Urbi et Orbi- Christmas 2021

URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
FRANCIS

Christmas 2021

Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Christmas!

The Word of God, who created the world and who gives meaning to history and to humanity’s journey, became flesh and came to dwell among us. He came like a whisper, like the murmur of a gentle breeze, to fill with wonder the heart of every man and woman who is open to this mystery.

The Word became flesh in order to dialogue with us. God does not desire to carry on a monologue, but a dialogue. For God himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is dialogue, an eternal and infinite communion of love and life.

By the coming of Jesus, the Person of the Word made flesh, into our world, God showed us the way of encounter and dialogue. Indeed, he made that way incarnate in himself, so that we might know it and follow it, in trust and hope.

Sisters and brothers, “what would our world be like without the patient dialogue of the many generous persons who keep families and communities together?” (Fratelli Tutti, 198). In this time of pandemic, we have come to realize this more and more. Our capacity for social relationships is sorely tried; there is a growing tendency to withdraw, to do it all by ourselves, to stop making an effort to encounter others and do things together. On the international level too, there is the risk of avoiding dialogue, the risk that this complex crisis will lead to taking shortcuts rather than setting out on the longer paths of dialogue. Yet only those paths can lead to the resolution of conflicts and to lasting benefits for all.

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The Nativity of the Lord, Mass during the Night

Readings: Isa 9:1-16; Ps 96:1-3.11-13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”¹ These words, written some seven centuries before the Lord’s birth describe well what his coming into the world meant and continues to mean. “[U]pon those dwelt in a land of gloom a light has shone,” the oracle continues.² Didn’t entering into the Church this evening, coming into this warm, bright, welcoming place from a cold dark night, give you an inkling as to what these words mean?

It is easy to lose sight of the wonder of the Incarnation, of the birth of the Father’s only begotten Son through the Virgin Mary in the humblest of circumstances. Jesus’s birth did not happen in a warm, well-lit place. It happened in a cave that served as a barn. After his birth, he was cleaned, wrapped in rags, and laid in a feeding trough. The phrase "swaddling clothes" is just a sophisticated way of saying "rags."

Jesus, son of Mary, was born a marginal man, among a marginal people, in a marginal, if troublesome part, of the Roman Empire. This is what the kenotic hymn, found in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, alludes to when it tells us the Son of God, Jesus Christ, “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness.”³

As Pope Francis said this week: “the mystery of Christmas is the mystery of God who enters the world by the path of humility.”⁴ Saint Luke’s Nativity portrays, the Holy Father continued, “a scene of poverty and austerity, unsuited to sheltering a woman about to give birth.”⁵ Nonetheless, God enters the world not by creating a huge spectacle, “but by causing a mysterious pull in the hearts of those who feel the thrilling presence of something completely new, something on the verge of changing history.”⁶

Humility, the Pontiff insisted, is the doorway through which God enters the world. On Christmas, Christ invites us through the doorway of humility. Because pride plays some role in nearly every sin, it is impossible to advance spiritually without humility. Being humble means knowing how to be human. It’s been observed: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.”

Humility requires that we accept our frailty, our need, the poverty that constitutes our humanity. Refusal to do this is tantamount to insisting that you do not need a Savior. Humility, noted Pope Francis, means

to look upon our poverty with the same love and tenderness with which we look upon a little child, vulnerable and in need of everything. Lacking humility, we will look for things that can reassure us, and perhaps find them, but we will surely not find what saves us, what can heal us⁷

The Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli, ca, 1473-1475

Our reading from the Saint Paul's Letter to Titus, which is quietly slipped between Isaiah’s great oracle, the ending of which puts many of us in mind of that glorious passage from Handel’s Messiah, and Luke’s wonderful telling of Jesus’s birth, puts some flesh on the bones of what it means to “have seen a great light.”

