My favorite Christmas poem, explaining better than anything else I have ever read, the reason for Christmas joy:
Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today’s Gospel reading speaks of the time just before Jesus came onto the scene of salvation history. There are two great figures of this brief period, as the Old Testament closes and the New Testament opens. These two great figures are Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and St. John the Baptist. Today we hear about the ministry of John the Baptist.
John is held before our consciousness in the liturgy today because the Lord is about to come among us liturgically, on the feast of his nativity (Christmas), just as he was about to come among the people of the 1st century, to whom John was speaking. Thus the choice of this Gospel reading is meant to shake things up temporally, to suggest to us that there is a mystical analogue between John’s situation and our own. And this analogue is not merely a liturgical fact, because we are again waiting for Christ to manifest himself in our world, to come again in glory.
The first epistle of John says, “Children, it is the last hour.” But, as we heard today, “among you stands one whom you do not know.” We stand in the world like new John-the-Baptists, voices crying in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” because he is coming soon, as Scripture bears witness.
He is coming to us at Christmas, and he is among us even now, though perhaps he stands yet “as one whom you do not know.” But he is coming again with power and great glory to judge the living and the dead, and the world by fire. And whether he comes again today, or tomorrow, or in another two thousand years, he is in fact coming soon, for this is “the last hour,” the final chapter of the world’s history and the fulfillment of time. And his second advent will contrast starkly with the humility and abnegation of the manger, as well as with the anonymity with which he stands among us even now. The book of Revelation says: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, every one who pierced him; and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen,” (Rev. 1.7).
So now, “We remember his death. We proclaim his resurrection. [And] We await his coming in glory.” And as we await his coming in glory, today’s Gospel holds before us the example of John the Baptist, whose vocation likewise was to await the coming of the Lord, who stood among God’s people then as one they did not know. In order to consider how John the Baptist’s vocation can illuminate our own, we might first consider why it is that the Lord stands among us unknown. What obscures our vision?
The Lord stands among us as one we do not know, because our vision is obscured by the twofold and interrelated realities of the world, with its power structures and its priorities, and our sins. (And, by the way, what better way is there to prepare for the coming of the Lord at Christmas, than by making our confession?) Every year at Christmas, Christians complain about the materialism of our culture, and how it corrupts the “true meaning of Christmas.” But if you are at all like me, every year you nevertheless, to some extent, buy into that materialism. More than either receiving or giving fits, Christmas has become a time to BUY gifts. The fact that I still have sitting around my house some things that I bought LAST year and meant to give as gifts but didn’t, is a convicting reminder of this.
Our world lives and breathes by the flow of money. In answer to the question of how Americans could help fight terrorism, not long ago, our government’s answer was that we should go shopping. The dominant narrative today is all about liquidity, the flow of money, the ease of borrowing, the valuation of debt; and the message of the government and the media seems to be that if money does not change hands rapidly, and on a massive scale, Europe might well sink into the ocean, and the world as we know it might come to an end. Money can save us, we are told; and money can destroy us. The first book of Kings says that in order to prevent the people of Israel from returning to the House of David, Jeroboam “made two calves of gold,” and showed them to the people, and said, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt,” (1 Kings 12.28).
“Among you stands one whom you do not know.” Our job is to become little John-the-Baptists, to be voices crying in this wilderness of falsehood, idolatry, and materialism, making the Lord known here, making straight what has become crooked, and building up what has been cast down. Concretely, this means that we must affirm and inhabit the truth, standing as witnesses against our world’s crookednesses and perversions. And this must mean, for each of us, reacquainting ourselves with Jesus. “Among you stands one whom you do not know.” In order to make him known, to bear witness to the justice and peace and truth that he embodies, each of us must first get to know HIM.
We know the straight way – what I often call the “economy of salvation” – set forth in the Gospel, and kept by the Catholic Church – the way of repentance and prayer, the way of the sacraments, the way of ascetical struggle, of lifelong fidelity in marriage, the way of selflessness and generosity, the way that affirms life and the dignity of the human person at every stage of development from conception to natural death, the way of solicitude for the poor, for immigrants, and for criminals. The “way of the Lord” commended by John the Baptist has been manifest to us, and now we must walk in it, and proclaim it to others.
