Living Our True Identity

Earlier this week, I went to jail. Don’t worry – I was there for a good reason. I was attending a training session for those who wish to volunteer in ministry work with those in the detention center. Several priests in the area, including myself, will soon be going there on occasion to offer confession for inmates who are Catholic.

During the course of the training, the senior chaplain explained that for many of those in prison, religious affiliation can sometimes be a fluid thing. In other words, they’re Baptist if the Baptist chaplain comes around, and Jewish when the rabbi visits, and Catholic if the priest is there. One of the biggest challenges of prison life, it seems, is that there is so much time and so little to do, and so when the opportunity comes along for human interaction and conversation, inmates are willing to adapt themselves – even something like their religion – in order to seize the moment.

That got me to thinking – you and I, though not in prison, are sometimes sort of the same way. Hopefully we’re not identifying ourselves with multiple religions, but don’t we sometimes adapt or shift our religious fervor depending on where we are, or who we are with, or what we are doing? Maybe we are one way with our families or our church community, but when we’re with friends or coworkers or classmates, we’re something else completely. Maybe we go through phases where we feel very Catholic and we pray and participate in the sacraments, but then other times, we let those things go entirely. We act a certain way on Sunday morning even though we had acted a totally different way on Friday night.

This problem existed in Jesus’s age too. The Jewish people were God’s chosen people, but they didn’t always act like it – they fell victim to fear, malice, oppression, all of the things that any other nation did. In the first reading, the prophet Ezra, having led back to Jerusalem a large number of Israelites returning from the Babylonian exile, reads aloud to them the Law, the Torah, God’s commandments to Israel of how to live. And the people weep – they weep out of sadness because they had failed to fulfill those commandments and they weep for joy because they have been given the chance to start again.

This aspect of our human condition – however you want to characterize it: being two-faced or wishy-washy or even hypocritical – is something we all fall victim to, in greater or lesser degree. Except for Jesus. Though truly man, he was also truly God, always in communion with and intimately connected to his heavenly Father. Jesus was incapable of duplicity or guile or sin not because he wasn’t truly free but because, being truly free in his Father’s presence, his human will perfectly conformed to the will of God. In every moment – whether in a healing, or a sermon, or just an encounter or a glance – Jesus perfectly embodied the fulfillment of his Father’s will. It was mission, his identity, and he never wavered or faltered from it.

Christ in the Synagogue (1868) by Nikolai Ge

Jesus announces the nature of that mission very explicitly in the Gospel today. Returning to the town where he was raised, entering his own home synagogue, surrounded no doubt by family and neighbors and friends – he announces that he is the fulfillment of Scripture, that he is the one anointed by God “to bring glad tidings to the poor, … to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free….” But it’s not a mission that he came to accomplish alone, especially now that he physically sits at the right of the Father in heaven. Instead, it’s a mission that he began but which is perpetuated through the Church, continued by every believer. We are, as Paul reminds us Corinthians, the parts, the members of the Body of Christ; we are, in a sense, his new family, his friends who are united to him not by blood or background but by mission and purpose. We do a variety of things, exist in this world in a variety of ways, but as a whole we form the living, breathing, active Body of Christ which continues to fulfill the Father’s will on earth.

How do we do that? In a number of ways. Through prayer, through sacrifice, through the active practice of our faith – we unite ourselves to what God continues to do in the world today. Even more, we can become the instruments through which God does it. Around our country, around the world, the Catholic Church is one of the biggest providers of education, health care, and support for the poor and the downtrodden, not just because we are altruistic but because we understand that is what Jesus would have us do. And in smaller ways, much smaller, we can be examples of his love and mercy to others – through daily encounters of faith, through small offerings of love, through heartfelt instances of forgiveness.

My friends, in this Year of Mercy, you and I are challenged to live authentically from our identity in Christ, and not to waver or falter in it. We are encouraged again to see ourselves not as we so often do – as from this background, or that culture, or this occupation, or that political persuasion. Rather, above all else, we are first and foremost members of the Body of Christ – his hands, feet, eyes, ears. We each fulfill, according to our own gifts, according to our way of life, the mission of furthering the work begun by Jesus, the mission of fulfilling the Father’s will. The role of the Church, of every believer, is to keep doing what Jesus started until all the world is converted. What is your part in that? What mission is God asking of you?

The Transformative Power of Christ

The Wedding at Cana (c. 1563), Paolo Veronese

Human nature is a funny thing. Though it may seem vastly different depending on the region of the world or the historical era, there are certain aspects of human culture that are common to any place or time. Take, for example, the ritual of a wedding. Every human culture celebrates weddings, and there are always two parts to any wedding: the ceremony and the celebration.

As a priest, I’ve been involved in quite a few weddings. I’ve noticed that there’s a somewhat humorous dichotomy to our contemporary American wedding culture. On the one hand, the ceremony is always very planned out, very choreographed – sometimes with lots of pomp and circumstance and even tension. Everyone behaves very proper and dignified. But after the ceremony? It’s time to party! All these people who were acting very sophisticated a few minutes before are now ready to throw down. The ties and jackets come off, the libations flow, and before you know it, Grandma is out on the dance floor. I’ve learned that’s usually the opportune moment to excuse myself.

