The Advent season closes today December 24th. The Christmas season begins with the vigil Mass this evening.
Advent is a season rich in the scriptures. Isaiah speaks strongly throughout the season, calling Jewish exiles and all nations to the holy mountain and God’s banquet with his people and all creation. “Swords will be turned into plowshares and spears will be turned into pruning hooks and they will not train for war again.”
John the Baptist and his parents Zachariah and Elizabeth have important roles in the coming of the Child born of Mary. Of course, Mary and Joseph are key figures responding to the messengers of God.
Faith and hope do not come easily, the Advent season tells us. Political unbelief appears in Ahaz who “will not tempt the Lord.” Zachariah, a priest, is struck dumb for his unbelief. John the Baptist asks if Jesus is really “the one who is to come.” Mary wonders “how can this be?”
The gospel reading today, Zachariah’s song of belief, seems to promise faith and hope conquers in the end.
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, he has come to his people and set them free.
Christmas carols, more than the scriptures seem to dominate the Christmas season. They bring the shepherds from the dark hills and magi from the east to the Child. They also speak of those who not believe, like Herod who goes in search of the Child. But people of faith, like Simeon and Anna, welcome the Child in the temple and take him into their arms.
Advent and Christmas are seasons rich in the wisdom of faith. A faith that leads to great truths, as the feast of John the Apostle reminds us. A faith one should die for, as we are reminded by the feasts of the Holy Innocents and Stephen the first of many martyrs.
“Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.” Today’s gospel image of the generous widow emphasizes the attitude of biblical stewardship that is not based on surplus but on sacrifice. Most of us live this kind of stewardship. We call our offertory collection a “sacrificial offering.” Biblical stewardship goes far beyond the material because something behind that spirit of giving comes from having values, namely the values of sharing, support, and trust. Sharing is not a programmatic gift. It comes from seeing our parents and grandparents sharing a home, their love, shelter, food, and themselves with us so we could grow into generous human beings. Jesus is not advocating financial irresponsibility; he is asking for the freedom to give out of love, not out of calculation.
The early Church put a great emphasis on the care of widows and orphans. It wasn’t a safety net that gave the widow in today’s gospel the strength to give, it was the church that she knew as a family that cared with compassion for those who were in the greatest need.
I remember when I was in Jamaica, West Indies, we had a group from a parish in Pennsylvania visiting. We went to see a woman in a very rural area. She told us that some of her crops from her small plot of vegetables were stolen. We spent an hour with her and as we were leaving, she handed us a bag of beans from her garden. The visiting pastor was speechless and immediately protested knowing her garden was depleted because of a theft. But she smiled, “Father, you cannot come to my home and not receive a gift to take back to your home.” He took the beans and was shocked but said, “I just met the widow from the gospel.” He witnessed the living gospel.
May our eyes be open to those generous hearts who renew our hope in the way God provides and never tires of giving himself to us in his Son whose sacrifice is the ultimate act of generosity.
An Excerpt From Pope Francis, General Audience, Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, 4 May 2016
We are all familiar with the image of the Good Shepherd with the little lost lamb on his shoulders. This icon has always been an expression of Jesus’ care for sinners and of the mercy of God who never resigns himself to the loss of anyone. The parable is told by Jesus to make us understand that his closeness to sinners should not scandalize us, but on the contrary it should call us all to serious reflection on how we live our faith. The narrative sees, on the one hand, the sinners who approach Jesus in order to listen to him and, on the other, the suspicious doctors of the law and scribes who move away from him because of his behavior. They move away because Jesus approaches the sinners. These men were proud, arrogant, believed themselves to be just.
The lesson that Jesus wants us to learn is… that not a single one of us can be lost. God’s action is that of one who goes out seeking his lost children and then rejoices and celebrates with everyone at their recovery.
We are all warned: mercy to sinners is the style with which God acts and to this mercy he is absolutely faithful: nothing and no one can distract him from his saving will. God does not share our current throw-away culture… God throws no one away; God loves everyone, looks for everyone: one by one! He doesn’t know what “throwing people away” means, because he is entirely love, entirely mercy.
While he is looking for the lost sheep, he challenges the ninety-nine to participate in the reunification of the flock. Then, not only the lamb on his shoulders, but the whole flock will follow the shepherd to his home to celebrate with “friends and neighbors.”
