Year C Third Sunday of Advent

Readings: Zeph 3:14-18a; Isa 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18

Shout for joy! Sing joyfully!¹ “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!”² Today, the Third Sunday of Advent, is known as Gaudete Sunday. As you might’ve guessed, Gaudete in Latin means “rejoice”. It’s the Sunday we light the pink candle.

On this Sunday the season of Advent takes something of a turn. During the first two weeks of Advent, as an extension of the Feast of Christ the King, which we celebrate the last Sunday of each liturgical year, the liturgy focuses intently on Christ’s glorious return. Hence, the singular message of the first half of Advent is simply “Repent!”

Finding its meaning in the Greek word metanoia, repentance means to have a change of mind and heart, to change from within. Another word for “change” is convert. The start of Advent calls us to live each day, each minute, in anticipation and expectation, not growing tired, complacent, or losing hope. Because Christians are to live life with meaning and purpose, we are to be sober, vigilant, awake, alert. Above all, as Saint Paul indicates, we are to be joyful. Friedrich Nietzsche once quipped: “I might believe in the Redeemer if his followers looked more redeemed.”

In its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes, meaning “Joy and hope”), the Second Vatican Council teaches: “the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.”³ The Church is not merely the hierarchy (i.e., the Pope and the bishops) but all the faithful.

The Spirit leads us ever forward to the coming of Christ, to the full realization of God's reign, and not backwards to an imagined time when, in the words of Pope Saint John XXIII, “everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea...”⁴ Historian that he was, he went on to point out that there never was such a time. So, with Good Pope John, we too, “must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster as though the end of the world were at hand.”⁵ Hope, the flower of faith, not despair, is what enables us to rejoice always. Joy is the nectar of the flower of hope.

Why does Saint Paul exhort the Christians of ancient Philippi to rejoice? Because “The Lord is near.”⁶ It is important during Advent to note that “Advent” means coming. We begin this season by being reminded of what we frequently recite in the Creed: “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”⁷ Then, at Christmas we celebrate the Son of God’s coming into the world through the Virgin Mary, that moment when eternity stepped into time.

But it is also important not only to know about but to experience the reality of Christ’s presence in the here and now. He is present in a variety of ways. As the priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins so beautifully observed:

for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces⁸

Most powerfully, he is really present whenever and wherever the Church celebrates the Eucharist. Christ’s real presence in the Eucharistic liturgy is fourfold: he is present in the gathering of the baptized, in the person of the priest, in proclamation of the scriptures, and in the consecrated bread and wine.

Rejoice! The Lord is not only near but here, now! By your communion, the Lord is not only with you. He is in you for the purpose of acting through you. This is what it means to have the Holy Spirit, who is the way Christ remains present in the here and now, prior to his return in glory.

Esta sigue siendo la celebración de la Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe para los gringos. Esto está bien. Yo soy un gringo.

Este año, la Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe cae el domingo de Gaudete. Esto nos da una razón más para regocijarnos. El martes y miércoles pasados, celebramos la Solemnidad de la Immaculada Concepción de la Santísima Virgen María. Bajo la bandera de la Immaculada Concepción, la Santísima Virgen es patrona de los Estados Unidos. Bajo el título de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, es la patrona de las Américas: Norte y Sur, y patrona secundaria de la diocesis de Salt Lake City.

This year, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe falls on Gaudete Sunday. This gives us a further reason to rejoice. Last Tuesday and Wednesday, we observed the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Under the banner of Immaculate Conception, the Blessed Virgin is patroness of the United States. Under the title Our Lady of Guadalupe, she is the patroness of the Americas: North and South, as well as the secondary patroness of the Diocese of Salt Lake City.

Estas diferentes manifestaciones culturales de la Virgen sirven para señalar no sólo la universalidad de la Iglesia, sino su diversidad. Sólo un Dios-Padre, Hijo y Espíritu Santo- es una comunión de personas, una unidad en la diversidad, la Iglesia también lo es. Estar unidos en la fe no es ser esclavizado por una uniformidad impuesta. Como San Pablo escribe en su Carta a los Gálatas: “Es por la libertad que Cristo nos ha hecho libres.” La fe en Cristo nos libera para ser quienes Dios nos hizo ser tanto individual como colectivamente.