Don’t get me wrong – if done in moderation, all of this is perfectly fine. After all, people come to a wedding to celebrate! They come to celebrate love – how two people have come together to form something new – and that feeling of love overflows into joy and exuberance. In the Gospel today, the people attending the wedding in Cana were certainly enjoying themselves. They were .... well, partying, but the intensity of their joy had led to a serious problem. The wine had run out.

On the one hand, we can interpret this story in a rather straightforward manner. The wedding at Cana is set in the Gospel of John at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, just after he has called his disciples but before he has really begun teaching and preaching. Indeed, as we heard, Jesus tells his mother that his hour has not yet come – he’s not yet ready to reveal who he is, to show his power and attract attention to himself. And yet, Mary persists and Jesus is persuaded. He performs the miracle of changing the jars of water into wine and so the party is able to continue. It’s a good reminder for us of why prayer through Mary is so important for us – then and now, Jesus has a special fondness for fulfilling the requests of his mother and all who appeal to her.

There is also a deeper, more hidden meaning to this story. Throughout the Bible, the writers of Scripture use the imagery of marriage – the love between spouses, the wedding banquet – to symbolize the intense, faithful love that God has for humanity. The prophets write about how God and humanity are divorced, in a sense, from each other by mankind’s sinfulness, but that there will come a time when God will restore his people and take them to himself like a beautiful bride.

We hear this in the first reading – Isaiah writes to the people: “you shall be called “My Delight,
and your land “Espoused”…. As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.” Though the chosen people of God had rejected the Lord’s plans for them time and again, he was not going to give upon them – even more, he was going to fashion them into something wonderful and beautiful, like a bride on her wedding day.

Unlike the other three Gospel writers, John never speaks of miracles; instead, he refers to the signs of Jesus. In a sense, they’re the same thing – the changing of water into wine can be seen as both a miracle and a sign. But perhaps thinking of them as a sign is the better way, because it takes the emphasis off of what is being done and instead puts it on who is doing it. Jesus performs various signs as a way of showing who he is and why he has come.

In this light, what Jesus does in the Gospel reading today takes on a new meaning. By changing the water into the wine, he shows his power to transform – not just the elements of the wedding celebration, but we ourselves, our very nature. He is the Savior who has been sent to restore humanity, he is the God who has come to raise up his people – in him, the divine and the human are forever reconciled and brought into union. He is the heavenly Bridegroom come to claim his Bride.

The transformation of water into wine at Cana allowed the celebration of the wedding to continue, taking on a new and joyous exuberance since it was “the good wine.” The transformation that God has worked in humanity through Jesus is a far, far greater cause for exuberant celebration. Though we have been far from God, he can bring us back to himself; though we have failed to live as his children, he wishes to restore us to a new and greater glory. Indeed, even more he has endowed us with his own power – gifts of wisdom and faith and prophecy and mighty deeds through the Holy Spirit, as the epistle tells us. Through our baptism in Christ, we share already in the ability to let each moment of each day – though seemingly ordinary or unremarkable – to be transformed into something greater, a cause for rejoicing, like water into wine, because of the knowledge of the love that God has for us.

My friends, the union of God and man in Jesus is something that profoundly affects us, indeed transforms us, since he shares that same union with us. Though human, we have been recreated in Christ and participate now in his divine life. His is a love that forgives but also transforms – his is a love that gives us reason to rejoice but then asks us to share that joy with others, each in our own way, according to the gifts God has shared with us.

As we begin a new year, a new semester, a new season in the life of the Church, it’s worthwhile I think to reflect upon the immense outpouring of love that Jesus offers and to consider how we are responding to it at this moment. Let us look for the ways that God wishes to show us his power in our daily life – not through loud miracles perhaps but through small signs – that we may be constantly reminded that we have a celebration to join in, a wedding feast of the divine and the human – present now, but especially in eternity – that awaits us.

Mary & Contemplating the Faithfulness of God

In the year 1788, the Scottish poet Robert Burns gathered together some fragments of a traditional Scots poem, added his own words and melody, and published the song, “Auld Lang Syne.” Ever since, that song – which is about cheerfully remembering friendships long past, even if they have faded with time – has traditionally been associated with end of the year. As we close out one year and usher in a new, “Auld Lang Syne” bids us to raise a toast for old times’ sake and remember the ways in which we have been blessed.

On this January 1, the Church bids us to do the same, to remember the ways we have been blessed, not just by others but by God. In the first reading, Moses receives the Lord’s promise of blessing upon the nation of Israel, a blessing that does not waver or fade but remains through for all time. Of course, as Christians, we understand that that blessing is primarily fulfilled in the coming of Jesus, who is the embodiment of God’s answer to humanity’s longing. On this eighth day since Christmas Day, we are reminded again that God has chosen to reveal himself to us by dwelling among us as one of us.

