Homily: 6th day within the Octave of the Nativity (December 30)

Readings: 1 Jn 2:3-11; Ps 96; Lk 2:22-35

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Christmas, of course, reminds us that Jesus chose to enter into the world just as helpless as you and I once were. He didn’t place Himself above us. He entered directly into the human story, sharing our humanity, our flesh and blood, and our physical mortality. Although a divine person, He accepted everything that came with His humanity, all the messiness, all the ordinariness, all its limitations. It was by accepting these limitations that He could “advance in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” [Lk 1:52]

In today’s Gospel passage Luke reminds us of both the humanity and divinity of our Lord.

According to Jewish law, a firstborn son belonged to God. And so, 40 days after his birth, parents would present their son in the Temple, in effect, buying him back with a sacrifice of turtledoves or pigeons. On that day, the new mother would also be ritually purified. Indeed, the feast was originally known as the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin.

Here we see the Holy Family, a Jewish family, living under God’s Law, doing as the Law prescribed. You see, Jesus’ mission is rooted in God’s revelation, expressed in the Law and the Prophets. It’s there, in the Old Testament, that God’s plan of salvation is first revealed; a plan fulfilled and brought to completion by the Incarnation.

As Mary and Joseph enter the Temple to fulfil the law, they’re greeted by two people, Simeon and Anna, who amaze them with what they reveal. Like many of us here today, these two were very senior citizens. Yesterday, we heard what Simeon had to say, but in today’s passage Luke turns to Anna, whom he calls a prophetess, one who speaks for God.

At 84 Anna had lived in the Temple since becoming a widow at a young age. And so, for decades she “worshipped day and night with fasting and prayer.” [Lk 2:37]. She is, in fact, the patron saint of widows.

Like Simeon, Anna is filled with the Holy Spirit, and coming forward she gives thanks to God for the child, Jesus. Luke goes on to tell us she “spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.” [Lk 2:38].

We see the birth of Christ revealed by very different kinds of witnesses, each in a different way: the shepherds, led by an angel; the Magi, guided by a star; and Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna inspired by the Holy Spirit. God chooses whomever He wishes to do great things; for the Spirit, though them, reveals Jesus Christ to the world.

The Spirit works in us as well, providing opportunities to take God’s love to others, an evangelization that begins right in our own families where holiness is first nurtured. In the midst of the chaos and messiness in our families there are glimpses of God’s presence, moments of grace when God reaches deep into the clutter of our lives and hands us a present we never expected.

When my mother died, our elder daughter, 6-years-old at the time, told Diane, “Don’t cry, Mommy. Grandma is with Jesus now, happy in heaven.” 

In moments like this God ignores the barriers and debris we place between ourselves and our redemption, reminding us we are called to holiness. In those moments, sticky hands are transformed into instruments of grace. Stories of the playground and classroom, or the words of a child to her mother become words of wisdom. In those moments, ordinary events take on new meaning and the dinner table becomes an altar.

These elusive, often sudden, and unexpected, moments are rarely captured on film or video. Sometimes, as with Mary and Joseph, they came in the form of words that amaze. Yes, Mary knew her Son was special. What had the angel revealed to her?

“He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High…the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” [Lk 1:32,35]

But to hear this and more in the Temple from Simeon and Anna…this too was something Mary would long ponder and cherish. Here we encounter an event that strikes a chord in all new parents who wonder and worry about the future of their child.

A story for every mother who looked into the face of her newborn, the face of innocence, and prayed that God would help her raise that child to holiness.

A story to remind us that as parents, along with the joys, we will experience disappointment, sorrow, sometimes great tragedy…but in the midst of it all we encounter Emmanuel, God with us.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph – pray for us.

Homily: Day 5 - Octave of Christmas

Readings: 1 Jn 2:3-11; Ps 96; Lk 2:22-35

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When describing the divine and human natures of Jesus, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council wrote:

"He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human will, and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin...[and His human will] does not resist or oppose but rather submits to His divine and almighty will" [Gaudium et spes, 22].

Christmas, of course, reminds us of Jesus' humanity, that He chose to enter into the world just as helpless as you and I once were. He didn’t place Himself above us. He entered directly into the human story, sharing our humanity, our flesh and blood, our physical mortality. Although a divine person, He accepted everything that came with His humanity, all the messiness, all the ordinariness, all its limitations. It was by accepting these limitations that He could “advance in wisdom and age and favor before God and man” [Lk 2:52].