These different cultural manifestations of Our Lady serve to point out not only the Church’s universality but its diversity. Just as God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- is a communion of persons, a unity in diversity, the Church is also. To be united in faith is not to be enslaved by an imposed uniformity. As Paul writes in his Letter to the Galatians: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”⁹ Faith in Christ frees us to be who God made us to be both individually and collectively.

Para los cristianos, “el agua es más espesa que la sangre, es decir, el agua del bautismo es más espesa que la sangre de la herencia biológica". Renacemos en el bautismo como hijos de Dios a través de Jesucristo por el poder del Espíritu Santo. Por lo tanto, pertenecemos a la familia de Dios, la Iglesia. Al participar de la Eucaristía estamos plenamente incorporados al Verdadero Cuerpo de Cristo. Al igual que la Virgen María y Juan el Bautista, debemos ser precursores la segunda venida de Cristo viviendo y predicando las buenas noticias por el poder del Espíritu Santo.

For Christians, “Water is thicker than blood- that is, the water of baptism is thicker than the blood of biological inheritance.”¹⁰ We are reborn in baptism as children of God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we belong to the family of God, the Church. By our partaking of the Eucharist, we are fully incorporated into Christ’s True Body. Like the Blessed Virgin and John Baptist, we are to be forerunners of Christ’s return by living and preaching the good news by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Debemos hacer todo por el poder del Espíritu Santo. De ahí que la invocación Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam, como señaló Luigi Giussani, “es la síntesis de todo lo que nos dice el año litúrgico. Es la síntesis de todo lo que nos dice la memoria de la vida cristiana. Porque todo, todo viene del Espíritu Santo”.

We are to do everything by the power of the Holy Spirit. Hence, the invocation Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam (i.e., Come Holy Spirit, come through Mary), as Luigi Giussani noted, “is the synthesis of everything the liturgical year tells us. It is the synthesis of everything the memory of Christian life tells us. Because everything, everything comes from the Holy Spirit.”¹¹

Because the Holy Spirit is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence in us, among us, and through us until he returns in glory and because of Mary’s “Yes!” in accepting God’s will for her, the Holy Spirit does, indeed, veni per Mariam- ven a través de María-come through Mary.

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1 Zephaniah 3:14.^↩
2 Philippians 4:4.^↩
3 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et spes], sec. 4.^↩
4 Pope John XXIII, “Pope John’s Opening Speech to the Council,” in The Documents of Vatican II: With Notes and Comments by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Authorities. Ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. and Very Rev Msgr Joseph Gallagher. New York: Guild Press, 1966, 712.^↩
5 Ibid.^↩
6 Philippians 4:5.^↩
7 The Roman Missal, Order of Mass, Liturgy of the Word, sec. 18.^↩
8 Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” in Hopkins: Poems and Prose, Tenth Printing. Ed. Peter Washington. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 18.^↩
9 Galatians 5:1.^↩
10 Giles Fraser, Chosen: Lost and Found Between Judaism and Christianity, 133.^↩
11 Luigi Giussani, “Notes from Remarks at the Memores Domini Spiritual Retreat” at La Thuile, 2 August 2001​.^↩

Pooping in St. Paul's and the Incarnation

These days I rarely post more than twice a week, let alone twice in one day. What prompts me to put up a second post today is something that I just read. This something comes from Giles Fraser's book Chosen: Lost and Found Between Christianity and Judaism.

For those unfamiliar with Fraser, he is a priest of the Church of England. In addition to having a Jewish lineage on his Dad's side, his wife is an Israeli Jew. Hopefully, this little bit of background helps explain the subtitle of his book.

For those who remember back slightly more than a decade ago, the Occupy movement was big. In London, the movement occupied ground connected to Saint Paul's Cathedral. At that time Fraser was the Canon Chancellor of the Cathedral. Unlike a number of his clerical colleagues, Fraser was sympathetic to and somewhat supportive of Occupy's occupancy of the land around the cathedral.