Francisco de Zurbarán, Christ and the Virgin at the House in Nazareth (c. 1640)

Rather than just remembering past blessings, rather than just being reminded again about what God has done for us, at the start of a new year, we also look to Mary – specifically to what she did in the Gospel reading. As the shepherds draw close to her newborn child, we hear that she “kept these things in her heart and reflected upon them.” Mary did more than observe, more than recall – she pondered, she contemplated, she kept the amazing events that had been done for her alive in her heart. Mary, of course, was pondering what God had done for her – that he had chosen her before all time to be the mother of his only Son. And because that Son, Jesus, is himself God, Mary is also properly called the Mother of God.

But by pondering what God had done for her, Mary was also pondering what he has done for all of us. The newness that Jesus brings is not something that fades after Christmas has ended – it has forever brightened our darkness, forever changed our mourning into gladness. Through Jesus, we are assured that God will never abandon us – he has eternally joined himself to our human reality through the Incarnation. And if God shares humanity with us, he also invites us to share in the divinity that he comes to bring.

On this New Year’s Day, perhaps we can take a hint from our Mother Mary, and remember to keep these things and reflect upon them in our heart. Gratitude is such an important key in our relationship with God – but we only cultivate a spirit of gratitude if we remember, as the shepherds did, what we have seen and heard. We shouldn’t let these days of Christmas slip by unnoticed; rather, we should seek to contemplate the newness of Jesus again and again, now but also throughout the year, so that we can learn to be grateful that the faithfulness of God is unwavering.

So let us be happy and rejoice, not just for old times’ sake, as Robert Burns would have it, but also for this new work that God has begun for us in Jesus, through whom he continues to bless us anew.

Living as the Family of Jesus

The Holy Family with a Little Bird (c. 1650), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

For the first time ever, more than 100 million Americans are traveling during the holidays this year, making it the busiest travel schedule on record, according to AAA. If you think about it, that makes for a lot of family dinners and get-togethers, lots of gift-giving and holiday toasts and happy hearts. For many of us, the best gift of Christmas is simply having the chance to spend it with family.

Of course, sometimes, when gathered with family, the less desirable sides of our human nature make an appearance. We end up sharing with them – and they with us – things less desirable than Christmas cookies and egg nog; things like old grudges, family disagreements, personal weaknesses, squabbles about politics or religion or any number of things. I remember someone telling me once that they never looked forward to the Feast of Holy Family, coming so shortly after Christmas, because they ended feeling as if their own family fell short in comparison.

The Holy Family – Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – certainly should be a model and inspiration holiness for us. The saints tell us that contemplating the inner life of the family of Nazareth, we can learn in our own families how to be kinder, more loving, more holy. But they also were a family that lived the same human reality that we do; though Mary and Jesus were without sin and Joseph a righteous man, they surely had moments of challenge, weariness, difficulty, just as all families do.

In the Gospel reading today, we hear about one such episode. For three days Mary and Joseph searched for Jesus in the large city of Jerusalem, their hearts no doubt as anxious as the hearts of any parent who has lost a child for just a few moments in a crowded public place. And when they finally find him, Jesus responds with this strange answer – that they should have known he would be in his Father’s house. Jesus, of course, is not being willfully insolent, as we might be at twelve years old. Instead, he is already helping his mother and foster father to understand something very important – that his Father has sent him for a mission, and that he is intent to fulfill that mission in its entirety. The purpose of the Incarnation, the Son of God becoming man, is that he might fulfill the will of the Father in restoring humanity back to holiness.

God could have chosen to save us from our sins in any number of ways, and yet he chose to become one of us to share our reality. And Jesus could have shared our human reality in any number of ways – as a great king or a conquering general – and yet he chose to come as a humble child, born into a family, living a domestic life that to outside appearances would not have seemed remarkable. And yet, the Holy Family shows us that the most important measure for any family is not the things we so often preoccupy ourselves with – the accomplishments of children, contentedness of the father and mother, security and achievement. Rather, it is in the daily living out of faith and hope and love – in short, in holiness – that any and every family lives out what God desires it to be.

This is why we as Catholics are so strong in our promotion of the family as the key to society. It's why we need good, holy marriages, which are open to life, and families that take time to pray together and attend Sunday Mass together. We need parents who will raise their children to understand why their Catholic faith is important, children who respect their parents as God’s guardians over them, spouses and siblings who look for opportunities to show sacrificial love to each other each day. The great English saint Thomas More once wrote that, “The ordinary acts we practice every day at home,” – that is, in our families – “are of more importance to our soul than their simplicity might suggest.” Never doubt that the daily routine of living as part of a human family, just as Jesus did, is a very important part of your path to heaven.

Even more important, I think, is the reminder today that Jesus has not just come as part of a Holy Family but to create a new family, one that we share in. Through Jesus we are members of the Body of Christ, the Church, we are intimately connected to the family life of Jesus – we too can call God our Father, we too look to Mary as Mother, we too honor with Joseph the Christ Child who has been born for us. Families today are so varied and diverse, and so often these things can be sources of division and alienation. But in the Holy Family, by being in a sense part of the Holy Family, by striving to live out the life of the Holy Family in our own families, we share more deeply in the peace and harmony that the Christ Child has come to bring. If you know that you or your family is not living out the life of a holy family in the best way, don’t feel bad – but turn to Jesus so that he may help you be the holy family he has called you to be.

