should be our song.

Another step in becoming the very best we can be, living with joy this time of year is to keep gift-giving in perspective. Giving gifts as a sign of our love and appreciation is a beautiful part of the season. Yet for some it is a source of anxiety. Some agonize over it; others agonize over how they can give the hint on what they really want. Giving and receiving should bring joy.

I read about a family in the military that was transferred to Spain in December. The mother of two was seven months pregnant. They packed up all their belongings including what would be needed for the new baby and shipped it all overseas. When the family reached Spain they discovered that their permanent housing was not yet available. Then they learned that their luggage, including most of their clothes, was lost in transit. To top it off the mother went into premature labor and gave birth unexpectedly to twins. She wrote that she had never felt so overwhelmed and alone in her life. Then the word got out in the local Spanish community. Suddenly clothes and other items started to appear. A man stopped by and said that he and his wife had lost twins in childbirth, and wanted to share with her two cribs that were meant for their own. That family felt real joy that Christmas because the gifts were given not out of obligation but out of love and concern, by strangers being the best they could be. The gift we all receive at Christmas that of the Christ child should bring us a joy that we want to share Pope Francis in declaring this jubilee year prayed that “touched by God’s compassion we can become compassionate toward others.”

Finally, what we should do to become the very best we can be, is be reconciled with our God and one another, especially our families and friends. Someone wrote that “friendships are fragile things and require as much care in handling as other fragile and precious things”. Sometimes we are careless and we break them, with our tongue, our action or our neglect. Through the sacrament of penance we are given the grace and the power to be forgiven and to restore those relationships which reflect our relationship with God

There are many opportunities for receiving the sacrament of penance, confession here in this Cathedral or other parishes this Advent and throughout the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Our faith in Christ’s promises and Christ’s presence make it possible for us to be the very best we can be and live our lives with joy because we know that Christ has already conquered the down side of the world. We will soon focus on the stable and his birth in Bethlehem, but in the background is Jerusalem and the cross which lead to the empty tomb and his resurrection. He was born, died and rose out of love for us. St. Julian of Norwich wrote: “the greatest honor you can give to God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.”

What should we do? John the Baptist tells us to repent and become the very best we can be by living lives of integrity. St. Paul answers: knowing of his love, rejoice in the Lord always. To do so requires us to change and to trust. When we do we can even in the midst of a world of worry, sing with the prophet Zephaniah in our first reading: “fear not, be not discouraged, the Lord your God is in your midst.”

Second Sunday of Advent

Tuesday is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a holy day of obligation. It also is the beginning of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, declared by Pope Francis. Next Sunday at the 11 a.m. Mass we along with cathedrals around the world will open our Door of Mercy, a point of pilgrimage. In the prayer the Holy Father composed for the Jubilee Year he declares his hopes: “Lord Jesus Christ, you have taught us to be merciful like the heavenly Father . . . Send your Spirit and consecrate every one of us with its anointing so that the Jubilee of Mercy may be a year of grace from the Lord, and your Church with renewed enthusiasm may bring the good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives and the oppressed, and restore sight to the blind . . .” I look forward to sharing this time of grace with you over the next year.

Happy St. Nicholas Day. We know little about St Nicholas except that he was a bishop in the early days of the Church. His legendary charitable care for others has morphed into Santa Claus with the emphasis not so much of gift giving out of charity but out of pressure and of gift getting. Giving and receiving gifts out of love is a wonderful human gesture; giving out of guilt or getting out of entitlement is not. To know the difference we need to be grounded in Christian values.

St. Paul in the 2nd reading prayed that the love of the Christians in Philippi: “may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception to discern what is of value, so that they would be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” That should be our prayer as well. When our conscience is clear and our conduct blameless we will be prepared for the coming of the Lord. But to lead such lives we must first discern what is of real value to us. Our relationship with Christ reflected in our love of all gifted by God with life ought to be of highest value. That’s tough in our culture that emphasizes me first and with our human nature that is fragile to temptations. It also is tough when we experience the horrors that terrorism and violence bring. We pray in a special way for those victims in California and other locations who personally experience such horror. We pray also for law enforcement, military and first responders who put their lives on the line that we might live in freedom with security.

John the Baptist issued the clarion call to prepare the way of the Lord. That means remove all those obstacles, all those things that stand in the way of the Lord becoming our Lord and Savior. John called for us to do so by preparing our hearts and our lives through repentance and forgiveness. The season of Advent is an opportunity to reflect on what stands in our way and what is really important to us. To welcome the Lord in our hearts and lives, we need to level the mountains, those things that limit us, seem beyond our ability to climb and cope and therefore discourage us. We also need to fill in the valleys, those things that weigh us down and keep us from moving forward on our journey toward greater holiness.

Is there a mountain you face that needs to be leveled or a valley to be filled? It may be a mountain of resentment, of envy, of a grudge held, or anger at a slight and not being able to forgive and let go. There may be valleys of guilt for mistakes made, sins committed that cannot be undone or forgotten, dreams that did not come true that weigh us down. Carried day to day, year to year, they can be like a cancer on our souls that eat away at our joy for life and hope for tomorrow and prevent our openness to the Lord who offers peace and joy, who is our hope. Take these to confession, the sacrament of mercy, and be set free. Christ’s love and mercy is available to all with sincere hearts.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a sad day that began for America World War II in which millions died, a war that changed the world and changed us as a people. I recall a moving moment when a woman showed me a picture of the memorial that was built over the site of the sunken ship Arizona, and told me her brother-in-law went down with the ship. This is a picture of his grave, she said softly.

