The Son Also Rises

The Son Also Rises

December 31, 2012

The Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas

Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared.  Thus we know this is the last hour.  They went out from us, but they were not really of our number; if they had been, they would have remained with us.  Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number.   1 John 2:18-19

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.  All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.  What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:1-5

Piety

"Peace is my gift to you." John 14:27 (2013 Theme for the Dominican Retreat House, McLean, VA)

Study

We end today at the beginning.  As we throw away the calendars from 2012, we read John's warning penned and voiced two thousand years ago about the "last hour."  I guess he was as wrong as the Mayans. 

Recall those old New Yorker cartoons about the end of the world.  If you are old enough, you remember the old man with the beard holding a sign that the world will end today.

Having just "survived" the end of the world publicity surrounding the Mayan calendar flub, think about all those for whom 2012 really did seem like the end of the world as we know it.  The parents of the children of violence from Newtown, Aurora, the Sikh temple, the Oregon shopping mall and the Webster, NY community.  When we experience loss, just "keeping calm and carrying on" seems daunting.

John was wrong.  It was not the "last hour" any more than the midnight drop of the extravagant Tiffany ball in Times Square will mark the last hour.  Calendars, after all, are arbitrary cultural creations that can be manipulated by kings and networks.  That is why the Good News delivered by John in the Gospel gives us hope.  Certainly, we remain surrounded and tempted by "anti-Christs."  Some are overtly evil Leviathans. Others are the products of a society that breeds sociopaths.  Yet the light of the world offers us a peaceful start to a new calendar.

Action

Anything that pulls us away from being pro-Christ can fall into the anti-Christ category.   No, don't stay home to watch Meet the Press.  Go to Church.  No, don't head to the movie theater.  Drop off some donations at Goodwill or the Salvation Army or Catholic Charities. No need to stop for that Big Mac Attack.  Bring a few bags of groceries to the local food pantry.

God sent Jesus as the ultimate magnet.  If we have all these forces acting upon our desires, God provided his Son as a counter-force to be among us as a sign of light and hope.  Because just as surely as the sun will set on 2012 in a few hours, the sun (Son) also rises on 2013.

Put On Love

Put On Love

December 30, 2012

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph 2012 C

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

God sets a father in honor over his children; a mother's authority he confirms over her sons.  Whoever honors his father atones for sins, and preserves himself from them.  When he prays, he is heard; he stores up riches who reveres his mother.  Sirach 3:2-4

Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.  And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection.  And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body.  Colossians 3:12-15

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.  When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, "Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”   Luke 2:46-48

Piety

Piety begins in the family of God.  Piety is the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit that makes one God out of three divine persons.  Piety is our oneness with God.  Created by the Father through the Son and alive through the life of the Spirit within us we reflect God's love by the oneness we share together that has its beginning in the family life that makes our lives possible.  The tragedy of an abandoned child is in the cutting off of what life should be.  Piety is not only our oneness with God that makes up our spiritual life.  Piety is also the wonder in the reflection of goodness of the parents in the child.   The Holy Family is the human expression of the mystery of Trinity.  We celebrate the fullness of the mystery of the incarnation when we celebrate the Word of God become flesh to dwell with us and finally expressed In us by our lived piety.

Study

We come to appreciate our parents as we grow older.  We leave behind us whatever thoughts we might have had about the parents we would have chosen.  God gives us the parents we have.  In the mystery of the love he has for us in that choice, we discover what it means to let God be God.  If we do not accept the parents we have with all their goodness and weakness, then we are playing at God and robbing God of the honor and glory we give him by honoring the parents we do have.  In growing up, we discover love as a gift that is given before we could ever deserve to be born and to be loved.  We are wedded to a partner of life that takes us away from our parents even as we become parents.  We discover that one deserves justice.  Love is given beyond the demands of justice.  One does not deserve love.  Love is the mystery of the gift of life that comes to us through love of parents.  We study parents without being aware of what we are doing and learn to be parents by what we have learned from our own parents.

Action

We work at becoming good people.  The good that one does in life lives on in the children that are part of our lives.  We work at honoring our parents all our lives because they share the glory of what we accomplish with our lives even when we do not see how that works out.   Car pools and all the ways parents are present in the lives of the children reveal  love in its nitty-gritty.  Seeing the president of the United States waiting for his daughter and writing words to honor children that were lost by senseless violence gives a real boost to meaning of any little thing.  The ordinary of life has its extraordinary meaning in how it gives growth to healthy family life.  We are born into our world to become in our very birth reflections of the Mystery of the Holy Family.  Family is the bottom line that makes sense out of the family of Nations.  We are called to be the family of the people of God where all difference will be swallowed up in the mystery of the oneness of the Holy Family that is our des tiny in Christ.

