Oink, Oink

One of our younger parishioners came up to me in his father's arms at Christmas Mass, quite concerned about something missing from the Nativity scene.  The issue: there was no pig.  In his world, the Bethlehem stable is a barn (it has sheep and a cow and a donkey, after all), and farmyards are simply supposed to include pigs.

I wasn't able to honor his request in church.  (I'm quite sure that, since Mary would have certainly kept a kosher kitchen, she tried her best to keep a kosher manger, too.)  But his Mom and Dad took care of things at home:

I just love how the wise man in green seems to be turning tail on catching sight of the newly-arrived big, pink visitor.

Many thanks to my buddy Parker for all the smiles!
 

Together

UPDATE - 11:00pm

About an hour ago, we were leaving from a lovely Epiphany dinner hosted by a neighboring pastor.  As we were getting into the car, I paused: it sounded like the clippity-clop of horse hooves ringing through the falling snow.  Sure enough, an Amish buggy slowly rolled by.  You don't normally see them at that hour, especially on a Sunday night...but hey, they've been out visiting for Old Christmas.

   The Epiphany of the Lord   

Readings

For the past few decades,
the Amish have more and more become a part of 

the North Country landscape.

But while we’re getting used

to seeing their buggies on the road,

most of us know very little 

about the folks at the reigns.

The Amish are 

famously private people.

Even if you live right next door

or regularly stop 

at one their roadside stands,

it’s difficult to get much sense 

of what makes them tick.

Which is why my ears perked right up Wednesday morning

to hear a report on local public radio

about how our Amish neighbors celebrate Christmas.

While many of them have also adopted December 25,

today—January 6—is traditionally celebrated

by conservative Amish communities as “Old Christmas.”

(The difference in date between our Christmas and Old Christmas

have to do with reforms made in the calendar centuries ago.)

It’s a day of rest and a day of fast: no eating before noontime.

But then there’s a great feast,

topped off with pie and homemade candy.

There are no Christmas trees or other decorations.

(After all, where would they plug in the lights?)

And if gifts are exchanged,

they’re usually handcrafted, generally simple, and always useful.

(No Amish parents go into debt

buying their kids the latest and greatest!)

For the Amish, Old Christmas is a visiting day:

a day for gathering with family and calling on friends.

It has few of the outward trappings

of a modern American Christmas,

but shares something vital at its core:

it’s a day for being together.

For the Amish,

the heart of Christmas is being together.

For us Catholics (and for many other Christians, too),

today, January 6—the twelfth day of Christmas—

is also the traditional date for a great celebration:

the Epiphany of the Lord.

“Epiphany” means manifestation or revelation.

And just what mystery is being unveiled?

That heaven’s glory has shone upon the earth;

that the Ruler of all and Rescuer of the poor

rests a helpless child on his virgin Mother’s knee;

that the very Son of God has appeared

in our human flesh.

Epiphany, you see, is all about being together:

not merely with neighbors and relatives,

as the Amish celebrate Old Christmas;

Epiphany is all about God being together with us.

In a serious deviation from the original plan,

sin—and with it, death—had come between God and man.

But the God who had created us in love and for love

would not allow the separation to continue.
Since we could not cross that chasm and find our own way back,

God came in person to be together with us here and now,

that we might in turn be together with God hereafter.

That’s the essential truth which underlies

all of our soon-to-be concluded Christmas festivities…

…but a truth which gets buried too often

beneath the weight of so much tinsel and wrapping paper.

Having—if you will—this second, far simpler Christmas

gives us a chance to reflect on what brought

those treasure-bearing magi to their knees.

Unlike our Amish comrades,

the King of kings and Lord of lords

is not at all standoffish.

Quite the opposite, in fact:

God has gone far out of his way to come close to us.

It’s hard to think of anything more approachable

than a tiny, vulnerable baby.

And yet this child, although appearing weak,

has the power to bring the whole world together.

His birth was the much-anticipated fulfillment

of a promise made to a single chosen people,

but the citizens of every land and nation—

following in the footsteps of a few star-guided foreigners—

have come to adore him.