All these years later the fuel tank of the Arizona still leaks bubbles of oil that rise to the surface and create little puddles of pollution, a remembrance of the violence of war, yet with the colors of a rainbow mixed in. We can discover rainbows, blessings from God, even in the horrible events of life when they are approached in faith. God does not cause, but he does I believe use the tough moments of life to reach out to us, to invite us to welcome him. He offers us a rainbow of perspective and of hope after each storm, if we listen to and for him. Holy Mass, the very presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist can be life giving in the midst of our crosses.

Every summer a wealthy family would vacation in Europe while leaving their daughter home with a nanny. One year the nanny quit just before the vacation. The parents were upset that their vacation might be jeopardized, but a few days before the trip they found a replacement. When their 11 year old daughter noticed her mother wrapping up the family silverware, she asked why because that had never been done before. Her mother explained that she could not trust the new nanny with the family valuables. The remark hurt the little girl in her heart. Was she not a family valuable of more worth than silverware? That thought stuck with her as she grew and became a mother herself. It could have become a mountain of resentment or a valley of rejection. Instead, she committed herself to be sure that her children would know how valuable they really are to her and to God.

This is my prayer St. Paul wrote: that your love increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception to discern what is of value. In the midst of the Christmas rush and pressure, when this season of Advent is over and Christmas comes, what will we have revealed as having real value to us? The legendary love of St. Nicholas points the way.

First Sunday of Advent

Today is New Year’s Day in the Church. Having celebrated Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe last Sunday the Church year ended on a high note. Today with the first Sunday in Advent we embark on a new liturgical year anticipating the coming of Christ in time and in eternity.

The Church year is out of sync with the world. It differs from the calendar year, fiscal years, academic years, sports years. And that is appropriate since Our Lord’s Kingdom is not of this world and Christ’s teachings call us to rise above the barrenness of the secular world. For instance the secular season of Christmas is already fully underway, although more and more mentioning the name of Christ is frowned upon, even legally prohibited. We need the season of Advent to help us avoid falling into the worldly whirl.

With the Christmas holiday less than a month away, many will identify with the verse in today’s Gospel: “beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.” The Christmas season can be a time of anxiety as we have seen with the fights that broke out in stores on Black Friday, or a time of joy with family, friends and faith shared.

Our Lord however was not talking about Christmas Day but the Day of Judgment. That is what we need to prepare for while also enjoying the spirit and traditions of Christmas. To prepare for the coming of the Lord in all its manifestations this month and all the year we need to watch, we need to pray and we need to grow in holiness.

To watch means to undergo an examination of conscience, to take the time to look around us and at ourselves and see what is really going on. Are we running at another’s pace or our own? Do we notice God’s presence in our lives or do we take His blessings for granted. Do we see each day as a gift to be enjoyed and used well or a block of time to be scheduled. Do we see others as fellow members of God’s family or an obstacle to or vehicle for getting what we want? We need to watch.

To be prepared for the coming of Christ we also need to pray. Special prayers for the season such as lighting candles on the advent wreath are wonderful and helpful which we will do shortly. Participating in Advent Vespers with Benediction which we will do Sunday evenings is an uplifting prayer. We can pray less formally as well. Prayer is referencing our lives and world back to God, raising our hearts beyond the pressures of this time to the One whose time is eternal.

A little boy said his night prayer. He thanked God for his mommy and daddy, his grandparents and then stopped. “What about your brothers and sisters,” his mother asked him, knowing that he had been fighting with them all day. He shook his head and said, “I don’t do kids.” Can we pray for our brothers and sisters especially the ones that are the hardest to love?

A spiritual writer related this story: There once was a cage hanging off a cliff on the shores of Mexico which was kept at a depth of 80 feet below the surface of the clear waters. In it were some of the most beautiful pearls ever in existence. They had belonged to a duchess. The pearls had lost their color and some suggested that the only way they could be restored to their original brilliancy was to immerse them in the depths of the sea from which they had come. For years they were in the crystal waters and sure enough over time they recovered their lost beauty. His point was that the only way to regain the lost luster of our inner life, our spiritual life is to go back to the depths from which the soul first received its bright touch of the divine.

Recalling our baptisms and confirmations and the promises we made, reflecting on the excitement of our first communions, the love expressed at marriage or ordination, the awe at the miracle of birth of a child. God gifted us with memory so we can be grateful and renewed. Advent offers us that opportunity to once again experience the beautiful touch of Christ, evidenced in a child in a manger, and be restored. We need to pray.

And to prepare for the coming of Christ we need to grow in holiness, which means to better live Christian virtues. Recall the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance; how well do we live them each day. Recall the theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. How well we live them is often reflected in little ways. Can we patiently wait in line, take the time to listen to someone at home who needs to talk, cope with the foibles of others, own up to our own mistakes, resist the inevitable temptations our human weakness brings forth, and when necessary in a hostile culture defend the Church and keep Christ in Christmas.

The story is told of two families who asked a rabbi to settle a dispute about the boundaries of some land they both claimed. One said that though they had never used it, they had received the land as an inheritance. They had the maps and papers to prove it. The other family described how they had lived on and worked the land for years. They didn’t have papers but their calluses and sore backs, the harvest and produce of the land proved it. The rabbi studied them. Then he knelt down on the land and put his ear to the ground. Finally he stood up, looked at both families and said, “I had to listen to both of you and I had to listen to the land. The land has spoken. Neither of you owns the land you stand on. It is the land that owns you.” Who or what owns us? The pressures and priorities of Christmas time can tell the story. We need to grow in holiness and deepen our personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

My prayer for you this season of Advent is what St. Paul wished to the church in Thessalonica in our 2nd reading: “may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all . . . so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus.”

This can be a special Christmas and church year if we take the time this Advent season and every day to prepare by watching, by praying and by growing in holiness.