Ultimately, the Church decided to team up with the City of London to forcibly evict Occupy, which led Fraser to resign from his position. His resignation led to a personal crisis. He went through a divorce, had life-threatening health issues, and had to find a new place of ministry. The first part of his book is about these events.

The second part of the book is a good (by no means perfect) account of the history of relations between Jews and Christians. He especially focuses on the early centuries of Christianity's existence. He is quite superb in discussing the role of the Temple in pre-Jewish Judaism. It was the Temple and not "orthodoxy" that held Israelites together.

Moving on from his discussion of the Jerusalem Temple, Fraser moves back to the joint decision by Saint Paul's Cathedral and the City of London to forcibly evict the Occupy occupiers from the vicinity of the cathedral. Citing a report given to London's Metropolitan Police, he notes the complaint that on a few occasions people had pooped inside the Cathedral. It is his subsequent treatment of this that prompted this post.

This morning I noted how really appalling were the circumstances of Jesus's birth, at least according to Saint Luke's account. No matter how historical this account may or may not be, the inspired author's point is that the Son of God became incarnate in the most "real" of circumstances. I went on to note that for Christ to be born in us, it has to happen in the messiness of our own lives to be real.

Fraser first points how effectively shitting insider the cathedral rallied public opinion in favor of forcibly removing the protestors. But, he correctly grasps, "At stake here was something surprisingly theological- in Christians terms, what is the proper relationship between a church and the messiness of the world?" (146) This is a great question in societies full of need in which churches sit on large swaths of prime real estate empty most of the time. It bears noting that the term "Emergent Church" was first coined by German Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz. What he addressed was the fact that, at least in most advanced Western societies, Christianity has become a largely bourgeois phenomenon (see The Emergent Church: The Future of Christianity in a Postbourgeois World).

Fraser goes on to ask: "Does the church seek to maintain and protect a cordoned-off sanctuary of purity, a pollution-free space for a pollution-free God? Or is the whole point of the incarnation that God becomes human, thus collapsing the barriers between the sacred and the profane, between God and shit?" (146-147) At least for me, these are rhetorical questions; the respective answers to which are No and Yes respectively. Further, when we consider the full and complete humanity of Jesus Christ, as insisted on by Christian orthodoxy, God evacuated his bowels the same way all human beings do. While in the flesh, God took dumps. While it isn't something one need fixate on, it does bear noting that denying this is denying Christ's full humanity,

Early on in the second part of Chosen, when considering how the Council of Nicea was intent to brighten and embolden the line of demarcation between nascent Rabbinic Judaism and the nascent Church, along with Spanish liberation theologian Jon Sobrino (specifically his essay "The Kingdom of God and the Theological Dimension of the Poor: The Jesuanic Principle," which can be found in the compilation Who Do You Say That I Am?: Confessing the Mystery of Christ, pages 109-145), Fraser notes how quickly Jesus's radical preaching and teaching about God's kingdom disappeared.

While this could serve as a springboard for my deep dislike of this least wonderful time of the year, I will limit myself to noting it passing and leaving both of my readers to ponder this for themselves.

Turning into reality

Here it is a dark, cold snowy morning. I have yet to go out for my morning walk. Every fiber of my being wants to stay in my recliner here in my den. But, after composing this, I will dress and walk, praying my morning Rosary as I make my way along the street. It's good for me to push myself, up to a point.

The trouble is, I can't locate that point. Meanwhile, mentally, I vacillate between feeling I don't push myself enough and that I push myself way too hard. I am told there is a balance and that it can be achieved. I remain skeptical about this.

It's funny when I was younger, I always envisioned my mid-50s as a time when I kind of had life figured out, at least the practicalities of life. In reality, I find myself struggling with the same things with which I struggled in my thirties and forties. You see, I didn't really get up and running, in the worldly sense, until I was thirty-one. Looking back, I take pride in the fact that I spent my twenties mostly doing what I wanted to do- for better and for worse.

My point? The same one I make with some frequency in these Friday posts: life goes by fast! Acknowledging this seems fitting as the Second Week of Advent comes to an end. On its Third Sunday, the Advent season takes a turn. It turns from focusing intensely on Christ's so-called Second Coming (he's never left) to looking forward to our celebration of his Nativity and, moreover, to his abiding presence as we await the fulfillment of God's creation.