We should reflect on this parable often, for in the Christian community there is always someone who is missing and if that person is gone, a place is left empty. Sometimes this is daunting and leads us to believe that a loss is inevitable, like an incurable disease.
In Jesus’ vision there are no sheep that are definitively lost, but only sheep that must be found again. We need to understand this well: to God no one is definitively lost. Never! To the last moment, God is searching for us. Think of the good thief; only in the eyes of Jesus no one is definitively lost. For his perspective is entirely dynamic, open, challenging and creative. It urges us to go forth in search of a path to brotherhood. No distance can keep the shepherd away; and no flock can renounce a brother. To find the one who is lost is the joy of the shepherd and of God, but it is also the joy of the flock as a whole! We are all sheep who have been retrieved and brought back by the mercy of the Lord, and we are called to gather the whole flock to the Lord!
Click here to read the full address by Pope Francis.
It’s so easy to see a world out of control these days, and to believe that nothing can be done. We’re going nowhere.
The Letter to the Ephesians, read this week at Mass, says that’s not so. It’s written, not just to the church at Ephesus, but to other churches as well, commentators says. So it’s written to our church too.
A great plan of God is at work from “the foundation of the world,” a plan for the “fulness of time,” a “mystery made known to us” in Christ Jesus, our Lord. We have this “word of truth” this gospel of our salvation, from Jesus himself. The Spirit he promised is the “first installment of our inheritance.”“First installment,” That’s what we working with now, It may not seem like much but it gets us where we’re going.
It promises more than we think or expect. “May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. May the eyes of [your] hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, (Ephesians 1)
Every Monday of the four week cycle of the Liturgy of the Hours we read Ephesians 1, 3-10 at evening prayer, a reminder to see the day, however small and confusing it may be, as part of the great unfolding plan of God in Christ, our Lord.
Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the holy ones who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.
In Christ we have redemption by his Blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us. In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.
As the Synod on Synodality proceeds in Rome, we can all participate as the listening Church, the Bride of Christ, sitting at Jesus’ feet like Mary of Bethany (Luke 10:38). Enveloped in his peace, we can attune our hearts and minds to the Spirit of truth sent to us from the Father by the Son (John 15:26).
In a world of distracting noise, the Lord invites us to listen to his voice in Sacred Scripture, the Holy Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, and personal prayer. Heard in the silence of the Spirit, the ancient words resonating from centuries past speak to the present generation with striking relevance. May the Lord grant us “ears to hear” his voice amid the din of the latest buzz (Matthew 11:14).
In a recent passage from the Office of Readings (October 11, 2024), St. Vincent of Lerins, a fifth-century French monk, seemed to jump out of the pages to address the Synod in Rome during its second week. In his vision, the organism of the Church grows and matures like a child to an adult, but preserves her essential form. Human skeletal structure, facial features, limbs, and organs develop with maturity but do not evolve into another species. The Body of Christ, the Church, in its heavenward journey also grows in the Holy Spirit into the perfect image of the Incarnate Son of God and not a distortion (2 Corinthians 3:18). May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, guide her sons and daughters in the Spirit to her Son, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
From the first instruction by Saint Vincent of Lerins, priest
The development of doctrine
Is there to be no development of religion in the Church of Christ? Certainly, there is to be development and on the largest scale.
Who can be so grudging to men, so full of hate for God, as to try to prevent it? But it must truly be development of the faith, not alteration of the faith. Development means that each thing expands to be itself, while alteration means that a thing is changed from one thing into another.
The understanding, knowledge and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as of the whole Church, ought then to make great and vigorous progress with the passing of the ages and the centuries, but only along its own line of development, that is, with the same doctrine, the same meaning and the same import.
The religion of souls should follow the law of development of bodies. Though bodies develop and unfold their component parts with the passing of the years, they always remain what they were. There is a great difference between the flower of childhood and the maturity of age, but those who become old are the very same people who were once young. Though the condition and appearance of one and the same individual may change, it is one and the same nature, one and the same person.
The tiny members of unweaned children and the grown members of young men are still the same members. Men have the same number of limbs as children. Whatever develops at a later age was already present in seminal form; there is nothing new in old age that was not already latent in childhood.