My friends, the celebration of the Holy Family today is not intended as a comparison to our own families, as if to point out our own imperfections. Rather, we are reminded that no matter what our family situation may be – whether it’s relatively wonderful, our relatively difficult, or even if we have no human family to speak of – Jesus has made us part of his family. By opening ourselves, and helping our families to be open as well, to the grace of God, then we are lifted from imperfections and raised to something much greater, indeed, something everlasting. Let us strive to live as members of holy families now that we might one day rejoice to join the eternal Holy Family of Jesus in heaven.

Beyond Any Expectation: The Nativity of Jesus

Baroque silver relief of the Nativity of Christ, Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Belgium

Everyone has certain expectations about Christmas, and how it should be. Maybe we expect to have the house decorated just so, or the Christmas dinner to be prepared in just the right way. Children certainly await with great anticipation the gifts that Santa has brought, and parents can expect that they’ll be ready for a nap before it’s even time to go to church.

Even at Mass, we have certain expectations about how things should be. We expect the church interior to look a certain way. We expect to sing certain songs. But, of course, the problem with expectations is that they are not always met. Maybe we don’t get the gift we really wanted; maybe our favorite Christmas dish is in the oven too long and is inedible; maybe the church choir doesn’t sing our favorite Christmas hymn. When we set ourselves up expecting something, and it doesn’t happen the way we want, we’re left with disappointment.

Sometimes, however, unmet expectations can help us in a very important way. One of the most fascinating books of the Bible, in my opinion, is the Letter to the Hebrews, from which our second reading comes today. Who wrote the letter is unknown – some say it was St. Paul while others say it was someone much closer to Jesus, maybe even a relative of his. Whoever it was, it’s clear from the letter that the author originally did not believe in Jesus; he did not accept him as the Jewish Messiah. He had a very clear expectation of what the Savior would be like, and to that expectation, Jesus was a disappointment.

And yet, in the midst of this unmet expectation, something unexpected happens – the author comes to a new realization. As he writes, “in times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son…” The author writing to the Hebrews realizes that the Messiah he had expected was never the one God wished to send – instead, God had always desired to send his own very Son to fully reveal his love. The disappointment of the writer’s expectation gave way to a profound awe in the power of God’s action.

We hear something similar in the Gospel reading. Now, you would be forgiven if – on Christmas morning – you had expected to hear a Gospel story about the angel encouraging Joseph to keep Mary in his home and not be afraid to welcome Jesus with her, or about the angel announcing the birth of the newborn king to the shepherds, or about the shepherds making haste to see the Christ child in the manger in Bethlehem. All of these would seem very appropriate for Christmas morning.

Instead, we get this beautiful if strange text from the Gospel of John, which isn’t about a baby at all but about the Word of God becoming flesh. John was likely an old man when he composed this text, perhaps nearly 100 years old, and by this time, after his life of preaching and writing and prayer, he wasn’t focused on shepherds and angels and manger scenes. What was far more important to him was what it all meant – that “the Word of God became flesh and made his dwelling among us; and from his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace, because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” John’s desire for his listeners is to understand who Jesus really is – not just the Savior, not just the Messiah, but God himself become man.

This is one of those truths of our faith that we repeat so often that it perhaps loses its power to affect us. But underneath all of the exteriors of the Christmas season – the celebrations and the merry-making – and even underneath our church observances and stories of long ago, at the heart of what we celebrate is something which utterly defeats the imagination, something which only God himself could have thought or have done: namely, that the Logos, the Word, who is with God and who is God, through whom all things have been created, became himself one with his creation. The Son of God – infinite in power and eternal in being – “worked,” in the words of the Second Vatican Council, “with human hands, thought with a human mind, acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved.” It’s so essential to let ourselves be struck dumb by this fact: that God himself, the true God, Creator of all things, entered our human reality – to share it, to show us how to live it well, and ultimately to redeem it and raise it to eternal dwelling with himself.

Several years ago now I had the opportunity to visit the Basilica of the Nativity, the church in Bethlehem that is built over the spot where tradition holds that Jesus was born. I remember being very excited to see this particular church – it was virtually the last stop on a journey through the Holy Land, ten days of amazing pilgrimage and prayer. My understanding of my faith has never been the same since that trip. But I remember being very disappointed by the trip to Bethlehem. Unlike most of the previous sights we had seen, in Galilee and in Jerusalem, the city of Bethlehem is in Palestinian-controlled territory, in the West Bank. We had to pass through two armed check points to get into the town, which itself was dingy and dusty, much poorer than what we had seen while in Israel. The basilica itself was in a state of disrepair, and the spot where the birth of Jesus occurred – the Grotto of the Nativity – was marked by only a simple piece of glass, covering the rock below. We spent a few moments in prayer, and then passed on, and before too long, were making our way back across the border.

"Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary," Grotto of the Natvity, Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem.

That was an experience where my expectation was not at all met – but with time, I realized that I had experienced something far greater than what I had expected. Because when you get down to it – when you take away all the trappings and traditions of Christmas – all the gifts, all the songs, all the meals (one of my favorite parts), when you take away all the expectations and heightened anticipation – what do you have left? Just that cold stone floor, with the simple piece of glass covering the rock below. And yet, there it is – it is real. It really happened. If you comprehend as I did what that simple spot means – then it is enough, it is more than enough – it is everything and more. “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”

My friends, expectations can be disappointed but they can also be surpassed, exceeded, transcended. God always desires to do that for us – just as he did for the author to the Hebrews and for St. John, just as he did for me in contemplating the bareness of that spot on the stone floor. Whatever this Christmas might bring for you – whether all of your exterior expectations go fulfilled or unfulfilled – remember that God himself has met, indeed surpassed our greatest interior desire. Let us be glad and rejoice, for Emmanuel, God-with-us, has come, and so it will always be.

Rejoicing Before Dawn

Would you say you are ready for Christmas? The calendar says that we’re now less than two weeks away from the big day. If you’re like me, there’s still many things to be done between now and then – preparations to make and gifts to buy and plans to arrange. And our students know that we’re even closer to the end of the semester – only a few days now, perhaps just a few exams or papers, between now and Christmas break.

When we are waiting for something – waiting for Christmas to arrive, waiting for the academic semester to end – it can be good to remind ourselves what we’re waiting for. Today, on the Third Sunday of Advent, the Church asks us to stop for a moment from the preparations of Advent to remember what we’re waiting for, indeed, who we’re preparing for. There is a joyful tone to today’s liturgy. We lit the rose candle in the Advent wreath and I’m wearing rose (not pink, rose!) vestments – it’s all symbolic that we are drawing closer to a brightness that awaits us. It’s not here yet, but it’s certainly coming, and coming soon.

In the Gospel today, the people ask John the Baptist how they are to behave in advance of the Savior’s coming. He gives them a variety of answers – share your clothing and your food, don’t take advantage of others, be satisfied with what you have. In other words, work for peace and for justice and be ready for the One who comes to bring you salvation.

That’s good advice, advice that we should heed now. But notice that it is advice for those who have not yet seen the Savior. St. Paul, in the second reading, also gives advice, perhaps advice much more appropriate for us who already know Jesus. Listen again to what he says: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: Rejoice! Your kindness shall be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Those are some of the most comforting words of the New Testament, probably written very shortly before Paul himself was executed. How can a man who was imprisoned, probably tortured, far from his own native land, waiting for his own execution, compose such powerful words? The answer of course is that he knew Jesus! He was putting his faith and hope in something, someone, greater than his own life and security – something truly wonderful to come.

St. Paul in Prison (1627), Rembrandt van Rijn

Sometimes, in our lives as Christians, we tend to let everything that’s still imperfect dominate our viewpoint. We focus on our sins and weaknesses, on what is wrong and unfair and unjust, on what causes us pain and discord and difficulty. Those things are not unimportant – but the whole point of our faith in Jesus is that they are not the whole story. You and I are called to live this Christian life primarily with a spirit of joy – something, I think, that is not so much about feelings as it is a particular mindset. No matter what our present circumstances – no matter how terrible, even if we were to be awaiting death in a prison cell, like Paul – our hearts can be focused on the knowledge that victory has been achieved. The Lord who is coming, and coming very soon, has already won the battle over sin and darkness.

Let me share with you an experience that happened to me several years ago that has stayed with me and symbolizes perhaps what I’m talking about.

After college some friends and I made a trip to Peru, and during our time there we had the chance to visit the ruins of the Incan city Machu Picchu. Allow me to set the scene for you: Early in the morning, you leave your lodging in the town in the valley below, and with dozens of other people, you board a bus that takes you up a winding road to the entrance of the park. There, in the cold and the pitch dark, you blindly stumble up a steep trail and clamber over large stones in order to finally situate yourself in the middle of the ruins, near a place called the the Temple of the Sun. And then, you wait. The ruins are high on a ridge surrounded by mountains. At first, you can’t see anything but the stars above and the shadowy rocks around you. Then, when dawn arrives, the faintest hints of light begin to brighten your surroundings. You don’t see the sun yet – it is blocked by a large mountain to the east – but soon the darkness softens to shades of gray. The mountain mist dissipates, shadows fade, and you can see the long journey that you have made to be in that spot. You are surrounded by stunning stonework and architecture, a city built on a mountain surrounded by higher mountains. You marvel with your friends at the amazing, dream-like place you find yourself in. And, finally, after great anticipation and long waiting, the sun breaks out brilliantly over the top of the mountain in the distance, and you and your friends and the whole city is flooded with intense light. 

