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?