Over the course of this Advent, a sentence keeps popping into my mind: "Christ is not really born until he is born in you." I think that sums the direction Advent takes after its turn mid-way through. This year, with Christmas happening on a Saturday, Advent is as long as it can possibly be. So, we have quite a lot of time to prepare ourselves to receive Christ again on the Feast of His Nativity.

Just as Jesus's birth happened not merely in "humble circumstances"- surely a euphemistic phrase in this context- but in what we would consider an appalling situation, so his birth in us has to happen in the messiness of the reality of our own lives. Typically, he does come screaming in from above, like a meteor, or creeping around from the edges of the circumstances we daily face. No, he comes in and through people and events. Usually in and through the most unexpected people and circumstances.

In my experience, grace is not some clean, shiny thing that is clearly distinct from reality as I experience it. It is right there in it, present in and through the opaque transience of my life. This, I'm pretty sure, is what is meant by the adjective "incarnational." Rather than absent ourselves from the nitty-gritty of life, putting our heads in the clouds, as it were, following Christ is to turn into reality.

In anticipation of the turn, our traditio for this Second Friday of Advent in the Choir of Saint John's College Choir, Cambridge, with "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus."

Monday Second Week of Advent, Year II

Readings: Isa 35:1-10; Ps 85:9ab-14; Luke 5:17-26

According to Jesus, it is harder to forgive sins than it is to heal the lame. The main reason Jesus spent a lot of time talking to the Pharisees is because they were the Jews with whom he had the most in common. Here’s something about the Pharisees: they understood the gravity of sin. Too often, we don’t. Hence, we continue to think that it’s a greater miracle to make a paraplegic walk than it is for God to our forgive sins through Christ.

Of course, Jesus can forgive sins because he is “True God from true God.”¹ Just think of how difficult it is sometimes to forgive someone who has wronged you. Usually, we don’t just want to forgive. We long to be reconciled. But being reconciled requires that the wrong-doer acknowledge her/his offense and ask the one s/he has acted badly towards for pardon.

Forgiving means letting it go, not seeking revenge, not trying to get even. It is possible and, in fact, often the case that we forgive and remain hurt, even angry, sometimes justifiably so. Reconciliation requires speaking, hearing, and then reckoning together with the truth. A reckoning is the settling of an account.

We all need not only God’s forgiveness but to be reconciled to God. Why? In his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul provides the answer: “all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.”² It is the work of Christ to reconcile us and the whole of creation to God. God deeply desires to share his glory with you.

You don’t go to confession to find our whether or not God will forgive you. As Jesus demonstrates in today’s Gospel, in and through him, you are always already forgiven. Confession is where you go to be reconciled with the Father, through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Through the Sacrament of Penance you are also reconciled to your sisters and brothers, that is, the Church. This is why we also call this the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Christ Healing the Paralytic at Capernaum, by Bernhard Rode, 1780

In confession, you face the truth by acknowledging your sins and, in the Act of Contrition, telling God you are sincerely sorry for them. Then, by doing your penance to show the sincerity of your promise to amend, you receive the full grace of the sacrament. It is with the help of God’s grace, his unmerited favor toward you, his love of you, that you can truly repent.

Repentance means changing your heart and your mind. These must change before your behavior changes. As Jesus teaches in the next chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel:

A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks³

Later in Luke, a rich man says to Jesus: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” To which Jesus responds: “No one is good but God alone.”⁴ As novelist Philip Roth wrote: “whoever imagines himself pure is wicked.”⁵

The first two weeks of Advent pick-up where Christ the King left-off: looking forward to Jesus’s return in glory. As a result, these weeks really have one theme: our need to repent, to be converted. To convert is to change. By grace, we are to be changed into the very image of Christ. In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern Church, Gaudium et spes, the Second Vatican Council stated this powerfully: Jesus Christ

Who is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), is Himself the perfect man. To the [children] of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every [person]⁶

This is summed up nicely by the whispered prayer said during Mass when the water is added to the wine on the altar: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”⁷ At root, this is what the Incarnation of the Son of God is about.