There is no doubt, then, that the legitimate and correct rule of development, the established and wonderful order of growth, is this: in older people the fullness of years always brings to completion those members and forms that the wisdom of the Creator fashioned beforehand in their earlier years.
If, however, the human form were to turn into some shape that did not belong to its own nature, or even if something were added to the sum of its members or subtracted from it, the whole body would necessarily perish or become grotesque or at least be enfeebled. In the same way, the doctrine of the Christian religion should properly follow these laws of development, that is, by becoming firmer over the years, more ample in the course of time, more exalted as it advances in age.
In ancient times our ancestors sowed the good seed in the harvest field of the Church. It would be very wrong and unfitting if we, their descendants, were to reap, not the genuine wheat of truth but the intrusive growth of error.
On the contrary, what is right and fitting is this: there should be no inconsistency between first and last, but we should reap true doctrine from the growth of true teaching, so that when, in the course of time, those first sowings yield an increase it may flourish and be tended in our day also.
Reference
The passage from St. Vincent of Lerins can be found in the Office of Readings for Friday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time.
The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set out into the deep” (duc in altum!) in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, “the way, and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), “the goal of human history and the point on which the desires of history and civilization turn.”
The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all the depth of the Gospel message in its entirety, of which it can be said to be a compendium. It is an echo of the prayer of Mary, her perennial Magnificat for the work of the redemptive Incarnation which began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.”
In the Hail Mary we ask Mary to pray for us sinners, “now and at the hour of our death.” These are the two most important moments in life. We have the past and the future, for sure, but they’re far less important than now and the hour of our death.
“Now” is the time we live in, the present moment. Whether it’s a time of joy or sorrow, a time of satisfaction or disappointment, a time of sickness or health, it’s the time we have to love, to give, to endure, to act, to live.
“The hour of death” is God’s time, when God brings us from this life to the next. It may be instantaneous or prolonged, but it’s the time when God who gave us life takes this life away.
Both of those moments benefit from faith. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was a believer who trusted in the power and presence of God through these same moments of life. They’re challenging moments.
After the angel left Mary in Nazareth, no other angel came; she walked by faith from the Child’s birth to the death and resurrection of her Son. As we face the mysteries of life, we ask her in our weakness to be with us as a believer and a mother, who knows the goodness and power of God as it is revealed in Jesus Christ her Son.
“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
You can’t listen to the story of the Prophet Jeremiah, our first reading these days, without thinking about the passion of Jesus. In fact, readings from the Book of Jeremiah are common readings for Holy Week. We see Jesus in Jeremiah.
God tells Jeremiah to “hold nothing back,” but speak the truth to those in power and the false prophets of the day, no matter how unpopular it is. Jesus did the same.
Like Jeremiah, Jesus was innocent, but was framed by the powerful as guilty. They questioned his authority, but he would not deny his mission.
Only a few voices seem to stand up for Jeremiah and only a few stood up for Jesus. Neither had many faithful followers at their time of trial. Yet both were carried along by God’s power and their names vindicated.
Jeremiah, like Jesus and John the Baptist who suffered a lonely death at the hands of Herod Antipas belonged to a brave company.
Some would have us see our faith as a ticket to success, an inoculation against failure or suffering. Believe and nothing bad will happen to you. Yet, as you look at Jesus, the prophets and the saints, you see a more realistic profile of faith. We’re promised victory, yes, but only by accepting the mystery of the cross.
Keep an eye on Jeremiah and John. Keep an eye on the passion of Jesus. Follow them.
The powerful sculpture of the Prophet Elijah with sword in hand stands on Mount Carmel in northern Israel, where he defeated the false prophets of Ahab –today’s reading, (1 Kings 18:20-39) We will be reading about him this week.
I must confess I like better his picture below where Elijah is huddled in his cloak facing death while a raven behind him offers God’s food. He’s a prophet on a lonely journey. Yes, the powerful prophet forbade the rain to fall and raised the dead, but according to the Book of Kings he spent most of his time on the run, hiding in caves and wadis, depending on someone like a poor widow for food and shelter. He had no support from other religious or political leaders. He was a lonely prophet.
The compilers of our lectionary knew what they were doing when they pared his story with the readings from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, also read this week. Some of Jesus’ listeners saw him as Elijah returned. He too had little support from the religious and political leaders of his day.