Walk Just as He Walked

December 29, 2012

Fifth Day in the Octave of Christmas

But whoever keeps his word, the love of God is truly perfected in him.  This is the way we may know that we are in union with him: whoever claims to abide in him ought to walk just as he walked.  1 John 2:5-6

The child's father and mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."  Luke 2:33-35

Piety

The Catholic Worker believes

    in creating a new society

    within the shell of the old

    with the philosophy of the new,

    which is not a new philosophy

    but a very old philosophy,

    a philosophy so old

    that it looks like new.

(Peter Maurin, Easy Essays, What the Catholic Worker Believes, 6)

Study

If you are looking for something new, you'll need to keep waiting like Simeon.  He waited in the temple to see the Lord and his patience was rewarded.  Yet this encounter did not end with the old man tickling the baby's feet.  Once encounter began, it culminated with Simeon sharing the news with Mary and Joseph that this peaceful baby would not lead a peaceful life nor die a peaceful death.  Instead of the "Prince of Peace," this baby will grow to be the Prince of Pierce. His hands would be pierced by nails.  His scalp pierced by thorns. His back pierced by whips.  His side pierced by the sword. 

Jesus himself admitted that he was not on earth to sow peace but to sow division -- both within each person and within families and society:

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division.  From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”  Luke 12:51-53

This cultural contradiction did not take root in Luke's Good News nor in the New Testament.  Evidence for it is firmly established in the Hebrew Bible which details how the Lord "raises up their foes against them and stirs up their enemies to action."  These can be political or military foes or the internal battle of truth and error.

Why then, is this episode with Simeon considered part of the "joyful" (?!?) mysteries in the Rosary?  The news that emanates from the Presentation in the Temple is hardly joy-invoking. Yet, in a sense, none of the actual scenes in this decade of the Rosary are really joy-filled.  The teenager finds she is pregnant.  She visits her elderly cousin who also is with child under questionable circumstances.  The baby is born in harsh conditions.  He is presented to a stranger in the temple who has words of doom and gloom.  Finally, the young boy gets lost and separated from his human parents.

The line, "I never promised you a rose garden" certainly comes to mind.  Society wants to portray Christmas as the season of lights and gifts and happiness.  However, salvation history has been misinterpreted for thousands of years.  Why should 2012 be any different?

Action

Live as he lived.  Walk as he walked.  These are easy words to type.  Just as easy as Peter Maurin typed up his essays.  But putting this life into practice is where the  joy must penetrate the sorrow.

As we get ready to close the book on this calendar year, resolve how you will side with Jesus on the great division.  How will you walk as he walked in 2013?  How will you live as he lived?  These are not new demands.  The demands of discipleship are just so old that they appear to be new.

In Him There Is No Darkness at All

In Him There Is No Darkness at All

December 28, 2012

Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs

By Melanie Rigney

This is the message we have heard from Jesus Christ and proclaim to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)

Our soul has been rescued like a bird from the fowler’s snare. (Psalms 124:7)

When they had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.”Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, Out of Egypt I called my son. When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi. Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet: A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more. (Matthew 2:13-18)

Piety

Lord, shine Your light into the dark corners of our world. Bless those who are the most vulnerable among us and hold them tight.

Study

He did it out of fear, ordering the massacre of all boys in the Bethlehem area who were under the age of two. Modern estimates are that six to perhaps twenty boys were slaughtered, though ancient writers put the total as high as 144,000. Augustine called them “the first buds of the Church killed by the frost of persecution; they died not only for Christ, but in his stead.”

While historians may dispute whether the killings actually occurred or if the story was a device for Matthew to show a prophecy being fulfilled, there is no disagreement that Herod was a paranoid despot who didn’t hesitate to eliminate perceived threats to his throne. Our Church has observed the Feast of the Holy Innocents for more than more than 1,500 years.

