Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family – (2013)

(Cycle A readings: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128: 1-2, 3, 4-5; Colossians 3:12-21; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23)

            Let’s talk about family. How many people here at some time of your life have been a part of a family, raise your hands. It’s hard work to be in a family.Families may not be easy, but we know that they are essential for becoming fully human. Families are, first and foremost, the place where God is encountered, where faith is given flesh, where our theories of justice are tried out, where our prayer is made real, and where our dreams are actualized.

            Families are so critically important because they reflect the nature of God – our God is a God of relationship, and our family is the most basic and essential human relationship we will have. It is the place where we share the joys and the struggles of those we love more than anyone else – where we have this realistic engagement with others in the difficulties, tensions, and celebrations of each others’ lives.

            This feast of the holy family presents a challenge to us to make our own families holy, just as THE holy family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph was. Now raise your hands if you have been part of a HOLY family. There are many fewer hands up than before. Why are we so reluctant to recognize OUR family as a holy family? I think there are two reasons why that might be so.

            First, maybe our definition of holy is a little skewed. Vatican II tells us that to be holy is to discern and do God’s will in everything, to be wholeheartedly directed to the glory of God, and to be of service to our neighbor. It’s about our fidelity to God and to each other.

            Second, maybe we get too hung up on the particulars rather than the attitudes and attributes of what it means to be a “holy family”. Families come in all kinds of variations and configurations – and being holy is based on the Council’s definition: to discern and do the will of God, to be wholeheartedly directed to the glory of God and service to our neighbor. That’s the basis for a holy family.

            The letter to the Colossians is a good example. If you read for the particulars, you can get hung up on the “wives be submissive” thing. That was a particular for another time – and not a prescription for ours. But earlier in the letter is where the path to holiness is laid out: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and on top of it all – love.

            So here is my suggestion for the next week – maybe as a way to approach the new year? Take one of those qualities each day and find ways to express that quality in your daily, ordinary living. Talk about those qualities – brainstorm in your family about what you can do to live them. Or, for those of you who are really ambitious, make each day of the week the day for that attribute: Monday is compassion day – each Monday perform some act of compassion within the family or together as a family. Tuesday is kindness day, or have “forgiveness Friday” – you get the idea.

            The heart of Christianity is the transformation of the ordinary into the holy – that is the lesson of the Incarnation that we just celebrated. Being in a family is no easy job – but discerning and doing the will of God, wholeheartedly directing ourselves to the glory of God and service of neighbor should be our goal. Living lives of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness will put us on the journey to make each of our families a holy family.

Christmas Homily – 2013

Midnight Mass readings

(Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-3,11-13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14)

           What an incredible event we celebrate tonight! These events of 2,000 years ago still are remembered and observed. For as Isaiah says, “a son is born to us, a child is given for us – and we call him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever”. “Today is born our savior, Christ the Lord” our Psalm proclaims.

            For the past 2,000 years, artists and iconographers and songwriters and poets have memorialized this night. And we have been graced with the beauty of their efforts to the point where each of us has a picture in our minds of what this night looked like all those years ago. And they are beautiful images – so many glorious and joyful representations of that special night.

            But I want you to put all of those images aside for a moment – including the beautiful nativity scene that you see in front of you. Instead, I want you to picture a night when a transient young woman and her betrothed stop in a remote village as she gives birth to her child. I want you to see a young couple, far away from home, scared and anxious about this child they are about to have. See the meager surroundings – a stable that is not even totally enclosed – all that was available to them as strangers.

            And now see the baby – naked and cold until his mother wraps him in rags. Hungry and crying until his mother nurses him to feed him.  Born far from family, friends, - homeless and without anyone to witness his birth and celebrate with his parents other than some dirty shepherds that were in the neighboring fields.

            This is how Jesus comes into the world – naked, hungry, cold, homeless. Is it any wonder that he would later teach us to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, welcome the stranger? I wonder sometimes if this deep compassion that he felt came from his very own experiences from the moment of his birth.