Today’s passage from Luke is offered to remind us of both the humanity and divinity of our Lord.

According to Jewish law, a firstborn son belonged to God. Forty days after his birth, the parents would present their son in the Temple, in effect, buying him back with a sacrifice of turtledoves or pigeons. On that day, the new mother would also be ritually purified. Indeed, the feast of the Presentation was originally known as the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin. Here we see the Holy Family, a Jewish family, living under God’s Law, doing as the Law prescribed.

Jesus’ mission, then, is rooted in God’s revelation, expressed in the Law and the Prophets. It’s there, in the Old Testament, that God’s plan of salvation is first revealed; a plan fulfilled and brought to completion by the Incarnation.

 

As Mary and Joseph entered the Temple to fulfill the law, they were greeted by old Simeon who, filled with the Holy Spirit, welcomed Jesus and revealed Him as the redemption of the entire world:

“…my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel” [Lk 2:30-32].

He then gave Mary a taste of the sorrows she would experience, for a sword would pierce her heart, a sword forged by our sinfulness.

The birth of Christ, then, is revealed by three kinds of witnesses each in a different way: the shepherds, led by an angel; the Magi, guided by a star; and Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, all inspired by the Holy Spirit.

God chooses whomever He wishes to do great things, and guided by the Holy Spirit they will reveal Jesus Christ to the world. The Spirit works, providing opportunities to take God’s love to others, an evangelization that begins right in our own families where holiness is first nurtured. In the midst of the chaos in our families there are glimpses of God’s presence, moments of grace when God reaches deep into the clutter of our lives and hands us a present we never expected.

When my mother died, over 40 years ago, our elder daughter, 6-years-old at the time, told Diane, “Don’t cry, Mommy. Grandma is with Jesus now, happy in heaven.”

In moments like this God ignores the barriers and debris we place between ourselves and our redemption, reminding us we are called to holiness.

In those moments, sticky hands are transformed into instruments of grace. Stories of the playground and classroom, or the words of a child to her mother, become words of wisdom.

In those moments, ordinary events take on new meaning and the dinner table becomes like an altar.

These elusive, often sudden, and unexpected moments are rarely captured on film or video. Sometimes, as with Mary and Joseph, they came in the form of words that amaze. Yes, Mary knew her Son was special. What had the angel revealed to her?

"He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High...the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." [Lk 1:32,35]

But to hear this and more in the Temple from Simeon…this too was something Mary would long ponder and cherish.

This visit to the Temple strikes a chord in all new parents who wonder and worry about the future of their child. It’s a story for every mother who has looked into the face of her newborn, the face of innocence, and prayed that God would help her raise that child to holiness. It's a story to remind us that as parents we will experience disappointment, sorrow, sometimes great tragedy…but in the midst of it all we encounter Emmanuel, God with us.

It reminds us of the depth of God’s love, of His arms open wide with forgiveness and mercy – a reminder that God calls us into families, not just to protect us physically, but to nurture us in faith, to prepare us for a journey that leads only to Him.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph – pray for us.

Homily: Saturday, 4th Week of Lent

Readings: Jer 11:18-20; Ps 7; Jn 7:40-53
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"Never before has anyone spoken like this man" [Jn 7:46].

Hearing those words brought to mind someone I first met over 60 years ago. I think it was my first week of high school, and to get there I had to take a train for a few miles, and then a 6-mile bus ride with lots of stops. It took a while.

Bus - Westchester County NY

That morning, when I got on the bus, this kid sat down next to me. Like me I guess he was a little nervous, and so for a while neither of us said much, but he seemed kinda nerdy...not that I wasn't. He was an Italian kid from the tough town and I was an Irish kid who lived in a slightly ritzier town. I sized him up and decided we had little in common, and I should probably seek friendship elsewhere.

Then he told a joke, and another, and another, and had me crying with laughter all the way to school. Yes, indeed, I'd never heard anyone speak like that before. And you guessed it: we became lifelong friends. Today he lives in Jersey and we had another long phone call just a few nights ago.

Reading today's Gospel passage brought him to mind, and made me realize how wrong I can be when it comes to first impressions. And usually the error is rooted in me, not in the other. I had sized up my friend in a few minutes, pretty much all based on my personal biases. I suppose I was a little snob, but my friend, John, and many others have cured me of that fault.