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1 The Roman Missal The Order the Mass, The Liturgy of the Word, sec. 18.^↩
2 Romans 3:23.^↩
3 Luke 6:45.^↩
4 Luke 18:18-19.^↩
5 Philip Roth, Sabbath's Theater.^↩
6 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et spes], sec. 22. ^↩
7 The Roman Missal, Order of Mass, The Liturgy of the Eucharist, sec. 24.^↩

Hopefully waiting

Today is the First Friday of Advent and First Friday of December. It also the feast day of that great Jesuit missionary, Saint Francis Xavier.

In with the new- a new Year of Grace and a new month, even if it is the final month of 2021. As I noted in my homily last Monday, as a Christian, I appreciate always being able to start again over and over again. It gives me hope. Who knows, with the help of God, maybe one of these times I'll "get it right"? That's the hope: my desire to get it right. Without that desire, there is no reason to be enthusiastic about being able to start again.

Saint Joseph Church Monticello, Utah

Perhaps in the missionary spirit of St. Francis Xavier, I am traveling today with my Bishop. We are headed to southeastern Utah. Specifically, paying pastoral visits to to Moab and Monticello- the parishes of Saint Pius X and Saint Joseph, respectively.

It will be nice to get away. The past few months have been incredibly busy. I've been busy to the point of nearly being overwhelmed. So, while there are places to be and things to do during this trip, the drive, the little bit of hiking, the quiet of a room, will be a nice, if brief, respite.

So, I am off today to Utah's beautiful red rock country. In the spirit of Advent, I am keeping today's post both simple and hopeful.

Our traditio for today. J.S. Bach's Jesu, joy of man's desiring as sung by the Choir of Somerville College, Oxford:

Monday First Week of Advent, Year II

Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Ps 122:1-9; Matthew 8:5-11

At Mass, just prior to receiving communion, we echo the words uttered by the Roman centurion in this evening’s Gospel: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”¹ The acknowledgement of our unworthiness implies that our souls need healing.

Here’s the thing about Jesus, as demonstrated by his healing the centurion’s servant: when we sincerely ask, he always says the healing word! We only learn that the servant of the centurion is healed two verses after the final verse of our reading, when the inspired author writes: “And Jesus said to the centurion, ‘You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.’ And at that very hour [his] servant was healed.”²

Why this Gospel today, the second day of a New Year of Grace? Because with the advent of Advent we are invited to begin again, again. Important for Christian hope is the belief that because of God’s love for us given in Christ Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit we can always begin again. As Pope Francis noted: you will get tired of asking God’s forgiveness long before God tires of forgiving you.

Jesus Healing the Servant of a Centurion, by Paolo Veronese, 16th century

Just as it is arrogance, not humility, to think your sins are too great for God to forgive, to think God will tire of forgiving you before you tire of sincerely repenting is to give yourself too much credit and God too little.

What is the healing word that Jesus says? It is absólvo or, in English, “absolve.” After confessing and expressing sorrow for your sins, the priest, acting in persona Christi, as part of Absolution in the Sacrament of Penance, says, Et ego te absólvo a peccátis tuis- “and I absolve you from your sins.” Apart from saying something fancy sounding in Latin, to say the priest acts in persona Christi is to say that it is Christ himself who absolves your sins, who says the healing word. Of course, Christ is himself the healing Word.

The main pastoral reason the Sacrament of Penance is encouraged and made more available during Advent is so that we can truly begin again, again. The grace we receive in and through the Sacrament of Penance, which is a unique grace- the restoration of sanctifying grace, the renewal of your baptism- prepares us to celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus, the Incarnation of the Son of God. It is through the sacraments that Christ is born and abides in us to accomplish his purposes through us. At the end of each Mass, you are sent to make him present wherever you are.

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1 The Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec. 132.^↩
2 Matthew 8:13.^↩

Abounding love

Readings: Jer 33:14-16; Ps 24:4-5.8-10.14; 1 Thess 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25-28.34-36

Central to the philosophical project of Martin Heidegger was the recovery of the question of Being. The question of Being Heidegger sought to recover was just that, a question, not an answer, let alone the answer. What is the question of Being he sought to recover? Stated inexactly it takes the form of Why does any-thing exist rather than no-thing? Why are there beings who can ask and wonder about Being?

