Memorial of Saint Thomas Becket, bishop and martyr

Readings: 2 Timothy 2:8-13; Ps 34:2-9; Matthew 16:24-27

Once again, on this Fifth Day of Christmas, we don red to commemorate a martyr. The martyr we commemorate today is not one from the pages of Sacred Scripture. Rather, one from the Middle Ages: Archbishop Thomas Becket.

Becket served as Archbishop of Canterbury. He was martyred in Canterbury Cathedral on the Fifth Day of Christmas in AD 1170. He had only returned from France, where he was exiled for seven years fleeing from the wrath of the English king, Henry II, earlier in December. As the film Becket, starring Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton, and T.S. Eliot’s verse-play Murder in the Cathedral depict, Becket was named Archbishop of Canterbury, then England’s primatial see, due his friendship with King Henry.

Because of the nature of his appointment, the king expected a compliant prelate, one who would bend the Church to his will. Already a deacon, upon being named archbishop he was ordained priest and consecrated bishop in rapid succession. Before and after his episcopal consecration, Becket served the king as Lord Chancellor. As Chancellor, he saw to it that income for the king was gathered from all landowners, including churches and bishoprics.

Much to King Henry’s surprise, Thomas took his call to holy orders and his consecration as a bishop quite seriously. Becket seems to have undergone a genuine conversion. As a result, he resisted the king and sought to reassert the Church’s rights, a reassertion that put him at odds with the monarch. This led Henry to issue the Constitutions of Clarendon.

The Constitutions sought to limit the Church’s independence and to weaken its connection to the Holy See. Henry, a formidable politician, succeeded in having the bishops of his realm agree to these. Becket, however, refused to sign. His refusal was the cause of his seven-year exile to France. His return at the beginning of December 1170 was risky.

All of this is so much history, albeit interesting and even important history in terms of the Church’s relationship to the state. Getting to the heart of the martyrdom of Becket and of martyrdom itself is what truly matters. Here is where the archbishop’s Christmas sermon from T.S. Eliot’s play is so wonderful.

Murder in the Cathedral consists of two parts. The first part is Becket’s return from France in early December. The second part takes place on 29 December, the day of his martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral. Between the play’s two parts, Becket's Christmas sermon serves as an interlude. This brings us to our Gospel reading, in which Jesus teaches that forfeiting your soul for anything in the world or for everything in the world is the worst deal imaginable.

In his Christmas preaching, Becket seeks to set forth that the deep mystery of Christmas lies in both celebrating Christ’s birth while, at the same time, calling to mind his death. Linking the wood of the manger to the wood of the cross calls us to rejoice and mourn simultaneously. He notes that this tension, this paradox, can appear strange but that it is just this tension that makes Christian experience unique.

At the end of his sermon, Becket turns toward the attention of his listeners to martyrdom. He mentions that on the Second Day of Christmas, the Church celebrates the martyrdom of Stephen. Celebrating Stephen's martyrdom, he insists, evokes the tension between mourning and celebrating. This tension marks the true spirit of Christmas.

The archbishop goes on to insist that we shouldn’t think of martyrs merely as good Christians who’ve been murdered for being Christians. This would only be to mourn. Neither should martyrs be reduced to being Christians who’ve been “raised to the altar” by the Church This is only to rejoice. To do one of these at the expense of the other is to let go of the tension not only that our faith requires but that is the essence of Christian faith. He says, “and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world’s is.”

Becket sets forth a further tension, the tension between martyrs being “made by the design of God” and also being those who freely and totally submit to God’s will. His overarching point, then, is because of this paradox (i.e., the martyr both submits and is simultaneously submitted by God’s plan)—the way we celebrate them must match that complexity.

Thinking dualistically about martyrdom and Christian life fails to match our calling, our Christian vocation. In this regard, as Christians, we are not faced with a dilemma, either being a victim of God’s harsh will or recklessly embracing death, either celebrating the Paschal Mystery by mourning or by celebrating. Rather, in true Catholic fashion, we are invited to embrace the both/and. Frankly, this requires a lot from us.

Eliot puts this response on Thomas Becket’s lips, a reply that gets back to the complexity of the existential and metaphysical tension of martyrdom:

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:

Temptation shall not come in this kind again.
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason

Today’s memorial invites each of us to reflect on our own call to follow Jesus. You and I are asked to consider what temptations, what besetting sins, get in the way of either discerning God’s will for your life or doing God’s will with your life. "Martyr" simply means witness. Christian discipleship is nothing other than a call to bear witness to the birth, life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, allowing yourself to be fully immersed in the Paschal Mystery.

Feast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs

Readings: 1 John 1:5-2:2; Ps 124:1-5.7-8; Matthew 2:13-16

It's interesting that two of the first four days of Christmas are days we celebrate martyrs. Stephen on the Second Day and the Holy Innocents on the Fourth Day. In a homily for Stephen’s Feast, Fulgentius proclaimed: “And so the love that brought Christ from heaven to earth raised Stephen from earth to heaven.”

Indeed, we are saved by love. One of the best-known verses of scripture is John 3:16- “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…” It is only through Jesus Christ that anyone is saved.

Herod unleashed lethal violence against the children of Bethlehem to kill the king born there. He was fearful that this king would take his kingdom from him. Maybe he called to mind the prophet Samuel anointing the boy David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons, to become king, replacing Saul.

David, too, came from Bethlehem. Saul’s efforts to kill David all failed. David, even when he had the chance, refused to harm, let alone kill, Saul. In reality, Jesus posed no threat to Herod. In the end, Herod was the enemy of Herod.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas, the Church celebrates the holy innocents. Specifically, we remember those children of ancient Bethlehem, who were killed on Herod’s order. Today, we should also call to mind those innocent children who have suffered terribly throughout the ages, including those children who even now are victims of violence, abuse, and war.

Saint Quodvuldeus, in a sermon delivered on this feast, declared: “The children die for Christ, though they do not know it. The parents mourn for the death of martyrs. The child makes of those as yet unable to speak fit witnesses to himself.” This is “the kind of kingdom” Jesus came to establish. It is a kingdom of the meek and lowly, of the vulnerable and defenseless.

In Stephen and the Holy Innocents, we see how God’s deliverance works and how Jesus saves. These witnesses show us in a stark and dramatic way the central paradox of Christian faith, taught by Jesus later in Matthew’s Gospel: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” We frequently make the connection between the wood of the manger and the wood of the cross. In our Gospel today, the murder of these innocents foreshadows things to come.

Now, let’s be clear, God did not cause or will the violent death of innocent children either then or now. Neither was the Father complicit in or responsible for the death of his beloved Son. As Owen Cummings observed:

God did not predetermine that Jesus would have to suffer on the cross, just as God does not predetermine that any of us has to suffer on our own crosses. That would turn God into a cruel tyrant [and us into something like marionettes acting out a script]. What God did in the whole event of Jesus, in the incarnation and crucifixion, was to enter into the messy details of our world, a world marked by arbitrariness and unpredictability. The God who is nothing but unconditional Love, embodied and made visible in Jesus, lets the consequences of being Love in our flawed human world happen without evasion or avoidance

And so, it was Herod who willed and caused the massacre of the infant boys in Bethlehem. In his infinite love and mercy, God can and often does bring good from our evil. What else can resurrection be about?

Bringing good from evil is precisely what our first reading, taken from John’s first letter, is about. To receive forgiveness for your sins, you must acknowledge and confess them. The inspired author calls our all-too-human bluff by boldly stating that if you deny you are a sinner you are dishonest. This, he goes on to note, is the height of self-deception.

By contrast, if we walk in the light, acknowledging our sins, through Jesus Christ, God will mercifully forgive us. By definition, a sin is a deliberately wrong thought, word, action, or inaction. Because sin is wrong, we must commit to trying not to keep doing it. This is what we call having “a firm purpose of amendment.” There is the part of the Act of Contrition where we say: “I firmly intend, with [God’s] help, to sin no more and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.”