I was like the Pharisees who, knowing little about Jesus, dismissed Him as a nobody; but a dangerous nobody, a threat to their own authority. Without having heard Jesus speak, without having heard His words, they rejected the Word of God. This, of course is exactly what Nicodemus tried to tell them.

"Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?" [Jn 7:51]

Nicodemus, too, was a Pharisee, but he had taken the time to seek out Jesus, to question Him, to listen to Him, to see if He spoke the truth. And it was to Nicodemus that Jesus first spoke those words of redemption:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life" [Jn 3:16].

Sadly, though, most of the Pharisees, like that younger me, were a bunch of snobs. You can almost hear them, can't you? This Jesus? He's from Galilee, a nobody from nowhere. How had the Apostle Nathaniel put it?

"Can anything good come from Nazareth?" [Jn 1:46] 

Even a soon to be Apostle can be a bit of a snob.

"Never before has anyone spoken like this man."

Isn't it interesting that so many of the people who encountered Jesus, even the Temple guards, who'd been sent to arrest Jesus, actually listened to Him, and realized they'd heard the truth?

"Never before has anyone spoken like this man."

What a remarkably courageous thing to say, knowing how much the chief priests and the Pharisees, despised Jesus.

What about us? Do we have the courage to speak out for our faith, to proclaim Jesus as Lord when He is under attack, as He is in our world today?

The world really hasn't changed all that much, has it? The Word of God causes division today just as it did in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. 

The prophet Jeremiah encountered the same kind of division centuries earlier, when all the important folks plotted against him, just as their successors would plot against Jesus.

Remember how Simeon had revealed to Mary that Jesus would be "a sign that will be contradicted" [Lk 2:34]?

"a sign that will be contradicted"

And how many ignored Jesus, the sign God had sent, the sign of the Father's overwhelming love, and instead contradicted? 

Jesus' deeds both amazed and provoked, and His words affected all who heard that call to conversion: 

"Repent and believe in the Gospel" [Mk 1:15].

Some responded with hatred, some turned away unwilling to accept God's grace and the changes it demanded, but others underwent a fundamental, transformative change of heart. 

Brothers and sisters, Jesus never stops calling us to conversion: to repent and trust in His mercy; to love God with all our being; to love our neighbor as we love ourselves; to speak always as Jesus spoke, in the language of the Father's love.

As we move through these last days of Lent, you and I must listen and respond to that call. We have to choose because God never wants to force Himself on us. He simply looks on us with love and lets us make the choice [See Mk 10:21].

So today, let's all open our hearts to Jesus, and listen to the One who speaks as no one else has ever spoken. Let His Holy Spirit fill us with the humility and repentance God asks of us. 

Homily: December 30

Readings: 1 Jn 2:12-17 Ps 96; Lk 2:36-40

Early in Luke’s Gospel we encounter Anna and Simeon, two special, almost grandparental figures, perfect models for those of us in the winter years of our lives. They are blessed with the holiness and wisdom most of us seek but too few of us attain.

But this passage about Anna always calls to mind my Dominican eighth-grade teacher. I’m certain Sister Francis Jane looked exactly like Anna. From my perspective as a 13-year-old they were both old – very, very old. And they both saw their mission in life as one of announcing the Good News to everyone they encountered.

How did Luke put it?

“…she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.”

Yes, Anna was telling everyone who came to the Temple to prepare themselves for the gift of redemption. What wonderful news! And it was the same message we eighth-graders received daily from Sister Francis Jane.

“Be prepared,” she’d say, “You and I don’t know when the Lord will summon us into His Holy Presence.” And so, for Sister Francis Jane, readiness just made good spiritual sense.

Over the years I’ve taken a lot of courses in spirituality, but despite all the deep theological insights I learned in those courses, I found myself ignoring most of them and going back to Sister’s four basic rules – rules she repeated again and again as we made our way through eighth grade en route to high school.

Her first rule was to pray.

That’s right, pray – pray every day. “Talk to the Lord,” she’d say. Nothing complicated about it. If you don’t have a prayer life, you can’t be Jesus’ friend. After all, what kind of person never speaks to his friend?

Her second rule was to watch.

Now she didn’t mean spending your time looking for the Second Coming. Too many people today seem to think the end is near every time there’s an earthquake, a flood, a war, or a rumor of war. In the words of the good Sister, “If you stand around looking at the sky watching for Jesus, you just might get hit by a truck – and then you’ll meet Him a bit prematurely.”