The day after I heard that piece on the radio,

I was in the grocery store

and saw a pair of Amish women checking out the produce.

(For some unknown reason,

they seemed particularly interested in watermelon.)

If I wasn’t feeling just about as shy as they do,

I might have asked if they were shopping

for a big dinner with visitors on Old Christmas.

As we have gathered on this feast of the Lord’s Epiphany—

gathered here to be fed by him in the Eucharist—

let’s make sure we observe this as a real “visiting day.”

Like the magi when reaching their long journey’s goal,

may we truly be overjoyed

to recognize that God has visited his people—

and has remained to dwell among us still.

What could matter more, really—at Christmas or ever—

than our being together?
  

Still In There

So, I've used this joke before--and even on this feast--but it works so well and still gets laughs!

Blessings on all of your families...

   The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, & Joseph   C 

Readings

A Sunday school teacher wanted to make sure
that her young class understood

that Jesus wasn’t just a made-up story,

but is real and living even now.

So she asked her students, “Where is Jesus today?”

Stevie raised his little hand and said, “He’s up in heaven.”

Maggie was next called upon and answered, “Jesus lives in my heart.”
Jake was waiving his hand furiously in the back of the room.

“I know!  I know!” he blurted out.  “Jesus is in our bathroom!”

The whole class got very quiet.

His teacher gathered her wits, swallowed hard, 

and asked Jake how he knew such a thing.

“Well,” he said, “every morning my father gets up,

bangs on the bathroom door, and yells,

‘Good Lord, are you still in there?’”

A few years ago,

the childhood home 

of Pope Benedict XVI

was turned into a small museum 

in his native Bavaria.

During the course of renovations,

a Christmas letter was discovered,

handwritten by a seven-year-old boy 

back in 1934.

The letter was just put on public display 

for the first time;

translated, it reads:

Dear Christ Child!

Come quickly down to earth.

You will bring joy to children.

You also will bring joy to me.

I would like a prayer book for Mass,

a green Mass vestment,

—he and his brother, Georg, 

liked to "play church"—

and [an image of] the heart of Jesus.

I will always be good.

Greetings from 

Joseph Ratzinger.

Clearly, the Catholic faith

had a central place in the Ratzinger household.

As that Sunday school teacher asked:

Where is Jesus today?

What place does the good Lord have in your family’s life?

Parents have an essential role

in shaping the religious imagination and identity of their children.

That’s an amazing power and an awesome responsibility. (cf. R. Smith)

(And while I say it belongs to “parents,”

I’m thinking of grandparents and godparents, older siblings,

aunts and uncles, teachers and neighbors, too.)As we can see from their annual Passover pilgrimage,

Mary and Joseph were diligent

in passing on their most deeply held values—

especially their religious tradition—to their Son.

Likewise, regularly coming here, to the Lord’s temple,

as a family for Mass

is at the heart of Catholic family life;

for it, there can be absolutely no substitute.

But things mustn’t stop even there.

Jesus went down with them to Nazareth,

and was obedient to them.

It takes real discipline to raise disciples:

to not only instruct them in the truths of our faith,

but to also inspire them to lovingly and faithfully

live out God’s commandments.

Nothing teaches children more

than the example—good or bad—of their parents.

It’s fairly safe to say most parents here today

don’t have to worry about raising a future Pope…

…but we should all be trying to raise future saints.

Headlines these days can make us wonder

how well we’re doing in this arena.

Yet I was touched and encouraged by a small scrap of paper

I found on the church floor after Mass late on Christmas Eve.

First, in the clear handwriting of an adult, it reads:

Dear Jesus

I Love you

God I Love you

And then in the large, shaky letters

of a child imitating Mom or Dad, it says,

GOd I LovE

It really is that simple!

And that’s what it’s all about.

Using all the means at our disposable,

we must constantly strive to make sure our youngsters

never lose sight of Jesus,

as did Mary and Joseph those three anxious days in Jerusalem.

Let’s instead make sure that our children know

that God’s Only Begotten Son,

who came down from heaven to earth at Christmas,

dwells with us still.

They can always find him here:

in the church, in the Eucharist.