Sunrise at Machu Picchu, July 2006

My friends, the best way to be ready for Christmas is not through a bunch of external preparations – parties, gifts, and festivities. The best way is to allow yourself to rejoice: to feel the real joy that comes from knowing that there is a Savior, that he has come and is coming again, and that when he does, the light that he brings will break forth through the darkness, dissipating the shadows and mists of night and shine upon us all. The full dawning of his sunrise has not yet come – and yet, if we look with eyes of faith, we can see that the shadows are softening around us, the darkness is fading, and perhaps we can begin to see how things really are.

Be joyful, then, today, not just with your feelings, but in your heart, with your will – for the Lord himself is near. May he find us ready to welcome him like the morning sun, filled with the peace of God which surpasses all understanding.

A Prophecy of Hope

St. John the Baptist in the Desert (c. 1670), Philippe de Champaigne

How do you feel about the world today? If you’ve been reading the news lately, it’s hard not to feel pretty depressed. From attacks against defenseless citizens at home and abroad, to political gridlock and endless arguing, to the demands of secular uniformity and ideology, it feels like a really dark time. It feels, in the words of a celebrity who wrote an op-ed this week, as if “the world is breaking.”

But are things worse now than they have been in the past? At first glance, they sure seem to be.  But history is full of dark times, long eras of tragedy and discord – in fact, you can look to just about any period of history and you'll discover there something terrible. And in just about any era of history you can find prophets of doom – people who wring their hands or stand on street corners or who write op-eds in newspapers – who warn us that the world is swiftly drawing to a close.

In the Gospel today, we hear about a prophet – not of doom, however, but of repentance. John the Baptist is called by God and sent to preach repentance in the midst of some very terrible circumstances, created by some very bad men. Luke names them for us – Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanius, Annas and Caiaphas. We are not familiar with these names, but the original audience of Luke certainly would have been. Think of your least favorite dictators and traitors throughout history – that’s what these names would have meant to all who knew them. They had plunged Israel into the depths of Roman oppression, afflicted it with corruption, and driven away any notion of Israel being God’s chosen people.

It is into this nightmare of a situation that John is called forth by God from the desert and sent to preach repentance. Certainly this seems logical – Israel, and the Jews of the time, and indeed all humanity had apparently royally messed up, and they needed to ask forgiveness to get themselves back on track. But note how there’s something more to John’s message than just “repent” – he says, "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." These words, taken from the prophet Isaiah, are words of repentance, yes – but they’re also words of joy and hope. They tell of a salvation that is to come, indeed, is already coming.

In some ways, John the Baptist was a messenger of that which he himself did not fully know. John knew there was going to be a Savior, but he didn’t know who it would be, or where he would come from, or how exactly he would redeem Israel. Yet, John had hope – he placed his faith in the Lord’s promises, despite the terrible circumstances and outward appearances that could have dissuaded him or caused him to doubt. He places his trust in what he knew to be trustworthy – that God’s promises do not go unfulfilled, that hope will not be unrewarded. And for this reason he begins his preaching, his cry of repentance – not because he wishes to tear the people of Israel down, but because he wants to build them up, to get them ready for the coming salvation. At the heart of repentance is hope – hope that the future will be better than the present.

In this season of Advent, the Church asks to look again to John the Baptist and to his cries of repentance – not just because we want to beat our breasts, and say “Woe is me, I’m a sinner”. We turn again to repentance because, at our core, we have hope. We believe that we can be better with God’s grace, that we have been called to become something which has not yet been realized, that we are not yet the best versions of ourselves. Our circumstances may be terrible – we might feel as if we are as distant from God or as unworthy of his love as we have ever been. Or perhaps we feel as if he is just absent from us, as if he is not listening and not present in our lives. It is precisely in this kind of situation that we have to have hope – we must trust that God is at work somehow, in some way, even if we can't see it at the present moment.

My friends, there is no period of history – not the time of John the Baptist and not now – that is beyond the reach of God's providence and grace. Sometimes it is precisely when things seem most dire that God breaks through to reveal his presence to us. This Advent, look to John the Baptist – hope even when you do not understand, believe even if you do not see, be a messenger of what even you yourself do not yet fully realize – and the presence of God will be revealed to you in a way far more profound than you know.

Allow me to end with just a few lines of a poem by the Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan, called “Advent Credo”:


It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss—

This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;

It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever—

This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful councilor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of peace.

So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world.

The Preparing of Advent

Blessed Hope, Nathan Greene (2011)

To truly know something, you have to understand its purpose. For instance, you can memorize the names of all the parts of the human body, but until you understand the purpose each serves and how they interrelate with each other, then you don’t really know anatomy. Or if you want to understand how a car works, it’s not enough to just name the parts under the hood – you have to understand how they work together to make the engine run.

The same is true in our spiritual lives. Today we enter into a new year in the Church, beginning again the season of Advent. But why do we have Advent? What is its purpose? We know that Christmas is coming, both as it is celebrated in the Church and in the world – but is Advent just the preparation for Christmas, and nothing more?

In the Gospel today, Jesus doesn’t reference Christmas at all. Instead he refers to things that sound terrifying – signs in the sun, moon and stars, nations in dismay, the roaring of the sea and the waves, people dying of fright. All of these are preparations for the Son of Man appearing in the clouds, with power and great glory. Jesus is explicitly telling the disciples that he will come back, that he will return to the earth – and when he does so, no one will miss it.