Herod’s heart was proud, vain, and fearful. As a result, he became wicked. You put your own heart at risk when you deny your sins and refuse to examine your conscience. This is nothing less than to reject your need for God. This, too, smacks of vanity, pride, and perhaps fear. Someone who insists that her/his sins are greater than God’s mercy, whether they know it or not, far from being humble, is prideful on a rather grand scale. We’ve all heard the old saw that goes something like, “If I went into a church it would collapse.” In addition to being a boast rather than a statement made in humility, such an attitude reveals a pagan understanding of God.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn learned from his experience of the Soviet gulag: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts.” This is why you should examine your heart regularly.

Here's the good news: you don’t go to confession to find out whether God will forgive you your sins. Because of Jesus Christ, you’re always already forgiven. Then why go to confession, you might ask? You go to experience for yourself the great mercy of God, to admit your sins, have them heard, and then receive the saving grace of this beautiful sacrament, thus being able to see for yourself how God can bring good from evil. So, my friends, let’s walk together in the light of Christ.

Feast of Saint Stephen, first martyr

Readings: Acts 6:8-10.7:54-59; Ps 31 Matt 10:17-22

Not having grown up Catholic, I never understood the beginning of the carol “Good King Wenceslas.” If you remember, it starts out- “Good King Wenceslas looked out/On the Feast of Stephen…” It’s a lovely carol about the “good” king reaching out to help a poor man on a cold winter’s night. Kind of diaconal in its way. My main memory of the tune, however, is from a Sprite commercial about the soda's taste being “crisp and clear and even” and being like a “limon.”

In those days, I had no idea what the Feast of Stephen was, only that it was in the winter around Christmastime. This was the result of the Sprite commercial. Of course, for me then, Christmas was a day, not a season. Even as a fairly small child, Christmas always resulted in an anticlimax. As it turns out, Santa Claus is pretty thin gruel.

As a priest friend of mine humorously likes to say, "Today is throw a rock at a deacon day."

It's beautiful to celebrate Christmas as a season. While celebrating the birth of our Lord, it's nice to observe several beautiful feasts. The first of these is today’s feast, the Feast of Stephen. Along with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, Stephen is revered by the Church as one of her first deacons.¹

The twofold criteria set forth by the apostles for those to be set apart for service was that they be filled with the Holy Spirit and with wisdom.² So, the primitive Jerusalem community, before it was dispersed due to persecution, selected these seven men. Their immediate charge was to ensure the just distribution of resources to the widows, who were dependent on the community.

Of the seven men named in the sixth chapter of Acts of the Apostles, we only subsequently hear about two of them. Philip, who relocated to Samaria because of persecution, and Stephen. Philip continued preaching the Gospel, baptizing those who believed, and casting out evil spirits and healing in Jesus’ name.³

Stephen, “filled with grace and power,” we are told, worked “great wonders and signs among the people.”⁴Like Philip, he continued to boldly bear witness to Jesus Christ. Unlike Philip, he didn’t flee Jerusalem and faced the full force of persecution.

The Stoning of Saint Stephen, Rembrandt's first signed painting, 1625

One has to ask, “Did God save, or rescue, Stephen?” The answer is “Yes.” Stephen grasped the teaching of Jesus that urges those who would be his followers not to fear those who can destroy the body but not your soul.⁵ As a result, at the instigation of one Saul of Tarsus, a very zealous Pharisee, Stephen became the first Christian martyr.

Like our Lord himself, far from condemning those who killed him, he pleaded for God to be merciful to them. This is set forth beautifully in the Collect for today’s feast:

Grant, Lord, we pray,
that we may imitate what we worship
and so learn to love even our enemies⁶

I often wonder what role Stephen’s witness played in Saul’s conversion. For it was this same Saul, whose first appearance in scripture is at the stoning of Stephen, who later, under his Roman name and the office given him because of his encounter with the risen Lord, came to be known as Paul, the apostle.

I often wonder what role Stephen’s witness played in Saul’s conversion. For it was this same Saul, whose first appearance in scripture is at the stoning of Stephen, who later, under his Roman name and the office given him because of his encounter with the risen Lord, came to be known as Paul, the apostle. It bears recalling that the apostle himself would die a martyr’s death in Rome.

Please permit me a personal note on this feast. My middle name from birth is Stephen. Stephen is my father's name. Therefore, when I converted, I didn’t feel I needed to take a saint’s name. As far as I was concerned, I already had not only a Christian name, but a wonderful Christian name. I suppose this may also have been an indication of my own vocation, though at that time it did not even enter my mind.

In Greek, martyr simply means “witness.” Among Ukrainian Catholics, a small community of whom I was privileged to serve over the course of a few years at the Cathedral, everyone who attends a baptism is given what is called a “martyr’s pin.” These pins, which you put on your lapel, feature a blue and gold ribbon. You are given this because, being present at someone’s paschal death, burial, and resurrection, you are a witness, like Stephen was a witness, like Paul was a witness, to the saving power of God. Baptism is the sacrament of Christian life.

I started by quoting a carol and so I will end by quoting one. My ending citation, the chorus of well-known hymn, is one that urges us to bear witness, one that exhorts us to proclaim the Gospel of the Lord and to glorify him by our lives:

Go, tell it on the mountain
Over the hills and everywhere
Go, tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born!

---

1 Acts 6:5.^↩
2 Acts 6:3.^↩
3 See Acts 8:4-38.^↩
4 Acts 6:8.^↩
5 Matthew 10:28.^↩
6 Roman Missal, Proper of Saints, 26 December, Saint Stephen, the First Martyr.^↩

Christmas- an addendum or afterthought

John 1:10

Proclaiming the Prologue to Saint John's Gospel during Mass today, I became aware that close to the middle of this pericope, of this unit of holy writ, the mystery of the Incarnation of the Father's only Begotten Son is set forth. I believe the heart of the mystery can be found in the tenth verse of the first chapter of the fourth Gospel:

He was in the world,
and the world came to be through him,
but the world did not know him

These sixteen words (in Greek- twenty in the NAB translation) really capture the mystery of God-made-man.

Jesus often didn't make sense to people of his own day. Quite frequently, he still baffles us today. Take the Gospel and politics- those who want to politicize Jesus are as wrong as those who want to de-politicize him. In other words, the Gospel certainly has political implications that followers of Jesus have to take seriously but neither does Jesus present us with a political program. In fact, he seems to repudiate programmatic politics.

Part of living between the already of his first coming, which inaugurated God's kingdom, and the not-yet of his return, when that kingdom will be fully established, requires Christians to find a way to continue on the Way amid the realities of this world. Just as we must make some peace with how to handle wealth, we must continually discern how to relate to power. We get a flavor of this in Saint Paul's Letter to the Romans as well as in Saint Justin Martyr's First Apology.

Again, I am only using politics as a case-in-point for showing the crisis the Incarnation foments and also how we try to evade the mystery by reducing it, in various and manifold ways, to our own measure. By his becoming truly human, the Son, through whom the world came to be, willingly submitted himself to his creation, to his creatures, those made in his divine image but who, through sin, forfeited their likeness to him. As with creation, the Incarnation shows us God taking a risk, a big one. I don't think that we think about God as a risk-taker often enough.

To jump from John to the Synoptics, it is by becoming human through the Blessed Virgin Mary that God's Son becomes Emmanuel- God-with-us. Christ is God's solidarity with us. As Paul asks, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" We state this even as, along with Saint Teresa of Avila, who a hagiographical anecdote has saying to God: "If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder why You have so few of them!" This is why Christian life requires a lot of patience and perseverance. Even in this, Jesus shows us the way.