May they also learn from us

how to find the good Lord at home,

in all the twists and turns of family life—

maybe even in the morning wait for the bathroom.

  

Let It Snow!

"No worries!  I've got this under control..."

 

Very Merry

Being a priest, you have to wear many hats...

From our home to yours, 

a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

  

Ringing

I never post my homilies before I'm through delivering them...but in the spirit of Christmas I guess I'll make this one exception.  And wherever you see [RING], well, you can just imagine what that stage direction means...

   The Nativity of the Lord - Christmas   

Readings

At St. Helen’s Church 

up in Chasm Falls,

there’s a full wrap-around gallery—

much as there is here at Notre Dame,

except on a much smaller scale 

in that tiny country church.

I have several “little friends”—

ages five and under, I’d guess—

who regularly sit upstairs with their families…

…and who regularly 

make not-so-whispered comments

for the rest of us to enjoy.

Just over a year ago,

at the same time as the new Roman Missal was implemented,

we reintroduced the custom of ringing bells [RING]

at the moment of the consecration in the Mass.

In a tradition going all the way back to the thirteenth century,

bells have been rung to elicit both joy and attention

as bread and wine—in a very real yet hidden way—

become the Body and Blood of Christ.

It’s at the very heart of the Mass,

and at the very heart of our Catholic faith.

Needless to say, it’s an especially solemn moment.

So you can imagine the reaction in the pews

when, on that first Sunday of Advent 

that the bells were back,

as I was elevating the Sacred Host above the altar,

and a server was ringing the bells 

from his kneeler [RING] —

just as we’d practiced—

a high-pitched voice from the loft intones,

“Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling!”

So much for solemn!

And then, not two weeks ago:

same church, same moment in the Mass, same bells,

and—I presume—my same little friend upstairs,

gleefully declaring [RING] : “Jingle bells!”

Bells are not nearly as much a part of daily life

as they once were here in the Western world.

Nowadays, out telephones have MP3 ringtones,

our alarm clocks buzz,

and schools send out an electronic signal over the intercom

when it’s time for classes to change…

but they don’t have actual bells anymore.

Bells are pretty much left for just two things that I can think of:

churches and Christmas.

At Christmas, there’s a lot of talk of bells.

There are Jingle Bells and Silver Bells.

There are Salvation Army bells at the doors of the stores.

And there’s that memorable line 

from the end of, It’s a Wonderful Life:

“Every time a bell rings [RING] an angel gets his wings.”

The famed American author 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

once wrote a poem called, “Christmas Bells.”

(It’s been turned into a Christmas song,

but they usually leave out a couple of the verses.)

Longfellow wrote this poem on Christmas Day 1864.

In the summer of 1861, 

Longfellow’s wife, Fanny, had burned to death,

and he himself was injured and permanently scarred

while trying to save her.

That same year, 

the first shots of the American Civil War were fired,

leaving the entire country in turmoil and fear.

Tragedy struck again when Longfellow’s son, Charles,

a lieutenant in the Union army,

was shot on the battlefield in November 1863 

and left crippled for life.

In the face of both national unrest and great personal loss,

Longfellow didn’t feel much like celebrating Christmas.

He wrote in his journal, “‘A merry Christmas’ say the children,

but that is no more for me.”  (December 25, 1862)

But then, on that particular Christmas Day,

in the depths of grief and gloom,

Longfellow heard church bells ringing—

and he was inspired to write these hope-filled words:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

and mild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent


The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

When bells first rang at the heart of the Mass

more than eight-hundred years ago,

it wasn’t a small set tinkling in the hand of an altar server [RING] —

no, it was the great bells pealing up in the church tower.

Those bells weren’t ringing to wake up a sleepy congregation,

refocusing their attention at the highpoint of the Eucharist

(although that’s a pretty handy side effect);

they were sending a message far and wide,

to those who could not or would not get to the church—

to the homebound sick and the poor bound to their labors,

to those locked in prison and those guarding the city gates.

Like the angels who appeared to Bethlehem’s shepherds,

they announced good news of great joy for all the people:

heaven was again being born on the earth;

the Son of God, according to his promise,

was once more appearing in human flesh and blood—

not laid in a manger where cattle feed,

but laid upon the altar to feed his own flock.