This passage from Paul's Letter to Titus focuses our attention not on Jesus’s birth or his passion and death, but on his glorious return and, by implication, his resurrection, and our ultimate destiny. He refers to Jesus Christ as “God’s grace.”⁸ Indeed, Jesus is grace in the flesh. Jesus saves us. As Catholics, we believe that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. By the power of the Holy Spirit (the seven fruits of the Holy Spirit can be summed as the virtues that make one humble), the Lord trains

us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ⁹

Living temperately, devoutly, and justly in this age with an eye on the age to come is the spirit of Christmas. The true spirit of Christmas is the Spirit of Christ, that is, the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

After being visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, a humbled, if not humiliated, Ebeneezer Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’s most Christian of books, A Christmas Carol, swears to the Ghost of Christmas Future: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.”¹⁰ Essentially, Scrooge vows to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, who humbly came to us as a child in Bethlehem, who comes to us now in word, sacrament, as well as in our neighbor, especially the person in need, and who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

The final paragraph of A Christmas Carol reports that Scrooge “knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”¹¹ To this Dickens adds, “May that be truly said of us, and all of us!”¹² May we all accept the Lord’s summons to enter through the door of humility, the passage to life eternal.

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1 Isaiah 9:1.^↩
2 Isaiah 9:1.^↩
3 Philippians 2:7.^↩
4 Pope Francis, "Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia." 23 December 2021^↩
5 Ibid.^↩
6 Ibid.^↩
7 Ibid.^↩
8 Titus 2:11.^↩
9 Titus 2:12.^↩
10 Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol, Stave IV, “The Last of the Spirits. Project Gutenberg.^↩
11 A Christmas Carol, Stave V, “The End of It.”^↩
12 Ibid.^↩

Monday Fourth Week of Advent, Year II

Readings: Isa 7:10-14; Ps 24:1-6; Luke 1:26-38

It is both fitting and wonderful that Monday of the last week of Advent features once again the Annunciation. In a real sense, it is back to the beginning of this holy season. Our first reading is from the beginning of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, from that part of that book known as “Proto” or “First”-Isaiah. Judging by its use in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, this passage has been understood by Christians practically from the beginning as a prophecy about Jesus Christ.¹

In context, however, this passage was an attempt to dissuade King Ahaz, who ruled the southern kingdom, which included Jerusalem, from joining with the northern kingdom and Syria to rebel against the Assyrians. What is going on is that the prophet instructs the king to ask for a sign that what the prophet is saying is what the king should do. But the king refuses, saying one should not tempt God. “Therefore,” says the prophet, “the Lord himself will give you a sign; the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel.”²

It is not clear who the woman or the child are. In the context of the prophecy it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the span of time: by the time the child is conceived, born, and learns the difference between good and evil, the two kingdoms Ahaz is considering joining in rebellion will be defeated.

It is also important to note that the word in the Hebrew original often translated as “virgin,” almah, simply means “young woman.” “Virgin” comes into play because the author of Matthew, taking his text from the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, uses the Greek word parthenos, which does mean “virgin.”

It is easy to see why this verse is seen as a prophecy of Christ. Jesus is, in word and in deed, Emmanuel, God with us. This one word can be used to sum up Christianity, at least in its essence, in its existential reality. Sometimes God's word is just that: one word.

The Annunciation, by Andrea Solario, 1506

In our Gospel, Mary is puzzled at the greeting given her by the archangel Gabriel. She is puzzled because it is such an exalted greeting. Why would anyone, let alone a glorious heavenly being, greet a marginal person, a poor young woman in backwards village, in such a way? The answer to this question lies at the end of the passage, when, after hearing what God has in store for her, Mary says: “May it be done to me according to your word.”³ This affirmation and acceptance of God’s will, we call Mary’s fiat.

Fiat is something like the Latin equivalent of the Hebrew “Amen.” But it means more than merely “so be it,” it means to willfully create something. In this moment Mary’s will was God’s will and vice-versa. As we heard about Christ in our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews yesterday, “I come to do your will, O God.”⁴

Doing God’s will is the way Christ is born in and through you. As Mary, who is the model disciple, shows us: doing God’s will isn’t always easy. It is often the case that successfully doing God’s will looks like failure. How can doing God’s will result in a young woman turning up pregnant with a child not conceived with her betrothed? How can God’s will result in the cross, or in the many different experiences of Christian martyrs throughout two millennia?