            Jesus born hungry, cold, homeless - means that Jesus is, yes, Emmanuel, God With Us, but he is also God OF us. God became what we are. And what are we? Well, we are frequently weak, unpredictable creatures, tied down by the limitations of time and space. Jesus not only took on our flesh and bone but took on our frailty as well. We are prone to illness, and moodiness, and loneliness…but God OF us means that we have a way out of all of that – we have a God who is not distant from us but is so close to us because God became OF us.

            God OF us means that just as Jesus shared in our humanity, we have the possibility of a share in his divine life. We no longer need to be afraid. No matter what it is that we are experiencing, all of our trials, all of our challenges, our loneliness, our discomforts – we know that God understands because in Jesus we have God OF us.

             That means that our faith is a faith of hope and not of despair; a faith of joy and not of anxiety; a faith of confidence and not of fear. For God came so very close to us in Jesus of Nazareth. And so tonight we celebrate those events of 2,000 years ago knowing that because of this night our lives and the lives of all people are changed – because God is OF us. 

Gaudete! Rejoice!

Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent - Cycle A

December 15, 2013

A few weeks ago Pope Francis issued his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium – the Joy of the Gospel. For the past few weeks we have been singing the refrain to O Come O Come Emmanuel – Rejoice, rejoice! The entrance antiphon for today’s liturgy- if you checked it out in the Missalette – comes from Paul’s letter to the Philippians: Rejoice in the Lord always; I say again, rejoice! Indeed the Lord is near!

           It is this phrase that is the reason this is called Gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Joy – and the name Gaudete comes from the Latin version of the Entrance Antiphon.  The readings, the prayers of the Mass, everything is intended to lift our spirits to joy. The third candle on our Advent wreath is pink, or technically, rose-colored – the color of joy – a mixture of purple and white. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice.

            That’s a whole lot of rejoicing! And then we look around in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our country, in our world, and we might wonder what there is to rejoice about. All of us know someone who is out of work, or underemployed, or having hard financial times. All of us know someone who is suffering with illness, or has lost a loved one.

            The holidays especially can be difficult times for us as we struggle to make sense of the inconsistency between the happiness that we are supposed to have at the holidays and the pain or sadness we might feel. That’s why we are providing pamphlets that we have in a display in the side vestibule that might help you or someone you know cope with the emotional roller coaster of the holidays.

            And yet we are still encouraged to rejoice, to be joyful. Our readings (and Pope Francis) might help us to figure out how to deal with this incongruity.

            The first reading invites us to be filled with joy and to express it in singing and rejoicing – even when everything seems bleak. The Israelites had been exiled into Babylon, and they were awaiting a restoration of their homeland – and once they returned, they are to be joyful, even in the middle of the rubble of their Temple and the ashes of Jerusalem.  This is not a dismissal of reality, but was an expression of hope that God will restore and save and bring the parched desert to a place of fragrant flowers. Their joy was to come from a trust and confidence in God – because they had encountered a God who had saved them.

            This is no small feat – think about how hard we make it to be joyful even at times when we should have no problem with it at all. There is the story of the mother and her young daughter who went out for a day of Christmas shopping and after going from store to store and being in all kinds of crowds, they were leaving one of the last stores, and in a voice of tired exasperation, the mother said to her daughter, “Did you see the nasty look that saleswoman gave me?” The daughter replied, “Oh no, Mommy, you had that nasty look when we left the house this morning!”

            We fail to be people of joy because we mistake joy for getting everything we want – we mistake joy for satisfaction. But that’s not joy. Pope Francis says that if we want to lead a dignified and fulfilling life – a life of joy, we have to reach out to others and seek their good. The joy we are about is the joy of the Gospel – the joy of the good news – the joy that fills the hearts and lives of those who encounter Jesus.