The Passionist community celebrates today Blessed Lorenzo Salvi, a Passionist priest who lived at the time of the Napoleonic Suppression of the church in 18th century Europe, when most of the religious communities in Italy where disbanded and their places taken over by the government. Lorenzo took part in rebuilding the church in Rome by his constant preaching. I think of him as a lonely prophet and I also see him as an example for the Passionists today. We have a role in rebuilding our church. You can read the story of Lorenzo Salvi here.
Elijah, the lonely prophet, makes me also think of a man who visited us from China about 40 years ago. He had been a seminarian in our seminary in China in the late 1940’s when the communists came to power and began the Cultural Revolution. John was sent for three years to a hard labor camp for “reeducation” because he was a Christian. But when they learned he knew English, government officials made him an English teacher in a Chinese high school.
I asked John what he taught. English literature, he told me. He taught Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth” because the Chinese loved Pearl Buck. He also taught bible stories, particularly the Old Testament stories about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and Elijah confronting the evil king Ahab and his wife Jezebel.
Bible stories I asked? Didn’t the officials question him? You can’t understand English literature without knowing the stories of the bible, he told them.
Whenever I hear the story of the lonely prophet Elijah in a country completely controlled by a powerful regime, yet still faithfully proclaiming the truth, I think of John. I also think of Lorenzo Salvi. Our society, held strongly now in the grip of a deaf secularism, needs lonely prophets to speak.
Our reading from the Book of Samuel these days raises that question. Are religion and politics separate lanes that never intersect? Does God has no role in politics? You can’t say that watching the Prophet Samuel repeatedly challenging rulers like Saul and David. It’s also important to notice too that Samuel can get things wrong.
“Fill your horn with oil, and be on your way,” God says to Samuel, “I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have chosen my king from among his sons.” Samuel goes through all of Jesse’s sons, but none fit the bill. “Not him, not him, not him,” God says as one after another are brought to Samuel. “Are these all the sons you have?” Samuel asks.
Jesse replied, “There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.” “Send for him,” Samuel says, “we will not begin the sacrificial banquet until he arrives here.” So David is brought to them, ” ruddy, a youth handsome to behold and making a splendid appearance.”
The LORD said, “There–anoint him, for this is he!”
Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand, anoints him in the midst of his brothers; ‘and from that day on, the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David.” (I Samuel 16,1-13)
“Anoint him, there he is,” God says. The prophet pours the horn of olive oil on David. What does the oil signify? A power not his own, a power that is God’s grace, to lead his people. The grace of God is needed to lead.
We can’t block out the world we live in. The messy, uncertain, brutal, sometimes going nowhere world we read about in the Book of Samuel reminds us that God never abandons the world as it is. It’s not Saul’s world or David’s world or even Samuel’s world; It’s God’s world and God’s plan.
Hard to see in the constant blast of news and political commentaries we get from the media. We think like humans do.We can throw up our hands and turn it all off, but this is our world to understand and care for and pray for.
We’re told to pray for our world, our leaders and ourselves that we may receive God’s wisdom and grace to see and hear God here and now
Almighty and eternal God, you have revealed your glory to all nations. God of power and might, wisdom and justice, through you authority is rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgment is decreed.
Assist with your spirit of counsel and fortitude the President of these United States, that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be useful to your people over whom he presides.
May he encourage due respect for virtue and religion. May he execute the laws with justice and mercy. May he seek to restrain crime, vice, and immorality.
Let the light of your divine wisdom direct the deliberations of Congress, and shine forth in all the proceedings and laws framed for our rule and government. May they seek to preserve peace, promote national happiness, and continue to bring us the blessings of liberty and equality.
We pray for the governor of this state
for the members of the legislature, for judges, elected civil officials, and all others who are entrusted to guard our political welfare. By your powerful protection, may they discharge their duties with honesty and ability.
We likewise commend to your unbounded mercy all citizens of the United States, that we be blessed in the knowledge and sanctified in the observance of your holy law.
May we be united in that peace which the world cannot give and, after enjoying the blessings of this life, be admitted to those which are eternal.
We pray to you, who are Lord and God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(Adapted from a prayer for the inauguration of George Washington by Archbishop John Carroll, first Catholic bishop in the United States)
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