Killing of children strikes a particularly sad chord in each of us, whether the senselessness happened centuries ago in Bethlehem… a few months ago in Syria… weeks ago in Connecticut… or on a daily basis at abortion clinics around our country. The reasons are legion—ethnicity, poverty, paranoia, hatred—but they all boil down to fear. Fear that we won’t be able to care for the child. Fear of something inside that seems too dark and too desperate to confront. Fear that a child too young to hate will grow up to become someone who not only hates but who will wipe us out if we don’t act first.

And while the poisoned fruit of hatred is particularly horrific to us when children are involved, it is no less tragic when the victims are in their teens, twenties, thirties, or eighties or nineties. A life is a life is a life. Each one is precious, even that of the persecutor.

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility,” the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote. We can’t magically change the hearts and souls of those who hate us for no apparent reason. We can pray for them that God’s love may touch them… and we can do the best to present Christ’s face to them. For, in the end, that is our best and only hope in reducing or ending the madness in this world.

Action

Think about your most deeply held prejudice, perhaps against someone of another nationality or faith tradition. Where does your fear begin? Pray for guidance on a way to begin overcoming it through love.

Saw and Believed

December 27, 2012

Feast of Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist 

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life -- for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us.  1 John 1:1-2

When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.  Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.  John 20:6-8

Piety

Father, 2012 years ago, you entered our world in the person of your Son to be with us.  Jesus, your real presence in our life was to comfort us and save us.  Holy Spirit, help us today to be that presence to those who face the hardest grief of all.  Help us to be your presence to others in how we proclaim this Good News in thought, word and deed.  Amen.

Study

In the hours after we celebrate the new birth of the Christ Child, we also get vivid reminders of the price that we pay for this gift.  Yesterday, we celebrated the life of the first martyr, St. Stephen.  Today, the readings direct us from the joyous Incarnation to the other end of the life of Christ -- his glorious Resurrection.

Without one, we cannot have the other.  God is not just a God of new birth.  God was born for a reason -- to fulfill the promise of old.  The Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection also happened for a reason.  To complete the story of Jesus giving up his life for our redemption.

Every Christmas season, real life faces this struggle.  Some years it is very personal.  Sometimes, we lose the ones we love at this holiday season -- they might be lost to us emotionally, socially, or through actual death. At other times, there is some event that takes place close to the holidays which heightens our sensitivity to the arc of the Incarnation-Resurrection-Redemption story which we must imitate.  Just a few years ago, there was the devastating tsunami in South Asia which confronted us with its immense human toll.  Then the Haitian earthquake.  Now, towns like Newtown and Webster will forever be a part of our holiday story -- a story that personally connects faith and joy and grief in our hearts, minds and souls.

Writer Michael Gerson tries to make some sense of this situation facing the parents of Newtown and those facing loss in his Christmas Eve column from The Washington Post.  He recalls a sermon delivered shortly after a minister's son was killed in a car crash.

“When parents die,” he said, “they take with them a large portion of the past. But when children die, they take away the future as well. That is what makes the valley of the shadow of death seem so incredibly dark and unending."

Minister William Sloan Coffin reflected on his grief after his son died in a car accident.  "My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”

Gerson, through this example, reminds us that the hope of Christmas is broad enough for joy and sorrow…because through the joy, our God shared everything that is human, including our tragedy.  The Christmas mystery is that God gave up heaven to be with us.  He was like the firefighter in Webster or Newtown, responding to our needs and being there to be a big shoulder.  And then, when he was done teaching and comforting us, he voluntarily shared in the worst death so that we might have, as John puts it so well in our first reading -- "the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us."

Action

The mystery is not just some story that we can read and re-read and re-read.  This is not just a movie or the Greatest Story Ever Told.  It does not end with the Resurrection.  The story continues -- with our belief and with what we do in turning that belief into action.

As we approach the final calendar days of the year, maybe you will mark these with some year-end charitable gifts.  Maybe you will stop by your parish blood drive and offer up a pint of your red for an unknown someone who is involved in a car accident on the Beltway or I-95 this holiday season.  Maybe you will offer some kindness to a person who is lost, alone or homeless.

St. John the Evangelist recounted the story in his Good News and in the Book of Revelation so that we might believe and proclaim that story to others through our actions.

Fr. Kevin O'Neil reminds us in the column by Maureen Dowd:  "For whatever reason, certainly foreign to most of us, God has chosen to enter the world today through others, through us. We have stories of miraculous interventions, lightning-bolt moments, but far more often the God of unconditional love comes to us in human form, just as God did over 2,000 years ago."

How will God enter the world today through YOU?