The way of the world runs counter to the way of the Lord, and we have to purge our consciousness of its influence. The Greek word for “repentance” is “metanoia” – and it means a transformation of one’s mind. It is not enough to be well-behaved, but our whole way of thinking must be turned around and our perspective transformed; our priorities have to be reversed in order for us to become agents of the world’s renewal and the salvation of souls. This is the work to which the Lord calls each of us, and to which he calls every Christian. And it is of such workers that the prophet Isaiah speaks in today’s OT reading: “they [will] be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.”
The world’s future is written, and it is a future of deliverance from every corruption, from loneliness, sickness, brokenness of every sort, and from death itself. This is the work that Jesus has already set loose within the world by being born into poverty, by dying and rising again; and it is the work to which each of us is called in virtue of our having been baptized into that, his death and resurrection. “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22.20).
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is difficult to believe, but here we are at the first Sunday of Advent. As I mentioned last Sunday, during Advent we prepare for the coming of the Lord at Christmas. And the relevant passages of scripture that treat this theme are pretty ominous. Today, Jesus says to his disciples:
…in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. (Mark 13.24-25)
The Venerable Bede says that “…the stars in the day of judgment shall appear obscure, not by any lessening of their own light, but because of the brightness of the true light, that is, of the most high Judge coming upon them…” This could of course be taken literally – to mean that celestial bodies will literally grow dim as the end of the world draws near. But reading between the lines, and drawing on St. Bede’s interpretation, we might say that Jesus means us to understand that the more we allow him to be the one who illuminates our lives, that is to say, the more we allow him to give us direction, to illuminate the pathways of our lives, the more we orient ourselves within the world by his teaching and example, the less influence “the powers that be” within the world will hold sway over us – the less will we heed them with respect to our decision-making.
It is like when you are in your house and the power goes out. You light candles in the darkness, and after awhile, your eyes become accustomed to the darkness, and the dim light of the candles enables you to get around. But when suddenly the power is restored and all the lights in the house come back on, everything is brightly illuminated, and although the candles are still burning, you do not notice their light. The light that they cast is inconsequential as compared with the brightness of the restored power.
The closer we get to the Lord’s coming, the less do the world’s powers and priorities have any influence in our lives. This is true not just considered historically – that is to say, not merely as the world grows ever more weary and lawless – but in our personal lives as well, as we come ever closer to seeing the king in his majesty and his beauty. And on this score, we do well to remember that however long this world lasts, every one of us will comparatively soon stand before our Savior and Judge. If this world lasts another million years, nevertheless each of our own personal worlds will end in a relatively little while, when we die; and so it behooves us to spend our energy in learning to be guided by the light of the Son of Glory.
Blessed Johhn Henry Newman once said:
O my brethren, pray [to Jesus] to give you the heart to seek him in sincerity. Pray him to make you… earnest. You have one work only, to bear your cross after him. Resolve in his strength to do so. Resolve to be no longer beguiled by “shadows of religion”, by words, or by disputings, or by notions, or by high professions, or by excuses, or by the world’s promises or threats. Pray him to give you what Scripture calls “an honest and good heart”, or “a perfect heart”, and, without waiting, begin at once to obey him with the best heart you have. Any obedience is better than none, — any profession which is disjoined from obedience, is a mere pretence and deceit. Any religion which does not bring you nearer to God is of the world. You have to seek his face; [and] obedience is the only way of seeking him. All your duties are obediences.
We must learn to be children of the apocalypse (which means “revelation”) – we must be offspring of God’s self-disclosure, born of the water and the blood flowing from the heart of Jesus, learning to recognize him easily as we go about our lives, and allowing his teaching and example to direct our decisions, as for us the world’s influence wanes, and we cease to walk by its light.