            What happens when people encounter Jesus? The gospel makes clear the result of an encounter with Jesus: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. Maybe we find joy so hard because we fail to realize that this is us: we are the blind and the lame and the leper and the deaf and the dead and the poor. We are blind to the sufferings of people across the world, across the country or across the street; we are lame in our walk of faith and conversion and take steps with Jesus only half-heartedly; we are lepers, separated from our families and our loved ones because of old quarrels, old hurts, old scars; we are deaf to those who need us just to listen to them for a while; we are dead in our spiritual life, just going through the motions at Mass and having a prayer life that is on life-support; we are the poor who desperately need the Good News proclaimed to us so that we can be heralds of that same Good News to others.

            When we realize the opportunity for transformation that we have in Jesus – we can shout Gaudete! Rejoice! because we allow ourselves to be transformed by him. Pope Francis says that with Jesus, joy is constantly born anew – and that no one – no one – is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord.

            This season of Advent calls us to reform ourselves, calls us to conversion. We are called to clean ourselves up to make room for the coming of the Lord – we are to make room for that personal encounter with Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas.

            And once we realize our need for Jesus and open ourselves up to an encounter with him we can say: Rejoice in the Lord always – I say again, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near!

Joy to the World!

Justice Perspective – December 2013

            Have you had enough of Christmas sale advertisements yet? Are you almost wishing that we would just get it over with? Does it seem like the whole shopping and decorating season began even earlier this year?

            With still weeks to go before the actual celebration of Christmas, it is easy to get caught up in the hype and the commercialism of the season.  Each year we hear messages that criticize how Christmas is even more about buying and less about Jesus. And each year we agree and shake our heads and long for the days when it wasn’t so.

           

            But are we doing anything differently this year to change any of that? Are we actually willing to find a way to make a difference?

           

            Unfortunately, I was not able to find any survey that compared the Christmas shopping habits of Catholics to other Americans, but it would be a fair guess to suppose that we are not very different. After all, American Catholics vote like other Americans, hold views about the death penalty and other issues like other Americans – why assume that we would shop any differently?

            And perhaps that’s where the problem is. Catholic Social Teaching has long supported the dignity of work and the rights of workers. But how many Catholics were in the throngs that stormed the doors of more than a dozen stores that are now open on Thanksgiving evening? The workers of many of these stores were told “don’t even ask” for time off that day, meaning that any time they intended to spend the holiday with family was now gone.

            Catholic teaching has also professed the dignity of people and the preferential option for the poor. Where are those values in how Catholics shop and spend at Christmas? Latest estimates from economists are that the “average American family” will spend over $750 this year on Christmas gifts, decorations, cards, trees, and food. And about thirty percent of Americans will spend over one thousand dollars.

            All of that adds up to total spending by Americans – on “holiday spending” for 2013 – of over $600 billion. (Yes, that is with a “b”). Experts predict that we will spend over $24 billion on decorations and flowers alone. Is there any reason to believe that Catholics spend any differently than the “average American family”?

            Maybe we have to do things differently if we want to break the cycle of commercialism and consumption and replace it with compassion and Christ-centeredness. A few years ago Catholic Relief Services (CRS) began a “Joy to the World” campaign that was intended to focus on the blessings of Christmas and provide ways for people to honor loved ones by giving gifts that give twice – once by helping the poor overseas and also by honoring those on our gift giving list. CRS had a three-fold program that provides principles for making Christmas a real celebration of the birth of Jesus: Prepare prayerfully, shop responsibly, and give generously.

            Preparing prayerfully means taking the time to reflect on how the incarnation of Jesus brings infinite dignity to all people. Shopping responsibly means buying fair trade gifts when we can, and at least patronizing retailers and manufacturers that have fair labor practices. Giving generously means setting aside a percentage of our spending and donating that money to life-giving projects and community-building aid to the world’s poor – in the name of those we love.

            If we are willing to be different, we can still make Christmas an authentic celebration of Jesus’ birth and through our compassion bring joy to the world.