It seems strange that in a season of new beginnings, like Advent, our readings focus first on things coming to an end. But of course, for new things to arrive, the old must be swept away. The season of Advent is a period of preparation – of turning ourselves to the Lord and awaiting his return. Yes, it’s the season before Christmas, but our preparation should be much more than just preparing to celebrate Christmas again – it should be a period of preparing ourselves for Jesus’s final return. Jesus explicitly refers to his Second Coming so that his disciples can be different than everyone else – rather than cower in fear like the rest of the world, they are to stand up and be ready and welcome him with joy.

If you and I are honest with ourselves, we’d probably admit that – at the moment – we’re not ready for Jesus’s return. We each have some area in our lives that needs some healing, some further conversion. That word – “conversion” – simply means to make turn, in this case, making a turn away from whatever is harmful for us spiritually and turning toward the Lord. In just a little over a week, on December 8, we’ll begin the special Jubilee Year of Mercy, called for by Pope Francis, when we’ll focus for a whole year on the merciful love of God that never abandons us or gives up on us but always welcomes us again with joyful love.

My friends, to truly know something, we have to understand it purpose. And the purpose of living as disciples of Jesus is that we receive – again and again – his mercy and grace so that we are ready for his return when he comes again. So use this Advent not just as a time to prepare for Christmas, but as a chance to ready yourself for Jesus’s final return – to deepen your relationship with him, to turn away from what is holding you back from doing so, and to turn toward the Lord who welcomes you with joy and peace.   

The Kingship of Jesus

Christ in Majesty, apse mosaic of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington D.C.

In a little less than a week, as you well know, families and friends around the country will gather around a shared table and join in one of the most special meals of the year. Any grade schooler can tell you that the origins of our Day of Thanksgiving are traced back to 1621, when English pilgrims and Native Americans of the Wampanoag tribe shared a feast after the autumn harvest. The event marks, in a certain sense, the kind of spiritual birthday of what America came to represent – a land of freedom, opportunity, even abundance, and indeed for that and for all of our blessings it is proper each year to give thanks.

The Pilgrims, like so many of the immigrant people that came to the New World, were not only seeking something better – they were also leaving something worse. Many of them were especially seeking freedom from tyranny – from the unjust laws and heavy taxes of kings and queens in the European homeland. In the centuries since, much of the world has come to appreciate and even adopt for themselves the political virtues which have come to define America – representative government, democratic rule – things that I’m sure each of us value as well. While we may tire at times with the downsides of our political process, we nonetheless are grateful that we have one, that we’re not merely the subjects of earthly kings and queens.

What then do we make of today’s feast, when we call Jesus our King? Does the fact that we live in a democratic society – indeed, in a nation founded by those seeking to get away from kings – mean that the kingship of Jesus lacks meaning for us? In the Gospel, Jesus certainly doesn’t appear very kingly – this holy man from Galilee, arrested, in the presence of the Roman governor, about to be sentenced to be crucified on a cross.

The key is to hear again what Jesus says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Jesus doesn’t need earthly kingship – or any of its trappings of power – for he has been given, in the words of the Book of Daniel, “an everlasting dominion”. Jesus is a King because he has been made one by his Heavenly Father, who has given him all power, honor, and glory. Obedient to his Father’s will, even to the point of death, in order to redeem us from eternal death, Jesus is, in the words of Revelation, “the firstborn of the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth.” His kingdom now is present only in a hidden form but at the end of time it will be revealed for all to see. In a sense, what we celebrate today – unlike all of the other feasts of our year – is not so much about an event that is in our past but rather one that is to come.

If we recognize that Jesus truly is the King of Kings – the only eternal King – then two things become apparent for us. First, we realize how important it is that we become a part of his kingdom. Just like an earthly king, we have to form ourselves after his example – valuing what he values, loving what he loves, rejecting what he rejected. This can be done in any and every aspect of our life: family, work, school, relationships. In these areas and others, we seek to act as he did – that is, forgiving, serving, praying, loving unconditionally. It’s much more than just asking ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” Rather we should ask, “What does Jesus wish to do through me?”

Second, we realize that in the face of final victory and everlasting glory, the fears and challenges of this world – indeed, this world itself – are ultimately all passing away. Whether it’s anxieties that we face in our personal lives, or the frightening things we see around our nation and our world, nothing can challenge the victory that Jesus has already achieved. I say this not in any way to trivialize the real difficulties that we do face. We know them all too well – we see them all around us – and we must work to overcome them, calling always upon God’s grace to assist us. But even as we strive against very real challenges to make our lives and the world around us better, nothing – nothing – should really disrupt the interior sense of joy that Christ reigns for all eternity. Remember that great line from St. Paul – "What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? ... No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us."