But what are we to make of Jesus’ words when he says, “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father,” (Mark 13.32)? Isn’t he supposed to know everything? Indeed, he is supposed to know everything, and he does. St. Hilary of Poitiers said that Jesus’ supposed ignorance of “that day” and “that hour,” is a “sacrament of his silence,” that it is related to the occlusion of all wisdom and knowledge in him – just as St. Paul says that believers in Jesus “have all the riches of assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” (Colossians 2.2-3).
Today’s Gospel reading concludes with Jesus’ exhortation for his disciples to watch for his advent, his coming. Four times in the last five verses of this reading Jesus uses the word “watch.”
Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Watch therefore — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning — lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch. (Mark 13.33ff)
Watchfulness and attentiveness – these are the hallmarks of the disciples of the Lord until he returns. But to what kind of attention are we being exhorted? St. Gregory of Nyssa commented on the “wakeful sleep” of the Beloved in the Song of Songs, who said that she “slept while my heart was awake.” Gregory says, “When all of these [outward senses] have been lulled into inactivity by a kind of sleep, the heart’s functioning becomes pure, the reason looks up to heaven, unshaken and unperturbed by the motion of the senses.”
This means nothing other than that in order for us to understand things from the treasures of knowledge and wisdom veiled in Christ, we must enter the darkness of sleep with respect to the world. For us, the world’s sources of light must become darkened, so that “the brightness of the true light” may flood our lives, enabling us go out to meet the Bridegroom when he comes, but also in the meantime, to negotiate our lives in this world without stumbling.
St. Paul speaks of this dynamic in today’s epistle reading, and exhorts his hearers to rely on God, to a greater trust in the power of God working in our lives, which is the fruit of prayer. St. Paul says:
in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge — even as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you — so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Our primary job, as disciples of Jesus, is to wait and to watch for his coming, his advent. But this kind of waiting and watching is not passive, because it is undertaken in FAITH – understanding and believing that God has indeed enriched us with his grace and his power; and that therefore we need not be afraid as this world’s sun is darkened, and its stars fall from heaven; it only means that our King and Savior now draws near. Come, let us adore him.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today’s Gospel contains Jesus’ injunction to “call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven,” (Matthew 23.9). This verse has been used by some Christians to criticize the Catholic practice of calling priests, “Father.” It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I don’t regard this criticism as legitimate.
Firstly, we might note that Jesus wasn’t speaking English. He was probably speaking Aramaic or Hebrew, and the language of the New Testament, in which this injunction has come down to us, is Greek. So the English word, “Father,” with reference to human beings hasn’t been proscribed.
But those who say we can’t call priests “Father” might retort that the spirit of the law is what’s important here. That Jesus obviously didn’t mean only to proscribe the Hebrew or Greek words for “father,” but he was saying that we must not call people “father” or any equivalent words in any language.
But if that is so, then we can’t call our own fathers “Father,” or “dad” or anything else. After all, Jesus doesn’t say “don’t call priests ‘Father,’”. He says call “no man… on earth” “father.” So if the critics are right, we will have to come up with new words for our fathers, like maybe “living male relation who is married to my mother.” But while I know of many Christians who object to calling priests “father,” I’ve never heard of any who objected to calling biological fathers “father.”
Moreover, following this logic, we should note that the words “rabbi” and “master” are prohibited to us. The Greek word here translated “master” means “teacher” – as does the Latin word, magister, from which the English word “master” is derived. So if we are to be consistent, we will have to come up with new words for schoolmasters, teachers, instructors, doctors (which is another Latin word meaning “teacher”), and so forth.
I am only following this logic to demonstrate how very tedious it is, and by way of suggesting that those who use this passage to criticize the practice of calling priests “father” are probably motivated more by anti-Catholic sentiment than by a concern to be disciples of Jesus.
The truth is that Jesus was not concerned with setting up a system of rules with respect to nomenclature, morals, or anything else, the following of which would constitute the true body of his disciples. Rather, the opposite is the case. As Jesus said, “no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit,” (Luke 6.43). The badness or goodness of the tree determines how it behaves, not vice versa.