Maybe it's the word wonder that is the key to the recovery of the question. I mean wonder in a dual sense: wondering about Being, about our own being, as in pondering it and wonder, as in being struck by the self-conscious nature of my being.

Judging from some of Heidegger's early work, like his lecture on Saint Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, what concerned him was how to live with meaning, purpose, even urgency. Maybe all these coalesce into a key Heideggerian term: authenticity. How does one live authentically? These are big questions and raise big issues.

First Thessalonians may well be the first of the uniquely Christian scriptures, known collectively as the New Testament, to be written. Its rival for being the earliest New Testament composition is Saint Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. First Thessalonians, one of the seven authentically Pauline compositions (i.e., written by Paul himself) in the Christian scriptures, was likely composed in about AD 50, which is probably 20 years before the first written Gospel (i.e., The Gospel According to Saint Mark, presumably written shortly after AD 70).

One of the things that prompted the apostle to write to the Church in Thessaloniki was in response to their anticipation of Christ's imminent return. This brings us to the passage from the end of the third and beginning of the fourth chapters of the letter that comprises our second reading for this First Sunday of Advent in Year C of the three-year Sunday cycle of readings. One way to frame our readings for today is that each of the three tells about one of Christ's comings.

In the first reading from Jeremiah, we hear what the Church takes to be a prophecy about the Lord's birth. Our Gospel, while contextually about the destruction of the Second Temple, which occurred in AD 70 and had already occurred when the Gospel of Luke was written, is about Christ's return in glory. Our reading from First Thessalonians, meanwhile, is about Christ's presence in the here and now.

You see, Christ wasn't born, lived, died, rose from the dead, and then, with his Ascension, taken away. On Pentecost, he sent the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the third Glorious Mystery of the Rosary, which is the Spirit's descent at Pentecost, is God's love for us. God shows his love for us by always being with us, not leaving us orphans. The Holy Spirit is nothing other than the mode of Christ's resurrection presence in us, among us, and through us.

It is just this that Paul addresses in the passage that is our New Testament reading: "May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, to strengthen your hearts" (1 Thess 3:12). It is through such love that the hearts of believers are strengthened for the Lord's return. It is by abounding love that Christ is present in, among, and through us.

In our Gospel, the signs about which Jesus speaks are ambiguous insofar as they are things that always happen. When has there not been natural disasters, strange interstellar events, and the like? Tribulation is always imminent, is it not? Jesus urges his followers not only to not be afraid, but to "stand erect and raise your heads" when these things happen. Why? Because when you experience these things "your redemption is at hand." As the Second Vatican Council put it in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: "Through Christ and in Christ, the riddles of sorrow and death grow meaningful. Apart from His Gospel, they overwhelm us" (Gaudium et spes, sec. 22.)

"Be vigilant at all times," Jesus tells us. Don't let the anxieties of daily life obscure your ability to read the signs of the times by the light of faith. Don't let trials and tribulations overshadow the reality and inevitability of your own death and what lies beyond. Christians live life with purpose and urgency, that is to say, with passion. In essence, passion means to suffer. The Buddha was correct- to live is to suffer. In and through Christ we overcome suffering and even death. This overcoming happens through experience, not avoidance. Because of Christ, we can truly live!

While Advent is a short season, consisting of only four Sundays- this year Advent is almost as long as it can possibly be (next year, it will be as long as it can be)- it is polyvalent. Picking up from Christ the King, Advent starts as a season of penance, looking forward to Christ's return and his judgment of the living and the dead. On its Third Sunday, known as Gaudete Sunday, Advent takes a more hopeful turn, directing us to Christ's birth and the effects of that, namely that Christ is not really born until he is born in you! This gets us back to abounding love. "Abound" means to have or, in the case of love (i.e., agape), to give in large amounts.

Abounding love is how one lives life with purpose and passion. To love is to live authentically. It is Christ who "fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear" (Gaudium et spes, sec 22). Our existence is an act of love. Without love there is nothing.