My friends, Jesus is not like an earthly king and we have no need to fear his kingship. His kingdom is not of this world – but that doesn’t mean we can’t begin to experience it even now, even before its final revelation. The more you and I form ourselves in the image of our king, the more we submit ourselves in joy to the knowledge that his Providence guides all things – the closer we come to bringing the full reality of that kingdom to light.

In a few moments, we’ll share a taste of that kingdom – a Thanksgiving feast, if you will, not commemorating an event of the past, but a reality of the now and the forever, a preview of the heavenly banquet. One of my favorite Christian authors, Fr. Romano Guardini, writing on the Mass, puts it well: Everything around us is uncertain, alien, edged with danger. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. Now, however, we are here, celebrating the memorial of our Lord. He knows about us, and we know about Him... Now, at the moment of sacred commemoration, He will come to us, will be with us, will fortify us. Whatever tomorrow may bring, it will be of His sending. 

May Christ our King – who feeds us with his very self – strengthen us today and always, that we may know and love and serve him in this life that we may reign with him in the next.

The Saints & Yourself

Paradise, dome fresco of Baptistery of Padua, c. 1378, Giusto de' Menabuoi

When you hear the word “saint”, who comes to mind? Hopefully not just someone who plays for the New Orleans Saints. If so, it might be a sign you need to spend more time in church!

Who do we think of as saints? Maybe someone who lived a long time ago, like Augustine or Athanasius. Maybe someone who founded a religious order, like Benedict or Francis. Maybe someone who lived a life of intense prayer, like Catherine of Sienna or Teresa of Avila. Maybe someone who did amazing, even heroic things like Mother Teresa or John Paul II or Maximilian Kolbe. In short, when we hear the word “saint,” we think of all sorts of people – everyone, that is, but ourselves.

Now, to be sure, we are not saints – not as we are currently. To be a saint means to be in heaven, to be experiencing the glorious beatific vision, that is, beholding God face to face. But while you and I are not saints yet – we are called to be saints, indeed, created by God for that singular purpose alone.

Our readings today tell us this very clearly. In the first reading, St. John is alone on the island of Patmos, toward the end of his life, and he is caught up in the visions that make up the book of Revelation. In this vision, he sees around the throne of God “a great multitude from every nation, race, people, and tongue”. This throng of people is from every background imaginable, and yet despite their outward differences, they are united in one thing: “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress, and have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”

If we think that’s intended to describe someone other than you and me, we’re mistaken. Yes, it means the martyrs and the bishops and the nuns, all those holy men and women that we first think of when we hear the word “saint”. But it’s not them alone. You and I, by virtue of our baptism, also have a share in the death of Christ – our souls have been washed in his blood to remove our sinfulness. By that fact, so too are we called to share in his Resurrection, to take, by the grace of God, our place in the Communion of Saints.

But how do we get there? As Catholics, we believe that becoming a saint is a lifelong process – as long as we are alive, we have the opportunity both to lose the grace of God through sin but also then to turn away from sin, repent, confess, and receive that grace of God again. We work out our salvation, as St. Paul says, “with fear and trembling,” recognizing that this work we are engaged in – this identity that we are striving to achieve, of being a saint – is the most important, indeed the only truly important thing that matters. This life on earth must be for us all about getting to heaven.

The beautiful thing is that the saints themselves show us that there’s not one single path to holiness. The Church traditionally identifies three vocations, three ways of life by which God calls us to holiness. The most common is in the exclusive bond of marriage, by which a man and a woman through their love express to each other the love God has for the other, becoming the foundation by which they share the work of God of bringing new life into the world, ultimately loving each other to heaven. Priesthood too is a vocation of love – specifically, the love of Christ, by which the priest seeks to show the love of God to all whom he encounters. Finally, the consecrated or religious life is a vocation by which God seeks to form a particular bond with a man or woman in order to dedicate them to a particular work of making the world a holier place, usually through prayer or service. They live out in a special way that blueprint for sainthood which Jesus gives us in the Gospel today, the Beatitudes.

These vocations are not just nice ideas or lofty but unrealistic goals. They are real callings, real movements within the hearts of people today. This week the Church in the US celebrates National Vocations Week, in which we pray for those who have committed themselves to a particular vocation and for those who are still discerning their vocation. I would especially encourage the young people today, particularly our college students, to take some time this week to reflect upon your vocation. Visit a church, take a walk, say a rosary – spend some time listening to whether what you think you want to do with your life is what God wants you to do. We need holy marriages, holy priests, and holy religious and consecrated because it’s through those vocations that God sanctifies the world and through which we strive for our ultimate, shared goal of being a saint.

Today we celebrate all of our brothers and sisters who have attained that goal. We ask for their spiritual assistance and intercession, and we look to them as models and inspirations to holiness. But we should also see in them a promise of what we ourselves can be, indeed are called to be, if we endure this earthly time of trial, clinging to the grace we have in Christ. The saints were not superheroes – but merely men and women who cooperated fully with the will of God, and now rejoice with him for eternity. As one of the saints said, “Why can we not be so holy?”

So, the next time you think of the saints in heaven, imagine yourself as one of them – and then live here on earth in such a way that you can make that a reality.