And so it is with Jesus and his disciples. There are, in fact, Gospel rules. There are precepts that must be followed. But keeping them is the fruit of the goodness, the LOVE, with which God fills us as we draw closer to him. “No good tree bears bad fruit.” If we bear bad fruit from time to time, it is only proof that God is not finished with us yet, and that we should continue to seek him when and where he wills to be found so that he can continue the process of transforming us into faithful sons and daughters.
So what IS Jesus saying in today’s Gospel reading? He is concerned with authority: “…you have one Father, who is in heaven,” “you have one master, the Christ.” The great exposition of Jesus’ teaching in this verse is 1 John 5.2-4:
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.
Love, faith, obedience. This is the dynamic Jesus is concerned with getting us to understand. We are to abide in the love of God, which means living in the relationship that Jesus has with his Father. As with every relationship, the way to foster it is by closeness and communication. And this means prayer and the sacraments. By these means, if we engage them with open hearts, we will gradually come to a better and better acquaintance with Jesus himself, we will learn that he is supremely lovely, supremely powerful, and therefore supremely trustworthy. We will come to understand from the heart that he cares for us, and that he is actively bringing about good in our lives, even in the middle of – and BY MEANS OF – circumstances that we find frightening or painful.
And this realization will lead to an increasing desire to remain with Jesus, to follow him, to listen for his voice, and to do what he says.
Why then does Jesus say all that stuff about calling no man father, etc.? Because he wants us to recognize the supremacy of God’s authority. “You have one Father, who is in heaven… you have one teacher, the Christ.” Every earthly authority, every earthly voice, is subordinate to that of God. And our ALLEGIANCE to every earthly voice, authority, ideology, or whatever, must be subordinate to our allegiance – from the heart – to God, to his plan, to his Kingdom.
This is why Jesus tells his hearers that they are, in fact, to do what the Scribes and Pharisees say, but that they are not to be like them. Because the Scribes and the Pharisees urged the people to be faithful to God; their voice harmonized with his. But they had forgotten the point of God’s plan from the beginning: to be united with all mankind in a communion of love. The special relationship that God established with the Jews was to that end, as God spoke to Abraham: “by your descendants shall ALL THE NATIONS of the earth bless themselves, because YOU have obeyed my voice,” (Genesis 22.18).
Blessing and life is God’s plan for us. It is what we attain through love, faith, and obedience. And not only that, but God’s will is to turn us into instruments of blessing and life for others, who have never known God. We are the descendents of Abraham because we share his faith in the living God, and by our love for him, our trust in him, and our putting that love and trust into action, we are supposed to be beacons of life and blessing and transformation for people in the world around us. They should be able to see us – the way we live our lives as individuals and as a community – and thereby come to know that God loves them, and be brought out of their bondage to destruction and come into the same transformative pattern of life that we live as members of Christ’s Body.
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In today’s Gospel, we have another exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. There are two acts, as it were, in this exchange; and on the surface they seem to have little to do with one another. In Act 1, a Pharisee asks a question “to test” Jesus. He asks “which is the great commandment in the law?” And Jesus responds with what we have come to call “the Summary of the Law” – he says “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” Everything depends, in other words, on these two commandments.
Its easy to take it for granted that we are to love God. After all, he’s God. But its also easy, perhaps, to lose sight of what it MEANS to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and with all our mind – in short, with our whole being. St. Augustine says it means that we are to leave “no part of our life which may justly be unfilled [by God], nor give place to the desire [for] any other final good; but if aught else present itself for the soul’s love, it should be absorbed into that channel in which the whole current of love runs. For man is then the most perfect when his WHOLE LIFE tends towards the life unchangeable, and clings to it with the whole purpose of his soul.”