We know that it is God’s will that we gather around this altar and listen to his word. Through the Eucharist we are strengthened to live according to what we’ve heard. At the end of Mass, we are sent to do it.

As we prepare for a New Year, just as we constantly hear talk about evangelization, most of it quite fuzzy, we also hear rumblings about a “Eucharistic revival.” But just as evangelization consists of telling others what Jesus has done for you, what difference knowing Jesus makes in your life and how you live it, what a Eucharistic revival needs, to borrow the words of Michael Sean Winters, is “those who claim to follow the Lord to follow him, to empty themselves as he emptied himself, to take up their cross as he did, to cling obediently to the Father's will."⁵

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1 Matthew 1:23.^↩
2 Isaiah 7:14.^↩
3 Luke 1:38.^↩
4 Hebrews 10:7.^↩
5 Michael Sean Winters. “US bishops lost about how to engage a culture they don't understand,” in National Catholic Reporter online. 19 November 2021^↩

Traditionis custodes and deacons

I finally had the opportunity to read the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments's Responsa ad dubia, its response to questions posed as a result of the motu proprio Traditionis custodes. This motu proprio, issued last 16 July, was promulgated for the purpose of restricting celebrations done according to liturgical books promulgated prior to the Second Vatican Council.

The Congregation's response to questions asked by bishops from throughout the world with regard to Traditionis custodes was published last Friday, 18 December.

Of note for deacons is the response to this question (i.e., dubia): "Do Deacons and instituted ministers participating in celebrations using the Missale Romanum of 1962 have to be authorised by the diocesan Bishop?" The Congregation's response is "Affirmative."

I assume "instituted ministers" refers to those who have canonically been instituted into what are now called the "lay ministries" of lector and acolyte. These ministries may now, according to the revised Canon 230 § 2, which revision was made by Pope Francis motu proprio in January of this year (see Apostolic Letter Spiritus Domini), be conferred on men and women. These were formally known as "minor orders" because they were reserved exclusively for men moving towards ordination (i.e., major orders- deacon and priest). I appreciate a brother deacon reminding of this change, thus prompting my revision of this paragraph.

Regarding deacons, being clergy and, as such, participating in the sacrament of orders, this is quite clear. Deacons serving at celebrations according to the Extraordinary Form, must be specifically authorized by their bishop to do so.

I understand that many dioceses are still in the process of figuring out some of the hows and the whens of implementing Traditionis custodes. I know mine is. Hence, many bishops are permitting the status quo ante. I think with the publication of this Responsa ad dubia, things become clearer. As ordained ministers, it is important for deacons to keep up with what is going on in this regard in our dioceses or jursidictions.

Spirit of Christmas

My approach to today's readings is going to be quite casual. Among other reasons, I have a pretty heavy preaching schedule over Christmas. I want to note, again, that this year Advent is almost as long as it can possibly be. Therefore, if you haven't yet, set aside some time over the next few days to quietly contemplate the mystery of God-made-man-for-us. Who knows, perhaps what you find here may be useful for that.

Before coming to the readings, it seems significant to me that the Collect, or Opening Prayer, of the Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Advent is the same prayer we say at the end of the Angelus:

Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord,
your grace into our hearts,
that we to whom the incarnation of Christ your Son
was made known by the message of an Angel,
may by his Passion and Cross
be brought to the glory of his Resurrection

Apart from exempting the whole of his life (something that seems a constant in these matters), this is a pretty good summary of the Paschal Mystery, into which the liturgy seeks to immerse us. Noting this lacuna is what led Pope Saint John Paul II to promulgate the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary in his 2002 Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae.

Our Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in Year C of the Sunday lectionary is a primer on the second mystery of the Joyful Mysteries of the Virgin Mary's Rosary. By way of reminder, this mystery is Mary's Visitation to her kinswoman, Elizabeth. The fruit of this mystery is love of neighbor. Of course, it is the Holy Spirit who is operative in the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth.