Yeah, she was a pretty funny. But what she meant was something a little more subtle. “Keep your eyes open,” she’d tell us. “Watch what’s going on in the world around you. Watch for opportunities to bring Jesus to others. Watch for the good things, and praise God for them. And watch out for the bad things, and then wait...and you’ll be amazed how God will use you to bring good out of the bad.”

“Don’t hide from the world,” she’d say, waving that bony finger at us. “God made the world. It’s good. It’s people who’ve made it bad. And you can’t change it if you hide from it.”

Her third rule of readiness was to avoid sin.

Too many people, she said, make friends with the devil, who dresses up sin trying to make the ugly attractive. I would hope as Catholic Christians we’d all want to be in a state of grace, a state of friendship with the Lord, so He will greet us as a friend when we meet. For this, the good sister said, we should be willing to sacrifice everything.

Her fourth and final rule of readiness was to use everything in our lives to fulfill our calling to serve.

By this she meant that parents should be good parents. Children should be good children. Brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, priests and nuns, deacons and bishops, doctors, lawyers, flight attendants, plumbers, salespeople, soldiers, carpenters… whatever we do in life, we should do it to the best of our ability.

But it also means we must be good Christians, that our work in the world is important only to the extent that it supports and furthers God’s work. Our preparation for eternity, then, must include using this world’s goods and pleasures for the glory of God and for the good of others. After all, what good is it to achieve great things in this world if they don’t help us achieve the salvation God wants for us in the next? We are all called to serve.

That, in a nutshell, is the late Sister Francis Jane’s program of spiritual direction.

Now, being always ready to encounter Jesus isn’t as easy as it might sound, especially in today’s world, a world that seems to place so many superfluous demands on us. In the days to come there will be a lot of talk about turning over new leaves and making resolutions for the new year — talk of diets, and exercise, and volunteer work, and watching less television…all good things.

But maybe you and I can do something a bit more meaningful. Why don’t we get ready for the Lord and start living each day as if it’s our last. Put away the old person with sin and weakness and live in a new spirit of grace and gratitude.

Homily: Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph - Year B

Readings: Sir 3:2-6, 12-14; Ps 128; Col 3:12-21; Lk 2:22-40

From the very beginning the Church has consistently taught that Jesus Christ is true God and true man, that the Incarnation is God coming into the world as one of us. In His humanity, the Church teaches, Jesus is like us in all things except sin.

And yet, over the centuries, many have tried to make Jesus into someone or something He isn’t. Indeed, most of the heresies that plagued the early Church focused on the identity of Jesus, as the world tried to answer the question Jesus asked His disciples: “Who do people say that I am?” [Mk 8:27] And now, 2,000 years later, people are still giving the wrong answers.

I once heard a television preacher say that Jesus possessed complete knowledge of all the sciences. “Jesus, the man,” he said, “was Einstein, Newton, Pasteur, Curie, Hawking…all the great scientists of the world rolled into one, and then multiplied by a thousand.” He went on to state that “Jesus was the most knowledgeable of doctors, for how else could He have cured all those people? How else could He raise the dead to life?”

I couldn’t help but think: well, if that’s the case, he could hardly be human, like us in all things.

And then, moving toward the other extreme, one of my theology professors once stated that the humanity of Jesus prevented Him from grasping that He was divine. Indeed this theologian taught that Jesus didn’t realize He was the Son of God until the Resurrection. What a surprise that must have been! And, the professor taught, because Jesus, in His humanity, was unaware of His divinity, none of those Gospel miracles really happened.

The real problem for the preacher and professor is that the Incarnation is a mystery, something beyond human understanding, and that just bothers the heck out of them. They can’t accept that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. They can’t understand how Jesus can be truly the Son of God and yet became a man and our brother.

That they’re unable to grasp the mind of God is unacceptable to them, so they manufacture a Jesus they can accept…one, of course, that conflicts with everything the Church teaches.

As the Second Vatican Council stated: “The Son of God…worked with human hands; He thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart He loved” [Gaudium et Spes, 22.2]. And yet that human will, “does not resist or oppose but rather submits to His divine and almighty will” [Council of Constantinople III: DS 556].

The Church gives us today’s feast of the Holy Family to remind us of Jesus’ humanity, to remind us that the family is the first church, the domestic church. Yes, Jesus chose to enter into the world as an infant, just as helpless as you and I once were. He didn’t place Himself above us. He didn’t reject the human story but entered directly into it, sharing our humanity, our flesh and blood, our physical mortality.