Urbi et Orbi- Christmas 2022

URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
FRANCIS

Christmas 2022

Dear brothers and sisters in Rome and throughout the world, happy Christmas!

May the Lord Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, bring to all of you the love of God, wellspring of confidence and hope, together with the gift of the peace proclaimed by the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem: “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those whom he favours” (Lk 2:14).

On this festive day, we turn our gaze to Bethlehem. The Lord comes to the world in a stable and is laid in a manger for animals, since his parents could find no room in the inn, even though the time had come for Mary to give birth. He comes among us in silence and in the dark of night, because the word of God needs no spotlights or loud human voices. He is himself the Word that gives life its meaning, he is the Light that brightens our path. “The true light, which enlightens everyone” – the Gospel tells us – “was coming into the world” (Jn 1:9).

Jesus is born in our midst; he is God with us. He comes to accompany our daily lives, to share with us in all things: our joys and sorrows, our hopes and fears. He comes as a helpless child. He is born in the cold night, poor among the poor. In need of everything, he knocks at the door of our heart to find warmth and shelter.

Like the shepherds of Bethlehem, surrounded by light, may we set out to see the sign that God has given us. May we overcome our spiritual drowsiness and the shallow holiday glitter that makes us forget the One whose birth we are celebrating. Let us leave behind the hue and din that deadens our hearts and makes us spend more time in preparing decorations and gifts than in contemplating the great event: the Son of God born for us.

READ THE ENTIRE ADDRESS

Nativity of the Lord: Mass during the Night

Readings: Isa 9:1-6; Ps 96:1-3.11-13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-4

The Christmas season is now here. So, Merry Christmas! Now is the time to really to celebrate! In the words of a contemporary Christian song, which takes its cue from our Isaiah reading:

Celebrate the child who is the Light
Now the darkness is over
No more wandering in the night
Celebrate the child who is the Light¹

Christmas, our celebration of the coming of the Son of God into the world through the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a reason to rejoice, to make merry, and to celebrate. I read something yesterday that made me scratch my head a little, words to the effect that with the busyness of the season now past, it's time to focus on the true meaning of these days.

It made me scratch my head a bit because the whole purpose of the beautiful Advent season is to prepare us to celebrate at Christmas. It's a minor thing, but when it comes to the practice of our faith, we need to be careful not to put the cart before the horse. Christmas is our annual celebration of God's only begotten Son, who for us "and for our salvation... came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man."² In short, we celebrate God becoming one of us.

As Roman Catholics in the United States, we have three extra days of Christmas. For us, Christmas goes until the feast of the Lord's Baptism, which this year falls on Monday, 9 January. 25 December is just the first day of Christmas, the "a partridge in a pear tree" day!

Christmas season consists of many beautiful feasts: St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, and the Holy Innocents, just to mention those that occur during the Christmas octave, which also features the memorial of Saint Thomas Becket. On our liturgical calendar, only Christmas and Easter have octaves, that is, eight days when every day is, liturgically, Christmas day. The Christmas octave ends with the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, on New Year’s Day.

If we’re serious about Christianity being countercultural, about keeping Christ in Christmas, then we need to take our observance of the liturgical year seriously. Being serious and celebrating are not opposites. During Christmas, we need to be serious about celebrating. “Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption,” Saint Augustine exhorted. “Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time.”³

Beyond the octave, there is Epiphany, our celebration of the visit of the magi to the infant Jesus bearing gifts. Traditionally, Epiphany is the day for exchanging gifts. Finally, as indicated, the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism.

The appropriate response to God becoming man in the person of Jesus, Son of Mary, is worship, praise, and celebration. Nighttime seems a fitting time to celebrate so deep and rich a mystery as the Incarnation of God. To enter the Church from the dark cold of a winter’s night and experience the light and warmth inside is already to experience the meaning of Christmas.

Our reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to Titus, which is often overlooked, points us, on Christmas, toward the Savior’s second coming. Salvation history, whether before or after Christ’s birth, consists mainly of waiting. So, Advent is the Christian mode of being. The difference between these two long periods of waiting for the Lord to come is Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended to constitute the Church.

To be a Christian, then, is to “await the blessed hope” of Christ’s return.⁴ The way we are to live between the already of Christ’s birth and not-yet of his glorious return, according to this New Testament epistle, is “to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age.”⁵ This reading for Christmas Mass during the Night serves to remind us not to reduce faith to sentimentality.

Our Gospel itself helps us to avoid this reduction. "Manger" refers to a feeding trough for animals and “swaddling clothes” is a dressed-up way of saying rags. Let’s not forget that the fruit of the third mystery of the Holy Rosary (i.e., Jesus’ birth) is poverty. This is brought into bold relief elsewhere in scripture: “though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not deem equality with God something to be grasped,” or held onto. "Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself…”⁶

We come to Church, not just on Christmas, but throughout the year and throughout the years, to receive the greatest gift of all: Jesus Christ. By the power and working of the Holy Spirit, he gives himself to us in the form of bread and wine. So, each time we come to Mass, we come to the manger, to mangiare (the Italian verb “to eat”). By eating together, we become his verum corpus, his true Body, the Church, his presence in the world until he until he returns. This is the “devoutly” part of how we live this Advent, this time of tension between the already and the not-yet.

Being devout also means celebrating our Savior’s birth throughout this glorious season. After all, the fruit of the fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary (i.e., finding Jesus in the Temple) is the joy of finding Jesus. This Christmas, may you experience again, or maybe for the first time, the joy of finding Jesus, who is the greatest gift of all. More than anything else, joy is the hallmark of being a Christian.

Have joyful, blessed, and Merry Christmas!

---

1 Michael Card. Song-"Celebrate the Child."^↩
2 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec, 18.^↩
3 The Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings, Second Reading, December 24.^↩
4 Titus 2:13.^↩
5 Titus 2:12.^↩
6 Philippians 2:6-8.^↩

Year I Fourth Monday of Advent

Readings: Judges 13:2-7.24-25a; Ps 71:3-4a.5-6ab.16-17; Luke 1:5-25

In our readings today, the parallel between Samson and John the Baptist is clear.

Barren women unexpectedly conceiving is something that happens a number of times throughout the Bible. In addition to Samson’s mother (who is not named) and Elizabeth, there is Sarah, wife of Abraham, who conceives Isaac in her old age. Let’s not forget Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, whose pleading with God was answered by her giving birth to a son whom she promised to dedicate to God’s service (see Genesis 17:15-17 ; 1 Samuel 1).

In the society and culture of ancient Israel, being a married woman without children was a cause for shame. Children were seen as blessings from God. The source of shame was likely the idea that because God had not so blessed a barren woman, she must’ve done something to incur God’s displeasure.

Theologically, these women naturally conceived their sons. It is only Miriam of Nazareth, who comes to be with child, God’s only begotten Son, by the Holy Spirit, that is an exception to this. But we can also make a connection between Samson and Jesus. Samson, according to the Book of Judges, will deliver “Israel from the power of the Philistines” (Judges 13:5). Jesus will save his people, that is, all who put their faith and hope in him, from death and from their sins.

In our readings today, the contrast between the disbelieving Zechariah and the mother of Samson (as well as all the other faithful women mentioned above) is clear.

Both Samson and John the Baptist were “Nazarites.” A Nazarite dedicates himself to God, either for a specified period or for life. As indicated in our readings, a Nazarite avoids grape products, primarily wine, does not cut his hair, and also avoids graves and contact with corpses.

In a move that would seem more like one the inspired author of Matthew might make, Luke has the archangel Gabriel make clear to the incredulous Zechariah that his and Elizabeth’s unexpected son would fulfill the prophecy of Malachi, outlined in the final two verses of the final book of the Old Testament (see Malachi 3:23-24). Their son would point people to God by pointing them to Jesus Christ.