To love God with all our heart, mind, and soul means that we are to see God as the ground of our being, and the end of our becoming. We are to ORIENT ourselves toward God, and to allow him to be the motive for ALL of our actions, and to find our objective, our destination, in him. And so everything we do should be motivated by our love for God. Making the love of God a life-pervading motivation means, in the words of Fr. Luigi Giussani, that we must include…
“…everything – love, study, politics, money, even food and rest, excluding nothing, neither friendship, nor hope, nor pardon, nor anger, nor patience. Within every single gesture lies a step towards our own destiny,” (The Religious Sense, p. 37).
The love of God must motivate everything we do. To love God means to realize that he is the One to whom we are called, that our final end is to dwell with him, joyfully to adore him in silence beyond the world. This is, of course, what it means to be, in the words of scripture, called “out of the world” (Cf. Jn. 17.6) or to keep oneself “unstained from the world” (Jas. 1.27). It means to be summoned to the “place” where God is, there to find our fulfillment in an eternal deepening into his life and love. St. Gregory of Nyssa said that “…in our constant participation in the blessed nature of the Good, the graces that we receive at every point are indeed great, but the path that lies beyond our immediate grasp is infinite,” (from his Commentary on the Canticle).
And so I am to love my neighbor as myself. Because to recognize the sovereignty of God, and to LOVE him, means, as Augustine says, that every love must “be absorbed into that channel in which the whole current of love runs.” And if our own self-understanding results from a recognition of WHO GOD IS – that he is the ground of our being and the end in which we become ourselves – then we recognize in him likewise the ground of our neighbor’s being and the true object of HER desire as well. And when we come to recognize God as the only proper axis around which every interpersonal relationship turns, we come to recognize that God himself is the common destiny of every person. We find in God the true meaning of human solidarity. And more than this: I find not merely that I am to love my neighbor as I love myself, but that I am to love my neighbor because MY NEIGHBOR IS MYSELF – because her true identity lies in God as well, and so only in finding God can I find her as well.
Now we are in a position to see the meaning of justice, which is to care for the least – immigrants, widows, orphans, the poor and the sick – we honor God, who revealed himself by identifying with us. He became one of us, only more so. He became weak, poor, despised, an outcast, and finally DEAD, in order to save us – in order to show us a way, and to provide us with that way, back to the house of our loving Father.
And this means that the love of God – and God himself, who is love – is made visible and tangible, for the first time, in the face of Jesus. And so we come to Act 2 of today’s Gospel. Its Jesus’ turn to ask a question: “What do you think of the Christ? Whose Son is he?” And we can skip the incorrect – or half-correct – answer given by the lawyer. The real truth is, as Simon Peter answered when Jesus asked him a similar question, Peter said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16.16).
Ultimately it is Jesus alone who loves God with all his heart, soul, and mind; with his whole being. That’s what it means for him to be the only and eternal Son: the one whose LIFE, whose very ESSENCE, is taken totally, directly, and eternally from God; who finds himself, his meaning, his being in God, in a relation of perfect, eternal and mutual self-giving. All of Jesus’ actions and decisions flow from his love for his Father.
And so we come to the question of HOW. How do I love God with my whole being, and so love my neighbor as myself? The answer, in a word, is Jesus. Jesus said, “No one knows… who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him,” (Lk. 10.22). As we discussed in “Belonging to the Way” last Tuesday, Jesus came to show us the way to God by BEING the way to God. In giving ourselves to Jesus, we discover our true identity in his eternal sonship. We are taken by him and with him into the mutual, divine self-giving; the communion-of-love that God is. We become children of God by accepting the life of the only Son. An early Church Father, whose name is now lost, said “Whoever serves God in fear escapes punishment, but has not the reward of righteousness because he did well unwillingly, through fear. God does not desire to be served [slavishly] by men as a master, but [he desires] to be loved as a father, for that He has given the spirit of adoption to men,” (Pseudo-Chrysostom).
To love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind is, in short, to seek ourselves in God, through Jesus Christ, and to allow EVERY other decision, action, relationship, or circumstance to be absorbed into that channel in which the whole current of our love runs.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