Although a divine person, He accepted everything that came with His humanity, all the messiness, all the ordinariness, all its limitations. In His humanity He accepted these limitations, and as Luke tells us, would “advance in wisdom and age and favor before God and man” [Lk 2:52]. And He did all this within a human family, a Holy Family under the care and love of Mary and Joseph.

In today’s gospel passage Luke relates the events surrounding the presentation of Jesus in the Temple. According to Jewish law, a firstborn son belonged to God. And so, 40 days after his birth, parents would present their son in the Temple, in effect, buying him back with a sacrifice. And for poor Jews, like Joseph and Mary, it would be a sacrifice of turtledoves or pigeons. On that same day the new mother would also be ritually purified. Indeed, the feast was originally known as the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin.

Here we see the Holy Family, a Jewish family, living under God’s Law, doing as the Law prescribed. Yes, Jesus, the Son of God, accepts that His mission is rooted in God’s revelation, expressed in the Law and the Prophets. It’s there, in the Old Testament, that God’s plan of salvation is first revealed; a plan fulfilled and brought to completion by the Incarnation.

And so Mary and Joseph enter the Temple to fulfil the law. There they are greeted by old Simeon who amazes them with what he reveals. Simeon welcomes the infant Jesus with open arms and in Him sees redemption of the entire world: “…my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel” [Lk 2:30-32]. He then gives Mary a taste of the sorrows she will experience, for a sword will pierce her heart.

Mary and Joseph then encounter Anna, a prophetess who lived in the Temple, who goes on to reveal more about their child. And just as Jesus advances in wisdom and age and favor, so too does the Holy Family advance in holiness.

But we should also realize that the message of Simeon and Anna is a message for every family. Holiness is nurtured first in the family. In the midst of all the chaos that surrounds any family there are glimpses of God’s presence, moments of grace when God reaches deep into the clutter of our lives and hands us a present that we never expected.

When my mother died, our elder daughter, 6-years-old at the time, told her mother, “Don’t cry, Mommy. Grandma is with Jesus now, happy in heaven.”

In moments like this God ignores all the barriers and debris that we place between ourselves and our redemption and reminds us that we are called to holiness. In those moments, sticky hands are transformed into instruments of grace and stories of the playground and classroom, or the words of a child to her mother become words of wisdom. In those moments, ordinary events take on new meaning and the dinner table can become like an altar.

In my family, those moments didn’t come when the six of us were kneeling piously in church. They were never captured on film or video. No, they were elusive -- sudden and unexpected. And sometimes, as with Mary and Joseph, they came in the form of words that amaze.

Yes, Mary knew her Son was special. What had the angel said? “He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High… the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” [Lk 1:32, 35]. But to hear this and more in the Temple from these two holy ones…this too was something she would long ponder and cherish.

This visit to the Temple is a story that strikes a chord in every new parent who has wondered and worried about the future of their child.

It’s a story for every mother who has looked into the face of her newborn, the face of innocence, and prayed that God would help her raise that child to holiness.

It’s a story to remind us that as parents we will experience disappointment, sorrow, and sometimes great tragedy…but in the midst of it all we will encounter Emmanuel, God with us.

It’s a story to remind each of us of the depth of God’s love for us, that He calls us to His open arms with forgiveness and mercy.

It’s a reminder to parents that holy moments of discovery and growth are often sudden and unpredictable.

It’s a reminder that God calls us into families — not just to protect us physically, but to nurture us in faith and love, to prepare us for a journey that leads only to Him.

It’s no accident that Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor, and did so in the midst of a family.

It’s no accident that God used that Holy Family — as he uses our families — to reach deep into other people’s lives, to bring them the light of Christ.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; and He came as a child born into a family. By doing so, He sanctified the family, making it an instrument of holiness, and reminding us of the awesome obligation we have to protect it.

For the family today is under attack from virtually every quarter. We seem to have stopped investing in children, and now just invest in things. This is the great temptation for us who live in our affluent Western societies with their contraceptive mentality, societies that see children not as our future, but as competitors who threaten future affluence, as things that take something from us.

This is the same mentality that, 45 years ago, Pope Paul VI predicted would lead to increased marital infidelity, a general decrease in morality, especially among our youth, a lack of respect for women, and the continued erosion of respect for human life at all stages. How right he was!

Today, on this beautiful feast of the Holy Family, let us pray for our families, that we may grow together in holiness, love and mutual respect.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph – pray for us.