While we’re not likely called to be Nazarites, it’s important for us not to forsake or avoid ascetical practices. In former times, beginning on or around the Feast of Saint Martin of Tours, Roman Catholics observed Advent much like we’re still supposed to observe Lent: by fasting and abstinence, increased almsgiving, and more time devoted to prayer. Eastern Catholics and Orthodox Christians still observe what is called the Nativity Fast in preparation for their celebration of the Lord’s Nativity.

Zechariah's Vision in the Temple

It's safe to say that for many of us, probably even most of us, the time leading up to Christmas is a time of increased almsgiving. But I don’t think it is a time of deeper prayer and it certainly doesn’t seem to be a season marked by any sort of fasting and abstinence. While no longer obligatory, there are still Ember Days. Ember Days are days of fasting of abstinence, meaning you abstain from meat and either fast from food altogether or follow the rules of fasting set forth by the Church.

Advent Ember Days are the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday following the Feast of Saint Lucy on 13 December. If nothing else, these days provide us with opportunities to prepare ourselves for Christmas, for Christ’s coming, for his dwelling in and through us. To modify something G.K. Chesterton wrote: It’s not that fasting has been tried and found wanting or useless for spiritual life. It’s that it’s been found hard and left untried. Nonetheless as taught by Jesus himself, along with prayer and almsgiving, fasting is a fundamental spiritual discipline.

In case you’re wondering, the next Ember Days are the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday following the First Sunday of Lent. Beyond that, the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after Pentecost.

“We fast,” observed Richard Foster, “because it reveals the things that control us. We fast because it helps to give us balance in life. We fast because there is an urgent need. Most important of all, we fast because God calls us to it. We have heard the kol Yahweh, the voice of the Lord, and we must obey” (Richard J. Foster “Understanding Fasting”).

Cistercian monk, Fr. Charles Cummings, who for many years was resident at the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity in Huntsville, noted: self-discipline is “a secret path to freedom.” He goes on to observe that the word “discipline” is of Latin origin, from disciplina, which means “instruction.” Hence, he concludes, practicing spiritual disciplines fosters “an attitude of listening and learning, an attitude of discipleship” (Monastic Practices, Revised Edition, 117).

As followers of Jesus, asceticism should not be foreign to us. While it features more prominently in monastic life, cloistered monastics are not the only Christians who should engage in ascetical practices. Like all spiritual disciplines, the fruit these practices bear takes time to grow and ripen before they can be harvested.

So, while the practice of the spiritual disciplines, things like Ember Days, Angelus bells, and Friday abstinence throughout the year and not just during Lent, may no longer be woven into our lives by way of ecclesial obligation, we are free to use our freedom to take them up. In fact, we are encouraged in our freedom, not by way of obligation on pain of sin, to still practice penitential disciplines.

We can take up these practices in the confidence that they are time-tested ways of becoming more like our Lord. The rhythm of the Christian life laid down by the beat of living between the already-and-not-yet is fasting and feasting. This is how we live what the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World calls “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties” of our age (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et spes], sec. 1).

Year A Fourth Sunday of Advent

Readings: Isa 7:10-14; Ps 24:1-6; Rom 1:1-7; Matt 1:18-24

While today is the fourth and final Sunday of this Advent, we still have almost an entire week to go before Christmas. Because the beginning of the season of Christmas is on Sunday this year, Advent is as long as it can possibly be. By contrast, next year Advent will be as short as it can be, when the Fourth Sunday of Advent is immediately followed by the beginning of Christmas at sundown on the same day. “Kind of cool to know,” you might be saying to yourself, “but so what?”

Well, the “so what” takes the form of a question: How are you going to “use” this final week of Advent? Will it be all hustle and bustle, flurry and rush, or will you dedicate some time, even if just a little each day, to prepare yourself for Christ’s coming? This “time gift” is a great grace.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote of Christ’s three advents, or comings.¹ Advent does not just prepare us for the celebration of Jesus’ birth or even for his return at the end of time- though, as Christians, our lives are dedicated to awaiting “the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”²

While a relatively short liturgical season, Advent has two distinct emphases. For the first two weeks, Advent extends the Solemnity of Christ the King, exhorting us to live our lives in readiness for Christ’s glorious return, which can happen at any time. Beginning with Gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, the season pivots, drawing our attention to the Lord’s birth in Bethlehem. According to St. Bernard, these are the first two advents.

What is Christ’s third advent? Well, the Lord’s third coming happens between his first and second. It is when Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is born in you, comes to dwell in you, and lives through you, through us, his verum corpus, his true Body, the Church.

While our reading from Isaiah and our Gospel today clearly focus on the Lord’s first advent, our reading of the beginning of Saint Paul’s letter to the Christians of ancient Rome addresses his third advent: Through Jesus Christ, the man from Tarsus wrote of himself and his fellow witnesses to Christ’s resurrection “we have received the grace of apostleship.” “Apostle,” in Greek, refers to one who is sent. In a Christian context, an apostle is one who has encountered the Risen Lord and who is sent bear witness. This grace is given, according to Paul, “to bring about the obedience of faith, for the sake of [Christ’s] name…” Along with Christians of first-century Rome, we, too, “are called to belong to Jesus Christ… called to be holy."³

More than any other way, you bear witness to Jesus Christ by how you live your daily life. To be holy is to be like Jesus, who is Emmanuel, God with us. The Holy Spirit is the mode of this third advent. In other words, just like the Blessed Virgin Mary, Christ comes to be in you and manifests himself through you by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This why we pray the venerable prayer Veni sancte Spiritus, veni per Mariam (Come Holy Spirit, come through Mary). As some of you probably noticed, our Collect, or opening prayer for Mass, is the same prayer that concludes the Angelus. By prayer the Angelus each day, we call to mind the amazing event of the Incarnation of the Son of God in the womb of the Blessed Virgin.

Our Gospel tells of the first of four dreams through which God made known his will to Saint Joseph. In this dream, an angel is instrumental in helping Joseph resolve his serious dilemma concerning Mary, his betrothed, who unexpectedly turned up pregnant with a child he knew wasn’t his. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,” the angel tells him “for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”⁴ When he awoke, Joseph did as the angel instructed him and took the pregnant young woman into his home as his wife.

“Obedience,” Pope Francis noted, “made it possible for [St. Joseph] to surmount his difficulties and spare Mary.”⁵ You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of the “obedience of faith,” about which Saint Paul wrote than Joseph’s response to learning God’s will for him. It is one thing to know God’s will and quite another to do it.

Maybe that’s a focus for reflection for this “extra” week of Advent: discerning God’s will for your life and committing, with God’s help, to doing it. This seems especially timely as an old year gives way to a new one. I don’t know about you, but Christmas (New Year’s Day is the seventh day of Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God) always gives me genuine hope. Genuine hope, because it is a gift from God, the flower of faith, reaches far beyond any human-generated optimism. Optimism can and sometimes does lead to disappointment. Whereas hope begins with disappointment. One can easily imagine the disappointment Joseph felt upon learning of the unexpected pregnancy of his betrothed.

As we sing in the first verse of the beautiful Christmas Carol, O Holy Night:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till He appear'd and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn⁶

My dear sisters and brothers, as we read in the Letter to the Colossians: “it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.”⁷ It is Christ in you that enables you to not only discern but to do God’s will. Holiness consists of doing God’s will.

---

1 Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings, Wednesday, First Week of Advent. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux Sermon 5.^↩
2 Roman Missal, Order of Mass, sec. 125.^↩
3 Romans 1:5-7.^↩
4 Matthew 1:20-21.^↩
5 Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde, sec. 3.^↩
6 John S. Dwight, Placide Cappeau, Adolphe-Charles Adam. O Holy Night. Genius Lyrics. Accessed 15 December 2022.^↩
7 Colossians 1:27.^↩

Jesus is the one: wait for him

Readings

"Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?" The Baptist's question is the question of many people who have put their faith, their trust, and their hope in Jesus.