Because it comes from The Letter to the Hebrews and this letter, which many New Testament scholars believe is actually an extended sermon of sorts, is the longest "book" in our unquely Christian scriptures apart from Saint Paul's Letter to the Romans, and because it is a book I personally find fascinating, I want to focus on it.

Too often, Hebrews, as it is abbreviated, is dismissed as some kind of Platonistic anomaly. In fact, it is a great treatise on Christian life and discipleship, especially in adverse circumstances. In its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council, turned to the Letter to the Hebrews for its image of the Church as the Pilgrim People of God.

While, like the Collect, our reading from Hebrews seems to jump from birth to sacrificial death, skipping Jesus's life and ministry, I think there is significance in the opening lines from our passage: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me" (Heb 10:5). While a body is certainly a prerequiste for being nailed to the cross, at this point in the passage, the reason for being incarnated, as it were, is to do God's will (Heb 10:7). A body is necessary for enacting, incarnating, making concretely "real," the will of God.

We need to tread lightly when insisting it was the Father's will that his Son should suffer and die. If nothing else, this lets us off the hook far too easily. By his Incarnation, life, passion, and death, Christ accomplished in his own person what Israel, or any group of human beings, could not accomplish in/through its history: to fulfill the Law of God in letter and in spirit, thus accomplishing God's purpose in/through/for creation.

Christ fulfilled the Law, thus doing away with the need for "Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings" (Heb 10:8). A further effect of this is opening the one covenant God seeks to establish to all people. Hence, joining God's Pilgrim People is open to anyone who is up for the journey. As Michael Card so beautifully sings, "There Is a Joy In the Journey."

As Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (a most Christian story) reminds us year-after-year, Christmas is a time of conversion, a time to turn around and follow Jesus. May we, like Mr. Scrooge, come to realize the saving effects of the Incarnation in and through the circumstances of our own lives. I think this gives some reality to the petition asking God to "pour forth" his grace into our hearts. God's grace, as our Gospel shows, once poured into our hearts flows out to others. This is the "Spirit of Christmas."

Liturgical reflections

Today is the Third Friday of Advent. Hey, one more week of Advent to go! It's hard to believe that Christmas Eve is a week from today. So, at sundown next Friday, Christmas truly starts.

As things tend to be with tradition, reckoning when Christmas ends isn't straightforward. Christmas either runs for 12 Days or until 2 February. Most Roman Catholics celebrate Epiphany on the traditional date of 6 January. Liturgically, the season of Christmas ends on Epiphany for Catholics in places where this is the case.

Roman Catholics in the United States observe Epiphany the second Sunday after Christmas Day (the first Sunday after Christmas Day is the Feast of the Holy Family). This year (meaning this liturgical year), Catholics in this country will observe Epiphany on 2 January. For Roman Catholics, Christmas in the U.S. doesn't end on Epiphany. It ends on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which falls this year on Sunday, 9 January. Both historically and contemporaneously, the case can be made that Christmas endures until 2 February, the Feast of the Presentation (of Jesus in the Temple), also known as Candlemas.

This year Christmas seems to me to be a twelve-car pileup. Because Christmas Day is on Saturday. So, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, then on the evening of Christmas the vigil for the Feast of Holy Family, and then Sunday, the Feast of the Holy Family. The following weekend, on New Year's Eve, the vigil of the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, is observed. On New Year's Day the solemnity itself on Saturday, followed on Saturday evening by the Vigil Mass for Epiphany and then Epiphany Sunday.

On the plus side, Advent is quite long this year, as it will be next year too. When Emmanuel finally comes this year, it will be a robust event!

Today, 17 December, the Church starts the O Antiphons. 17 December is also Pope Francis's birthday. He turns 85 today. And so, iFeliz cumpleaños!

There are seven O Antiphons. Liturgically, the O Antiphons occur in Evening Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. These are antiphons recited with the Canticle of Mary, which occurs between the Responsory to the scripture reading and Intercessions.

