Tuesday, December 29, 2015

The Fifth Day in the Octave of Christmas

(I John 2:3-11; Luke 2:22-35)

Fifty years ago Dutch theologian Edward Schillebeeckx wrote a revolutionary book entitled Christ: The Sacrament of the Encounter with God.  In this work the author showed how Jesus in the flesh signifies God’s love for the world.  The humanity of Jesus then can be legitimately called a sacrament – a visible sign of invisible grace.  The idea sounded almost heretical at the time but is now accepted as a valid way of considering Christ’s redemptive work. 

In the gospel the visionary Simeon sees the infant Jesus as “a sign that will be contradicted.”  He too recognizes that Jesus manifests God’s redemptive love for all.  But he has the insight to realize that the sign will be rejected by some.  Indeed, Jesus will become the test for the world.  Anyone who accepts him or, at least, his commandments of love of God and love of neighbor he proclaims will find salvation.  Anyone who rejects him or his message will be lost.  Simeon’s reference to the sword piercing Mary seems to include her in this test.

Often we dwell on Simeon’s words to Mary as prophesying Jesus’ death on the cross which she witnesses in John’s gospel.  However rich for some that way of thinking is, we do well to ponder the prophecy as a matter of acceptance or rejection of Jesus as sign of God’s love.  We can take note that Mary passes the test brilliantly.  She is the first to follow Jesus by meditating on the events of his birth and acting on them. In doing so, she provides us an example for this Christmas week.  

Monday, December 28, 2015

Feast of the Holy Innocents

(I John 1:5-2:2; Matthew 2:13-18)

Just as boys today love to play video games, their counterparts sixty years ago enjoyed model trains.  They may have received a basic Lionel electric train one year for Christmas and in subsequent years added onto it.  That was not all they did. Obtaining at first a few replicas of shops and public buildings, by the time they were grown they had constructed a village in miniature.  We should see the story of the magi in a similar vein.  It is not just one of the most popular passages of the four gospels.  It is the gospel in miniature.

Today we hear the most gruesome part of the story.  King Herod wanted to know the whereabouts of the newborn “king of the Jews” so that he might kill him as a rival to his supremacy.  Realizing that the magi did not return to him with news of Jesus, Herod orders the extermination of all baby boys in the region.  Jesus, of course, miraculously escapes the massacre.  Thirty years hence, a similar plot to have Jesus killed succeeds.  But God raises Jesus from the dead to frustrate the proposal of his executioners.

We celebrate Christmas with great but not unmitigated joy.  We know that Jesus is born to die a terrible death.  It will cause us to ponder not just at the enormity of our sins but also whether we want to follow his way.  The joy we feel now is thus mixed with a disquieting thought. The love which Jesus was to born to proclaim carries with it a measure of sorrow.  Yet we proceed forward because we know that as God raised Jesus from the dead, he will turn our sorrow to joy.

Friday, December 25, 2015

The Nativity of the Lord (Christmas)

(Isaiah 9:1-3.5-6; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14)

The sign revealed more than it said.  It was written with little Christmas lights and positioned in front of a corner house.  “Happy Birthday, Jesus,” was the wording.  Obviously, the homeowners wanted to counteract the secularization of Christmas.  But perhaps they missed the point of the Christian feast.

Christmas celebrates much more than the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth.  Thinking of the feast in this way domesticates Jesus.  It makes him seem like good old Uncle Bill whom we should honor with a dinner party.  But the celebration should be much greater than that.  Christmas represents the coming of the Savior.  Christians have been waiting not so much patiently as painfully for his arrival.  In the Middle East they have been victimized by Islamist brutality. In all parts they have been subjugated by pride, lust, and greed – their own as much as others’.  Now the Lord is here to defeat these powers.  More than a birthday party, the rejoicing should be as great as the jubilation felt by Jewish inmates of Nazi concentration camps as the Allied soldiers liberated them.

It is true that Jesus in today’s gospel is portrayed as the child of a poor family.  He lays in a manger with only Mary and Joseph noticing.  But then the heavens open and angels reveal his true stature.  He is “Christ and Lord.”  God has come to earth to once and for all establish His kingdom of justice and peace.

We must take care not to domesticate Jesus.  We must not treat him like just another member of the family whom we might ignore if we are tired or upset.  We must not let ourselves say to him, “Nice to see you, Jesus.  Would you excuse me?  I don’t feel very well.”

Rather we should hunger to talk with him.  We should strive to please him by everything we say, do, and think.  Now that he has arrived, we should announce a grand jubilee.  This means that we ask pardon of those that we have offended and pray for those who have hurt us.  He is here.  A new age has begun.  It is time for us to begin a new way of life.  Now and forevermore is the moment to imitate his goodness.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Thursday of the fourth Week of Advent

(II Samuel 7:1-5.8b-12.14a.16; Luke 1:67-79)

Frank Leahy was a legendary football coach at Notre Dame during the 1940’s and 1950’s.  During his tenure, he recruited the Heisman Trophy winner Paul Hornung.  He did not have to lure the high school star from Louisville with a car or money.  Leahy just asked his prospect whether he would like to use the body God had given him to honor God’s mother.  In today’s gospel Zachariah prophesizes that his newborn son will similarly not work to bring notoriety to himself but to God’s Son.

In the passage Zachariah notes that God is fulfilling the promise he made to David in the first reading.  He says that his son John will prepare the way for a savior of David’s lineage.  John will preach repentance so that the savior could bring about forgiveness of their sins.  The savior, of course, is Jesus, the dawn guiding his followers on the road to peace.

One of the hardest lessons in life is learning how not to draw attention to ourselves but to God.  It’s not that we just want people to think well of us, but that we want them to think of us as better than others.  It is part of our sinfulness that Jesus has now come to reconcile.  Humility will draw us closer Jesus.  It will make us more like him and more reliant on him as our recompense.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Advent

(Malachi 3:1-4.23-24; Luke 1:57-66)

In Luke’s gospel John the Baptist clearly takes the place of Elijah, the prophet associated with fire.  He warns the people that unless they reform and do good works, they will be cut down like trees “and thrown into the fire.”  In this way John goes before the Lord, as his father Zechariah proclaims in his song of jubilation at his naming, “to prepare his ways.”

Jesus will not take up John’s message of the primacy of divine retribution for evil.  Rather, his preaching will be dominated by the image of God as the human’s savior.  Although he will not shrink from mentioning God’s power to cast a sinner into hell, Jesus will stress God’s love.  God, he will say, is like the shepherd who searches out the lost sheep.  

Since love too has been looked upon as a kind of fire, we might try to distinguish between the fire of wrath and the fire of love.  Fire can destroy dispassionately, and it can purify with all compassion.  John, following Elijah, will use blazing images to warn us of the punishment that dissolute living precipitates.  God’s love, incarnate in Jesus, is like a surgeon’s laser beam.   Its flame will not harm but heal and make us whole.