Matthew kind of gives away the answer when, even before posing the question, he refers to Jesus as "the Christ." "Christ," of course, means "Anointed." Anointed in the anglicized Hebrew is Messiah.

Jesus answered John's disciples knowing that, as the seal of the Old Testament prophets, the Baptist would surely know the prophets. Our reading from Isaiah, to which Jesus refers, is a Messianic prophecy. Hence, John would grasp that, indeed, Jesus "is the one who is to come."

But how much comfort was it for the imprisoned and doomed Baptist to have Jesus' Messianic identity confirmed? It's impossible to say, really. It seems likely that it was at least some small comfort for him to know that his ministry, which is what led to his predicament, was not in vain. I would be remiss not to note that Jesus' answer did not rescue him from jail nor spare him execution at Herod's command.

This brings me to my point: Jesus saves us through our experience, not from it. It's one thing to generally believe that God is at work in the world and in your life. It's another thing to experience for yourself just how God is at work in whatever circumstances you face.

Experiencing how God is present and active in your life, especially when things seem bad, is vital for anyone who would follow Jesus. Having such an experience might well make the difference between keeping and losing faith. No doubt, many have lost faith in God because they feel God broke faith with them, let them down, didn't answer their plea, failed to meet his/her expectations, or perhaps even seemed to crush expectations.

I am not being harsh on people who've not experienced God's way of working in and through experience. Doubting God is something virtually every believer, maybe even including John the Baptist, does at some point. Doubting to the point of giving up belief is a temptation most serious Christians face at one time or another. Maybe it's because someone wants a result s/he is not getting. Overall, I attribute this to our desire for the peace, hope, joy, and love that we celebrate successively on the four Sundays of Advent.

"You too must be patient," the scripture exhorts. Hope is perhaps best expressed as patience with God, with his means and methods of making all things work together for your good, which can sometimes seem like the opposite.

St. John the Baptist in Prison, Visited by Salomé, possibly by Guercino, 1591-1666

We experience the peace, hope, joy, and love God gives through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit through what we experience, not in some other way. In other words, God meets you in the ordinary circumstances of your life. Along with faith, hope and love are theological virtues. As such, these are gifts from God. Peace and joy are fruits of the Holy Spirit. Hoping and loving in times of difficulty produce peace and joy. This is the witness of so many saints, including Mother Mary and John the Baptist, and our Lord himself.

In his second letter to the Church at ancient Corinth, Saint Paul states this rather forthrightly:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)

Keeping faith, even when all seems dark and there appears no way out, is what it means to hope. You see, hope kicks in when optimism runs out.

Hope is not optimism. If nothing else, hope not only permits but is strengthened by lament, doubt, and even anger at the way things are (in the awareness things could be different, better). "Joy comes when the sun rises, dispelling the darkness. At dusk weeping comes for the night; but at dawn there is rejoicing" (Psalm 30:6).

Advent is about waiting for the light to dispel this present darkness. Advent prepares us to celebrate the dawning of that "new and glorious morn" at Christmas. The promise in our readings today does not come from our Gospel reading. Instead, it is found in our first reading:

Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing,
crowned with everlasting joy;
they will meet with joy and gladness,
sorrow and mourning will flee

Jesus is the Christ, the one who ransoms us, opening for us the gates of Zion. Wait patiently for him, not another.

Reflecting about blogging

I am giving both my readers an up-front warning: this is a post about blogging. Don't worry, it won't be long. It is the second post of the last month of 2022. This hardly seems possible.

I haven't been a terribly diligent or consistent blogger this year. But this is my sixteenth year of blogging. My goal this year was to post somewhere around 120 times, which amounts to 10 posts per month. This is my 101st post. With Advent and then Christmas, I may still make that goal.

It's probably because I've had a bit more time than I usually have on a weekend that I am both thinking and writing about this. I started this blog in August 2005 and then began blogging in earnest in the July of the following year. My diligent blogging started with the post I titled "How Occasional?"

For several years, it was frequent, not occasional. Over the years, it has become more occasional but still works out to roughly twice a week on average.

Like a lot of people who started blogging a long time ago, I now post on social media quite a few things about which I would formerly compose a blog post. Once in a while, there is something I want to write about in an extended way and so make recourse to this cyberspace.

Lately, I've been thinking I need to do more blogging and spend less time on social media. We'll see what the rest of this month and early 2023 brings. I do think maintaining a blog is worthwhile. If not for others, then it is for me. Blogging has been a means of growth for me. Writing is a way to materialize what I think.

Oh sure, there were times when I was on the verge of being a really popular Catholic blogger. I am equally sure that isn't what I aim for with my modest efforts here.

I appreciate those who read what I write. I am grateful for the occasional comments I receive on my posts. I don't envision quitting this endeavor in the foreseeable future.

My dilemma

Readings

For me, the worst thing about a reading like today's Gospel is that it's easy to apply to someone else or everyone else. In reality, it is directed at me and nobody else.

John the Baptist is utterly correct: God can raise up children of Abraham (i.e., people of faith) from among the stones. The question is, can God transform my heart of stone? Stated simply, yes God can.

More precisely, will God, taking a cue from the prophet Ezekiel (36:26), remove my stony heart and replace it with a living, beating heart of flesh? I don't think he'll do that without me surrendering my heart, handing over the stone, no matter how precious it might be to me.

It's a true dilemma. I can surrender or resist; repent or remain as I am now. It seems to me that for an increasing number of professing Christians, repentance isn't necessary and so not terribly urgent. But that is precisely to project the Baptist's challenge onto others. This is a false move, a way of deflecting it, rejecting it. Do I hear what he says? Am I responding to what I hear?

St. John the Baptist, by Jen Norton

I know the right answer is "surrender." After all, it's an easy enough word to say. It's not like I can't make recourse to two surrendered hearts: Mother Mary's Immaculate Heart and Jesus' Sacred Heart. Isn't surrendering an admission of defeat? Does God really want to beat me at my own game? But, as the Baptist warns: Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. But that is to mix metaphors. Most of the time, axes can't cut through stone. In any case, a cut stone is just two stones.

I'd be lying if I said I am always disposed to surrendering my stony heart to God. Sometimes this stone is very precious to me (think Gollum). But surrender I must.

"There are only two kinds of people in the end," noted C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, "those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'"

One more thing I feel I must do is pray the one-word prayer of the primitive Church. This is invoked only once in Scripture, by Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 16:22. This is a prayer lost, forgotten, replaced with so many other petitions: Maran atha: "Come, Lord."

You see, Jesus isn't just the reason for the season. He isn't the raisin in the cookie. He is, as our reading from Colossians for the Solemnity of Christ the King a few weeks ago, declared, "preeminent". All things were created by and for him. He is the giver and the gift.

Year A First Sunday of Advent

Readings: Isa 2:1-5; Ps 122:1-9; Rom 13:11-14; Matt 24:37-34

What matters to you? I mean, what really matters? Answering this question honestly is different from giving what you think is the “right” answer at Church. Probably the least honest way to answer this question is with words.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein made a lot of the distinction between saying and showing. Showing is almost always more convincing than saying because it is more straightforward than mere words. In his earliest work, Wittgenstein went as far as to insist: “What can be shown cannot be said.”¹

This same distinction is made in the New Testament. “Indeed someone may say,” we read in the Letter of Saint James, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Demonstrate your faith to me without works,” the passage continues, “and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.”²

Therefore, you demonstrate what matters to you far more clearly and honestly by how you spend time and your resources than anything you say.

Maybe instead of asking what matters, as Christians we should ask “Who matters?” Isn’t “mattering” a matter of love or lack of it? In the sacarment of penance, when saying the Act of Contrition, which comes between the confession of our sins and receiving absolution, don’t we acknowledge this when we say to God- “I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things?”