The first of the O Antiphons is O Wisdom. In their modern version, according to the International Commission on English in the Liturgy translation, the first of the O Antiphons is:

Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation

The verses of the well-known Advent hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel are metrical paraphrases of the O Antiphons

It seems fitting that our traditio for this Advent Friday is the Choir of King's College Cambridge singing O Come, O Come, Emmanuel:

Memorial of Saint Lucy

Readings: Num 24:2-7.15-17a; Ps 25:4-9; Matthew 21:23-27

Today the Church celebrates another great Advent feast: the Feast of Saint Lucy (i.e., Santa Lucia). During Advent, we also observe the Feast of Saints Andrew, Nicholas, Ambrose, and Juan Diego, along with the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Advent is such a rich liturgical season.

Santa Lucia lived in the late third/early fourth century. Along with Saint Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Agnes, Cecilia, and Anastasia, and, of course, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Lucia is one of the eight women named in Roman Canon, which we typically call Eucharistic Prayer I. All of these women, apart from the Virgin Mary, were martyred.

At a young age Lucia committed to remaining a virgin. Unaware of her daughter’s commitment to virginity, her mother arranged a marriage for her, which was the custom of her culture at the time. Because she was determined not to marry, she intended to give the money set aside for her dowry as alms to the poor. Her prospective bridegroom was not pleased at losing her dowry and denounced her to the Roman governor as a Christian. After being tortured horribly, including having her eyes gouged out, Lucia was killed. Examples like this lend some gravity to the question “If you were charged with being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

Young Lucia insisted on the validity of her vow of virginity and her commitment to the poor by the same authority Christ invoked in today’s Gospel: love of God and neighbor. This authority is in no way coercive. In fact to bring any kind of coercion or manipulation into it nullifies it. In other words, it is a matter of the heart and not a matter of law, unless it is divine law.

Divine law is simple: love God with your entire self and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Because “God is love,” divine law is the law of love. You see, divine law is nothing other than God himself. The law, such as it is, isn’t something apart from God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As Simone Weil importantly noticed: God is always subject, never object.

As Jesus’s followers, we are to live and to teach- mostly by example, like Santa Lucia and the other women martyrs- by the same authority with which Christ lived and taught; the authority of God, which is the love of God. In our Gospel this evening, not only was Jesus cannily avoiding being trapped, he understood that because it is firstly and lastly a matter of the heart.

In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, Pope Saint Paul VI pointed out that people today listen “more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”¹ Pope Paul continued by pointing out that “St. Peter expressed this well when he held up the example of a reverent and chaste life that wins over even without a word those who refuse to obey the word.”² And so, it is “primarily by her conduct and by her life,” he continues, “that the Church will evangelize the world.”³

Showing is more powerful than saying. Setting the example is more attractive than directing, demanding, and certainly better than damning. If you are concerned about the sanctity of marriage and you are married, live your marriage in a holy manner. If, like Santa Lucia, you want to highlight the value of celibacy, then live celibacy in a Christ-honoring, that is an other-honoring, way. This is true across the spectrum of so many issues the Church faces today. It costs you nothing to take a political position, or voice your views on social media. It costs you time, effort, and resources to concretely help another.

Observing a holy Advent teaches you what it means to await the joyful hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. In a very real sense, most of human history- both before and after the birth of Christ- is an Advent. An Advent well-observed also prepares you for the celebration of the Incarnation of the Son of God. What Advent teaches is that Christ is not really born until he is born in you. Christianity is more than theory. In fact, as a theory, Christianity lacks. Christianity is incarnational.

Christian faith is not just some things that you do, or even merely a way of life. Being Christian is a mode of existence. As the martyrs show us, being Christian is ecclesial being. There is a subtle but importance difference between being a Christian and being Christian. One cannot be a Christian on one’s own. Hence, the Church is not incidental but necessary for accomplishing God’s purpose in and for the world. Where else but in the Church are people like Santa Lucia remembered? We remember her because, along with others, like six woman whom we also recall in the Roman Canon, she shows us what being Christian is all about: self-emptying, self-sacrificing love. This is how we bear witness to Christ.

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1 Pope Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation on Evangelization in the Modern World [Evangelii Nunitiandi], sec. 41.^↩
2 1 Peter 3:1.^↩
3 Evangelii Nunitiandi, sec 41.^↩