We need church bells—we need Christmas bells—

now as much a Longfellow did, don’t we?

2012 has been a difficult year for so many people.

We’ve all had our disappointments.

Many of us have suffered the loss of loved ones.

As a nation, just in these last months,

we’ve continued to bring home the dead and the wounded

from conflicts in foreign lands;

we’ve weathered a violent “superstorm”;

we’ve wept at the brutal death of innocent school children;

and we’ve braced ourselves for continued fiscal woes.

Yet in our darkness, a light has shone;

and right here—where we laugh and cry,

where we rejoice and grieve,

where we despair and hope—

the grace and glory of our great God and savior continues to appear,

just as he did before the eyes of Joseph and Mary.

So we need to ring our bells!

We need to ring them not just near our altars, [RING]

and not just in our church towers,

and not just at Christmas, either.

We need to ring out the good news of God-with-us

in our lives each and every day.

It’s not exactly a compliment to tell somebody

that they have “a face that could ring a bell”…

…but each one of us gathered here tonight

needs to have a living faith that rings a bell:

eliciting in those around us both attention and joy

that Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh—

in a real though hidden way—

continues to dwell among us.

My little friend upstairs at St. Helen’s 
knew that “jingle bells”
announce the coming

of a certain jolly man 
in a bright red suit.

May the bells of our churches [RING] —
both inside and out—

always announce the coming of him

who is both the Son of God 
and Son of Mary:

once wrapped in swaddling clothes 
and adored by shepherds;

later wrapped in a shroud 
and laid in a tomb;

now wrapped in glory 
and reigning forever.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

[RING]

Merry Christmas!

Keeping Watch

"I'm just keeping an eye on these till Santa arrives. Really.

Why are you looking at me like that?"

  

Away in a Manger

Don't even think about it, FideliCat...

The Christmas Story

One of the cutest retellings I've heard (or seen):



I'm not sure which I enjoyed more: the donkey, the angry innkeepers, the oh-so-adorable sheep, that third wise man...
 

In Haste

Fr. Stitt has given me a really swell late Advent/pre-Christmas gift: he's preaching in my stead this weekend...

   Fourth Sunday of Advent   C 

Readings

"Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah,

where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth."

Luke 1:39-40

Many women, if they were expecting a child, would refuse to hurry over the hills on a visit of pure kindness.  They would say they had a duty to themselves and to their unborn child which came before anything or anyone else.

The Mother of God considered no such thing.  Elizabeth was going to have a child, too, and although Mary's own child was God, she could not forget Elizabeth's need—almost incredible to us, but characteristic of her.…

If Christ is growing in us, if we are at peace, recollected, because we know that however insignificant our life seems to be, from it he is forming himself; if we go with eager wills, in haste, to wherever our circumstances compel us, because we believe that he desires to be in that place, we shall find that we are driven more and more to act on the impulse of his love.

And the answer we shall get from others to those impulses will be an awakening into life, or the leap into joy of the already wakened life within them.…

We must be swift to obey the winged impulses of his love, carrying him to wherever he longs to be: and those who recognize his presence will be stirred, like Elizabeth, with new life.  They will know his presence, not by any special beauty or power shown by us, but in the way that the bud knows the presence of the light, by the unfolding in themselves, a putting forth of their own beauty.

Caryll Houselander (1902-1954)

 

Expectant

"What good does it do me 
if Christ was born in Bethlehem once 
if he is not born again in my heart 
through faith?"

Origen (184-254)

"What keeps you from projecting His birth 
into times that are in the process of becoming, 
and living your life 
like a painful and beautiful day 
in the history of a great gestation?"

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Christmas Backstage

The rectory dining room, after the poinsettias for Notre Dame Church arrived this morning:

FideliCat is attentively standing guard, making sure that none of them wander over to church before we've properly observed the Fourth Sunday of Advent...
 

The End?

I know some people think today will be the end of the world...

...but (quite remarkably) I'm feeling perfectly fine!


 

The Stuff of Joy

   Third Sunday of Advent   C 

Readings

I was driving alone Friday evening

when I had to turn off the radio:

I couldn’t stand to listen to any more talk

about the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.