What is sin except a lack of love for God and/or neighbor? This is true for both sins of commission (the things we do wrong, despite knowing they’re wrong) and sins of omission (the good things we should’ve and could’ve done but didn’t).

Our readings for this First Sunday of Advent pick up where our readings for last week’s Solemnity of Christ the King left off. At the beginning of this Year of Grace, we are called to repent. Acknowledging one’s sins and expressing sorrow for them is only the beginning of repentance.

True repentance means changing your mind and your heart, reorienting your life, walking in a different direction, taking up the cross and following Jesus Christ, changing what needs to be changed, with God’s help. To repent means to live in a new way. The way of God’s kingdom.

The advent of Advent also lets us know that time is of the essence. Both Jesus and Paul in our readings point this out: repent before time runs out. No one knows what the future holds. Not only does nobody know when Christ will “return to judge the living and dead,” nobody knows the hour of her/his own death.

Now is “the hour now for you to awake from sleep,” Paul insists in our reading from his Letter to the Romans.³ "For our salvation," the apostle continues, "is nearer now than when we first believed.”⁴

These remain timely words nearly two thousand years later. Again, you don’t and you can’t know what the future holds. For those who wait in joyful hope for the return of Jesus Christ, it’s always the end of the world until the end of the world.

This is not as dire as it might sound. In fact, it is hopeful. It is hopeful because we believe that Christ has conquered death. Because he’s conquered death, by virtue of our baptism, so have we.

After the pattern of Jesus, to live forever, you must first die. Elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says that those who lose their life for his sake will find it.⁵ In this same passage, the Lord goes on to ask, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”⁶ He then points to when he “will come with his angels in his Father’s glory," when "he will repay everyone according to his conduct.”⁷

I remember listening to a radio program years ago. A segment of the program was an interview with a journalist who, at the end of his career, went back and re-interviewed the happiest people he had encountered in his work. In sharing a few bits of advice he received about living a happy life from these people, he recalled an elderly German man. This man shared that one key to his own happiness was spending a few minutes, no more, each day thinking about his own death.

This is an ancient Stoic practice adopted by Christians in the early Church. This practice is known as Memento mori. Memento mori is Latin for “remember death.” Or, if that doesn’t work, always bear in mind: Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

While a relatively short liturgical season, Advent has two distinct movements. On the Third Sunday, it pivots from anticipating Christ’s glorious return to looking forward to our celebration of his Nativity.

My dear friends, Advent is a beautiful season. Its spiritual purpose is to prepare us for our celebration of the Lord’s Nativity at Christmas. You keep Christ in Christmas by observing Advent. Christmas is its own season, which doesn’t begin until sundown on Christmas Eve and lasts until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which, this year, we will observe on Monday, 9 January.

So, in a mad dash towards whatever it is Christmas has become, don't neglect Advent. Use this season as a time to ponder the question What/Who really matters? And then to ask yourself: What do I need to change?

---

1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.1212.^↩
2 James 2:18.^↩
3 Romans 13:11.^↩
4 Romans 13:11.^↩
5 Matthew 16:25.^↩
6 Matthew 16:26.^↩
7 Matthew 16:27.^↩

From the cross, God gathers his people

Readings

In Eucharistic Prayer III, we pray

You are indeed Holy, O Lord,
and all you have created
rightly gives you praise,
for through your Son our Lord Jesus Christ,
by the power and working of the Holy Spirit,
you give life to all things and make them holy,
and you never cease to gather a people to yourself,... (emboldening and italicizing mine) (Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer III, sec. 108)

Indeed, God never ceases to gather a people to himself. In and through Christ, God gathers his people from throughout the world, from every nation, race, tongue, from all walks of life, making the least the greatest, the last the first, etc.

At the beginning of Saint Matthew's Gospel, the angel, in his announcement of the Lord's birth to Joseph, also announced that the child would be named "Jesus because he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Indeed, "Jesus" or Yeshua has a range of meanings from "the Lord our help," to "the Lord saves," to "the Lord is salvation."

It is interesting that in our Gospel reading for the Solemnity of Christ the King for this third year of the Sunday lectionary, which has Saint Luke's Gospel as its focus, the "good thief," whom tradition names Saint Dismas, calls the Lord by his given name when he says- "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Luke 23:42).

"Is it accidental," asks the late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown in a footnote, "that this wrongdoer is the only one in this or any Gospel to call Jesus simply, 'Jesus' without an additional modifier?" (An Introduction to the New Testament, pg 260) For my part, I take this as a rhetorical question, even if it wasn't the intention of the inspired author.

What makes someone a member of the people God gathers to himself through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit? Well, Dismas establishes the pattern, does he not? He acknowledges his own sins and failings, going so far as to accept his capital punishment as just and fitting. Further, he not only sees Jesus' innocence but recognizes Jesus as his Savior. It is this that makes Dismas a member of God's people and this that makes Dismas a saint. According to Luke's narrative, we can be quite certain that, unlike Jesus, Dismas is not an innocent man, wrongly condemned.

In his play Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett has Vladimir ask Estragon "...how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved" (Act 1 ). This is an important observation- Beckett did not write this as an interrogative, but a statement.

Getting back to the issue of how to read the Gospels (Beckett sticks with a standard and, sadly, popular way of reading them), Vladimir continues: "One out of four. Of the other three, two don't mention any thieves at all and the third says that both of them abused him." Then, without pause, he muses "Then the two of them must have been damned." At this point, Estragon chimes in with "And why not?" To which Vladimir replies: "But one of the four says that one of the two was saved."

Estragon wants to pass this off as a simple disagreement. But Vladimir, taking all the Evangelists to be eyewitnesses (Luke wasn't, he tell us so- see Luke 1:1-4), persists in asserting only one of the Evangelists says the good thief was saved. Why is it, then, that we should "believe him rather than the others?" This fascinating dialogue continues for quite some time.

I suppose the reason I believe Luke is that he seems to capture God's nature in this instance better than the others. As Beckett intimates, the Passion according to Matthew and John features no thieves or revolutionaries. Mark's account actually does not have the two being crucified alongside Jesus abusing him (see Mark 15:22-32).

It seems obvious that the point is you and I are in an existential situation similar to the one in which the thieves find themselves. As Raymond Brown points out, "The unique scene with the [good thief] in [Luke] 23:40-43 is a masterpiece of Lucan theology" (An Introduction to the New Testament, pg 260). Jesus' mercy "goes far beyond what the criminal asks" (Ibid). After all, Brown observes, "he becomes the first to be taken into Paradise!" (Ibid)

Dismas: a charter member of God's people, a true subject of Christ the King. The king whose throne is the cross and who you can address using his first name.

Apocalytic eschatology

Readings

According to the narrative set forth in Luke's Gospel, Jesus and his followers have arrived in Jerusalem. This is the part where Jesus really begins to stir up trouble. In our Gospel reading for this Sunday, he predicts the destruction of the Temple.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Temple for ancient Judaism. The first Temple had already been destroyed. The Second Temple, the Temple that stood in Jerusalem in the first century, replaced it. The Second Temple, at this point in Luke's internal chronology, had only been completed a few years earlier. It was still new!

Jesus's teaching in this pericope is apocalyptic. "Apocalypse" does not mean divinely unleashed catastrophe, chaos, and destruction. It means to unveil. To unveil is to reveal.

No doubt taken somewhat aback by this dire prediction (keep in mind we're working here with Luke's text in a post-critical way- Luke was probably not composed until after the Temple's destruction), some of his audience asks when this going to happen and if there will be any detectable signs that indicate when this will happen.

What Jesus goes on to describe are things that are the stuff of human history. Keeping in mind that the same inspired author wrote both Luke and Acts, Jesus does seem to predict the persecution of the early Church, which takes place before the Roman destruction of the Temple, which occurred in AD 70. As with the rest of what the Lord predicts, his prediction of persecution can be extended over time.

In short, as is suggested in our reading from 2 Thessalonians, the key is perseverance in living the Gospel, following the way of Jesus, and walking the way of the Cross, not living some overheated state imminently expecting the end of the world.

In our culture, which is largely shaped, at least religiously, by a non-doctrinal, non-confessional form of biblicist Protestantism, which many Catholics have appropriated, endtime-mania seems to always be in season. The signs to which Jesus points are deliberately vague. In other words, there is no way of telling when these things will happen. This is just the point as it pertains to how a Christian lives. Today is always the time of tribulation.

Earlier, during the travel narrative, Jesus exhorted his followers to live in what New Testament scholar Raymond Brown refers to as "eschatological vigilance" (see Luke 12:35-48; An Introduction to the New Testament, 254). What is eschatological vigilance? It is an awareness that God can bring his purposes to fulfillment at any time and will do so in his own time. No one is privy to God's timetable.

Christians today, two thousand years later, are to live in eschatological vigilance. This is not "Look busy, Jesus is coming!" Rather, it is living your life according to Jesus' teachings come what may, even when you experience backlash, resistance, even persecution, or, worse yet, discouragement. Claims of persecution, at least the contemporary United States, are grossly overexaggerated. Of course, there are many Christians throughout the world who face genuine persecution.

What Jesus says about not planning what you will say before hand is realized in the Acts by the witness of Peter, Stephen, and, later. Paul. Clearly, the life that is "secured" is eternal life, not mortal life.

Living in eschatological vigilance is already an apocalypse, an unveiling, a revelation. Living this way, which is not a paranoid, alarmist, pessimistic way, but a hopeful, even joyful, way that makes God's kingdom a present reality, is the revelation. So far from supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, apocalyptic eschatology is adhering to Jesus' teachings.

Two examples of what this might look like: Saint Francis of Assisi was tending the community garden one day with another friar. This friar asked Francis (who was most likely a deacon), something like- "If the Lord were to return right now, what would you do?" Francis is said to have responded: "I would keep tending the garden." In a similar vein, Martin Luther said, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."

While the second isn't as "eschatological" as the first, it is highly relevant to the matter under consideration. Luther was noting that, at least for us, the future is uncertain. So, we should practice what spiritual teacher John Eldredge calls "benevolent detachment," what Saint Ignatius of Loyola dubbed indiferencia. What is that, you might ask? It is to put everything into God's hands and live the calling to which you are called without worrying about the future.

Earlier in the same chapter of Luke in which Jesus exhorts his followers to eschatological vigiliance, he teaches- "do not worry about your life and what you will eat, or about your body and what you will wear." He continues:

Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your life-span? If even the smallest things are beyond your control, why are you anxious about the rest? (see Luke 12:22-34)

Whether you accept it or not, this is the essence of the freedom Christ offers. By living in the freedom of the children of God we reveal what is coming.

Year II Thirty-second Monday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Titus 1:1-9; Ps 24:1b-6; Luke 17:1-6

What is faith? As simple as it is to ask this question, the nature and essence of faith remains a perennial subject of deep theological reflection. As in most instances, the Greek word translated into English as “faith” in our readings, both taken from our uniquely Christian scriptures, the New Testament, is pistis.¹

In response to Jesus’ teaching on the necessity of forgiveness, recognizing what a difficult teaching it is, the Apostles plead: “Increase our faith.”² In true form, Jesus tells them that if they have even a little faith, faith the size of mustard seed, which is a very small seed, they could, by their words, uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the sea.

It would seem, by use of hyperbole (hyperbole= exaggerated statements not meant to be taken literally), Jesus implies that if the power of faith can move a mulberry tree in such a dramatic way, then by this same power you can forgive someone who wrongs you seven times in one day. Persinally, I think the latter is the greater miracle. Okay, but what has that to do with faith? Well, the short answer is: Everything!

In antiquity, as a singular term, pistis referred to a guarantee, something like a warranty. Hence, in Christian usage, pistis, or faith, becomes God’s warranty, guarantee, or, more accurately, God’s provision. Believing that God will provide is an act of trust. This why, as Christians, we say that hope is the flower of faith. Keep in mind, hope is not optimism. Hope kicks in as optimism fades out.

What we often worry about when it comes to forgiveness is justice. This is not a trivial or silly concern. By forgiving, we accept the guarantee of God’s justice, opening ourselves to receive divine provision. This is why elsewhere, Saint Paul, invoking the law, exhorts:

Beloved, do not look for revenge but leave room for the wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
Rather, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink… Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good ³

A mustard seed

Jesus never simply teaches. He doesn’t simply “put his money where his mouth is” or just “walk the walk.” Rather, just as he mysteriously becomes the bread and wine, what he teaches, he is. This is why, in the midst of the humiliation and torture that was His passion, he asked the Father to forgive those who were humiliating and torturing him.⁴

By hearing his words and partaking of his body and blood we should be transformed so that we, too, become what Jesus teaches.

Ancient Greeks understood pistis to result from a certain kind of persuasive discourse. Like Jesus’ teaching in response to the plea by the Apostles, this discourse is elliptical (i.e., not direct, like his use of hyperbole with regard to the mulberry tree). For the Greeks, pistis is the affect and effect of such a discourse. Hence, it is not a logical demonstration. The affect and effect of Jesus’ teaching in this pericope is the hearer feeling the need to be forgiving and then, when wronged, forgiving.

Psychologically, forgiveness is defined “as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.”⁵

Now, forgiveness is a serious matter. One’s ability and even one’s willingness to forgive is often in proportion to the grievousness of the wrong endured. Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. Forgiving does not necessarily mean reconciling. In fact, sometimes reconciliation isn’t possible and at times inadvisable.

Forgiveness means willing to forgive even the unforgiveable. This where trusting in divine justice becomes so vitally important. As C.S. Lewis noted: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”⁶ “Only, I think, by remembering where we stand,” Lewis continues, “by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms.”⁷

Rather than logic, what Jesus employs is theo-logic, which, given the pull of the flesh, is usually quite counterintuitive. This teaching takes aim at our human default setting: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It is Tevye, the lead character in Fiddler on the Roof, who notes that the result of this is “the whole world will be blind and toothless.” In the Kingdom of God, it is not so.

---

1 Nestle 1904 Greek New Testament: Titus 1:1; Luke 17:6- .^↩
2 Luke 17:5.^↩
3 Romans 12:19-21; Leviticus 19:18; Deuteronomy 32:35.41.^↩
4 Luke 23:34.^↩
5 Greater Good Magazine. “What Is Forgiveness?”^↩
6 C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. 136.^↩
7 Ibid.^↩

Who are you? Are you ill or just alive?

Based on what I see on social media, this article by therapist Hannah Baer, "Who decides if you’re mentally ill? Self-diagnosis is undermining therapy," seeks to start an important conversation. While arguing for the need for trained, educated, and experienced mental health professionals, she does not merely assert the authority of her profession.

Life is often hard. It's impossible to be what most people take to be "happy" all the time. What is meant by "happy" is feeling good, fulfilled, and satisfied, grateful, excited, cared for, etc. If you can't be happy in all or most of these ways, well trick-fuck yourself into being so by pithy memes. Things happen to us all day pretty much every day. Of necessity, we respond, react, absorb, roll with the punches (of so many metaphors!).

We have good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks, and moreover, a lot of mundane in-between. Negotiating the latter seems to be what many find so difficult. On the human front, there is a lot of loss. Virtual interaction is not the same as live interaction in many aspects. I'll park that observation there.

I grew up in a different time. A time during which there was not so much stimulus available. We need to recover the fruitfulness of boredom, which, at least since Heidegger, is an important existential category. Boredom is fruitful. One thing I've reflected on a lot over the past 2-3 years on just how much time I spent as a child and adolescent alone with "nothing" to do. Nothing, it has been noted, is not an empty category. On this view, doing nothing is certainly a possibility. I argue that it is necessary for our humanity, our identity, our self-understanding, and our grasp of "the world."