It’s not that I’d grown indifferent or uncaring;

it’s just that my mind and my heart couldn’t bear

to hear the sad news repeated again.

So I popped in a new Christmas CD

that just arrived in the mail that morning.

Before I knew it, I was belting out Frosty the Snowman

with surprising gusto:

“…with a corncob pipe and a button nose…”

And then I stopped.

How could I suddenly be so holly-jolly

when twenty innocent children had just been robbed

of this Christmas and all Christmases to come?

On the Church’s calendar,

this is known as Gaudete Sunday:

out of Advent’s somber purple tones,

this streak of rose breaks through to remind us to rejoice.

That this ancient tradition of encouraging joy

should today be aligned with the terrible tragedy of current events

can seem a rather cruel twist.

But maybe—just maybe—

the combination isn’t quite as inappropriate

as it first appears.

We hear Zephaniah declare:

Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!

Be glad and exult with all your heart!

We can forget that the prophet

is speaking to people emerging from hard times,

brought on by their own repeated infidelities.

The source of their joy?

Be not discouraged! 

The Lord is in your midst.

Then St. Paul writes to the Christians of Philippi:

Rejoice in the Lord always! 

I say it again: rejoice!

We can forget that the Apostle

is writing to a community suffering

because of persecution from without and dissention within,

while Paul himself lay deathly ill in prison.

So why the rejoicing?

The Lord is near.

It would be easy enough to feel guilty right now

for getting into the Christmas spirit—

as I experienced while in the car on Friday night.

But as I began to realize even then,

we really need Advent and Christmas joy now

as much—maybe more—than ever.

As we grieve the senseless death of so many little ones,

it is still right for us to rejoice in the birthday of a child

who came to teach us a way through life

other than the paths of violence and revenge.

As our time in this world is spent so often

passing though a vale of tears,

it is good for us to be glad

that we are only passing through—

to celebrate that heaven took flesh on earth

so that our earthly flesh might enjoy eternal life in heaven.

Such joy is not about glossing over the heartbreak;

it’s about recognizing that God is with us—

has come oh-so-close to us,

is bearing the hurt right along with us—

here in the midst of it all.

We’re like the crowds, the tax collectors, the soldiers

that came to John the Baptist:

we find ourselves asking, “What should we do?”

For one thing, we should pray:

pray for the souls of those whose lives have been lost;

pray for the loved ones left behind in sorrow;

pray for the marginalized,

for those who suffer with mental illness,

for those who themselves have been victimized

and so conceive of causing pain to others.

Prayer is more powerful and effective

than we often stop to realize.

And we should take action:

not with the grandiose promises of changing laws and society

which always follow on the heals of such cruelty,

but by making changes in our own sinful lives—

much as John the Baptist prescribed.

The workings of evil in the world

are conquered one heart at a time.

We should fervently pray.

We should repent, changing what needs to be changed.

And we should rejoice…without feeling too guilty about it.

The French Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac once wrote:

Suffering is the thread

from which the stuff of joy is woven.

Never will the optimist know joy.

Commenting on this profound insight

in a lecture delivered just about a year ago,

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said:

Those seem like strange words,

especially for Americans.

We Americans take progress as an article of faith.

And faith in progress demands a spirit of optimism.

But Father de Lubac knew

that optimism and hope are very different creatures.

In real life, bad things happen.
Progress is not assured,

and things that claim to be “progress”

can sometimes be wicked and murderous instead.

We can slip backward as a nation

just as easily as we can advance.

This is why optimism—

and all the political slogans that go with it—

are so often a cheat.

Real hope and real joy are precious.

They have a price.

They emerge from the experience of suffering,

which is made noble and given meaning

by faith in a loving God.

Joy—it has been said—

is the infallible sign of the presence of God.  (cf. L. Bloy)

It’s that divine presence

which we seek in moments of suffering and sorrow.

It’s that divine presence

which we’ll celebrate at Christmas.

It’s that divine presence

which is the miracle of this Eucharist.

In the face of tragedy,

may it yet give us cause for rejoicing.