It seems that many people are looking for someone to either tell them who they are or to affirm different identities as they are tried on in a quest for the oh-so-elusive personal authenticity. "Look, I am this. I really am this!" While there is genuine authenticity, the defining characteristic of which is wonder and humility in the face of reality, there is no authentic self waiting to be discovered.

As a Christian, I have beliefs about what's wrong with us. Recognition that something is wrong with us, that the world is broken, is just part of the human condition, whether or not you have transcendent beliefs. Even from the perspective of the philosophy of religion, any religion that doesn't account for this existential human condition isn't likely to find many adherents.

Here is the issue Baer thoughtfully addresses:

Many young people I work with try to understand themselves (and often others) through the lens of mental illness. Typically they are focused on one diagnosis, but some, like Abby, are open to having several, many, or any. My co-workers notice it too. One colleague recently brought a question to our clinic’s staff meeting: “Has anyone else noticed a large number of students lately claiming to be on the autism spectrum, despite seeming to be… clearly not autistic based on clinical criteria?” Heads nodded. Why is it that so many young people are concerned that they are sick? And what is a mental health professional to do, in a culture where patients come in having already staked out their symptoms?

If autism is the one diagnosis for one's self (this is understandable because alienation is worse now than it's ever been, leaving many people ill-equipped to understand, let alone "deal with" life's exigencies), the one diagnosis for others seems to be narcissism. After all, if you're not deeply concerned about me, you must be pathologically self-absorbed! There is a lot more to be said about the truth and falsity of personal identity. I will limit myself to observing that any "true" personal identity summons a certain about resiliency. Our participation in reality, it seems to me, requires no little stubbornness.

Anyway, I thought the beginning of November would be a good time to revive our Friday traditio. After all, blogger is my "true" identity, c'est ne pas? "Trouble Is" by Jars of Clay, off their still notable album Who We Are Instead, seems a fitting song:

All Souls

Readings: Wis 3:1-9; Ps 23:1-6; Rom 6:3-9; John 6:37-40

“Are you unaware,” Saint Paul asks the Christians of ancient Rome, that you were baptized into Christ’s death?¹ Death is a fact of life. But Christ has overcome death. In baptism we die, are buried, and rise with Christ to new life, to life everlasting. This is why Christians shouldn’t fear death. It is, therefore, fitting that our Paschal Candle is lit tonight.

Just as baptism is the fundamental sacrament, belief in Christ’s death and resurrection is the basis, the cornerstone of Christian faith. But a Christian does not believe that Christ’s rising from the dead is a one-off event. S/he believes that by dying, being buried, and rising with Christ through the waters of baptism s/he, too, has died and risen.

Resurrection and redemption are the themes of All Souls Day. Just as All Saints is a day to celebrate all saints, particularly those holy women and men who even now enjoy God’s presence but who are not canonized, on All Souls we commemorate all the faithful departed, perhaps especially those who have no one to remember them. This is why we have our memorial book at the foot of the chancel and we read the names before Mass. Today is Catholic Memorial Day.

Commemoration is different from mourning. We don’t gather this evening to mourn. We gather to celebrate. We don’t really gather to celebrate our beloved dead, but to remember them. We gather to celebrate the hope we have because Jesus Christ conquered death, even if this does not now seem to be the case.

Christ our hope enables us to pray for those who have died. Very often and understandably we auto-canonize the dead, at least publicly, making them saints a bit prematurely, or, in recent years, with a persistent form of gnosticism in the ascendent, thinking they become some kind of disembodied astral being or angels. We are not angels because we are not disembodied. We are embodied and will be so throughout eternity. After all, we believe in the Son’s incarnation and in bodily resurrection.

As Catholics, we believe that in most instances our journey back to God continues after death. On this journey, according to Church teaching, most people pass through Purgatory. We make a mistake, however, if we think of Purgatory as a hellish place, a place of torment and horror. In her lovely Treatise on Purgatory, Saint Catherine of Genoa describes the so-called “fire” of Purgatory as an inner fire. For Catherine, this is the fire of human desire, the very desire that make us and that finds its satisfaction in God alone. We are made for God and it is God, who is love, whom we desire. To paraphrase Saint Augustine: our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

Maybe because God, at times, seems far away or even absent, it is easy to believe that other things, even things that are not bad in themselves, or other people are what we truly want and need. This is what we often find so very dissatisfying about life in a transitory world, a world in which even our closest relationships don’t and can't last continuously forever. For example, our marriage vows only bind us until death. For, if we listen to the Lord and not to other, strange voices that contradict revelation: “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage."² If nothing else, and there is plenty else in a broken world, death disrupts.

You should be similarly suspicious of those who claim to have crystal clear ideas about life after death. As Saint Paul intimated by quoting Isaiah:

What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him³

What theologian David Tracy observed gets to the heart of the matter:

our beloved dead, whose fates no one really knows, are painfully invisible to us now. Indeed, the dead possess a unique form of invisibility: the dead are presently absent and absently present. When Dante first experiences the underworld and sees so many dead persons he once knew well in life, he exclaims, 'I did not know that death had undone so many

He concludes this thought by writing: "We all know the feeling."⁴

By Hieronymus Bosch

As a result, our desires need to be re-directed toward the One who truly satisfies. Only then can our other relationships be restored and placed on solid footing. This purgation, according to Saint Catherine, is not torment. In her Treatise, she puts it this way:

I believe no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise; and day by day this happiness grows as God flows into these souls, more and more as the hindrance to His entrance is consumed⁵

Commemoration of the dead is an act of love. Love is what gathers us tonight around this altar: the love of God given us in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and, flowing from that, our love for those who have died. So, while we aren’t here to mourn, we are here to once again commend the souls of the faithful departed to the mercy of God whose name is Mercy.

Commendation has three main meanings: to formally praise someone, to present as suitable for acceptance (recommend), and to entrust. Indeed, we praise the dead for the good they did and for the love they gave. It is Christ who presents them and who will present us to the Father as suitable for acceptance. It is us who entrust them to God, which is what we're here to do on the solemn day.

By his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ reconciles us with the Father. We pray in the second Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation, asking the Father to graciously “endow us with [Christ’s] very Spirit.” It is the Holy Spirit, this prayer continues, “who takes away everything that estranges us from one another.”⁶ What estranges more for each other than death? By participating in Mass, you are united with the entire Body of Christ: on earth, in heaven, and in Purgatory. Don’t forget, according to the Church, Purgatory is populated by people who are ultimately bound for glory.

We can extend this communion beyond our celebration tonight by praying for the dead. Even now, consider obtaining indulgences for them to help them on their way. By obtaining these on their behalf, you are like the Good Samaritan, who helps the man beaten, robbed, and left for dead to be healed and to complete his journey. These practices and beliefs are not outmoded or outdated.

Tonight, we express our faith in Jesus Christ, who teaches that it is the will of the Father that everyone who believes in him shall have eternal life and be raised on the last day.⁷ The Eucharist, it has been noted, is the medicine of immortality. It is this faith that generates hope and enables us to journey through the valley of death, fearing no evil.⁸ As Saint Paul asks further on in his Letter to the Romans:

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?⁹

---

1 Romans 6:3.^↩
2 Matthew 22:30.^↩
3 1 Corithians 2:9.^↩
4 David Tracy, Fragments: The Existential Situation of Our Time, Collected Essays, Vol 1., 36.^↩
5 Saint Catherine of Genoa. Treatise on Purgatory, Chapter II.^↩
6 Roman Missal. Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation II, sec. ^↩
7 John 6:40.^↩
8 Psalm 23:4.^↩
9 Romans 8:31-32.^↩