In the inn of our own hearts, there is an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. God is with us!

 

 

CHRISTMAS1 2020

While I was the pastor of St Louis parish some years ago, I visited the home of a wonderful parish family. The youngest in the family was five years old.  She immediately took me by the hand and brought me to the family nativity set.  She pointed to the baby Jesus and promptly told me that the baby Jesus was me.  She claimed I was God.

As I have reflected on this young girl’s description of me as God, this has been a source of prayer for me.  The truth is that the mystery of Christmas is that God chooses to come among us.  God does dwell in the heart and soul of each one of us.

Let me ask you the question:  where is God as we celebrate Christmas in 2020 as we wrestle with the coronavirus?  You can point to the heavens; you can point to the infant Jesus in the Bethlehem crib; but I would like you now to point to your heart as I ask the question:  Where is God?

As we listen to the Gospel just proclaimed: in  one simple unassuming sentence, the Christmas mystery is revealed.  From the evangelist Luke:  “While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son.” 

The power of God comes to us in a tiny infant.  God is with us in the Bethlehem infant born to Mary and Joseph.

Of all the ways that God could have come into our world, the way he chose was as an infant, born in the simplicity and poverty of the Bethlehem crib.

“She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”  No room in the inn is not simply a description of the housing situation in Bethlehem at the time.  It is a probing statement that is meant for us to continually reflect upon as we retell the Christmas story.

 And so, may I ask you what is the housing situation in the inn of your heart?   Is there room in the inn of our hearts for the birth of the Savior?    Is there room in the inn of your heart for the family member for whom you have difficulty getting along with?  Is there room in the inn of your heart for people who think differently than you -- politically, religiously, or in any way whatsoever?  Is there room in the inn of our hearts for Jesus who lives in the hearts of the poor, the immigrants, and children of all cultures and of all ways of life?

As we celebrate Christmas in 2020, Christmas is not simply about Mary and Joseph and the baby.  It is about God becoming part of our daily struggle, transforming the world through us.  We are the people who walk in darkness – the darkness of sin, the darkness of war, the darkness of relationships that are broken, and the darkness of the threat of violence and terrorism.  How many people in our world today experience “no room in the inn” because of race, color, religion, gender, sexuality?  What attitude and actions of ours communicate to people in need that there is no room for them in the inn of our hearts?  Do we ever in our parish life make people feel unwelcome and there is no room for them?  The message of Christmas is that Jesus comes for people in dark places.  The real, lasting and deep joy of Christmas is that light shines in the darkness.

  You may be sure that to whatever area of our life we allow the Christ child to enter, the darkness recedes.  The mystery of Christmas is allowing the person of Jesus to enter the inn of our hearts.  It is an invitation to look at our present moment through a different lens, the mystery of the nativity of Jesus, the wonder of the Incarnation.  This new lens enables us to see a new and radiant vision, a light for people who walk in darkness.

How can we imagine that it is God’s desire to allow the person of Jesus to enter the inn of our heart?  My niece Emily sent me a photo of her three year old daughter playing with the figures in the nativity scene that is in her home.  Now Taylor was talking to Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus in the same way she would play with her barbie dolls.  Now was Taylor in all her innocence being irreverent in playing with the figures of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus? 

I suggest not.  Taylor is touching into the deepest aspect of the Christmas mystery.  God wishes to come us among in the person of Jesus.  God wishes to become a part of our lives, part of our family lives.  May we see our prayer as our conversation with Jesus.  It is a great idea to seek the assistance of Mary and Joseph in our conversation with Jesus.  It is awesome that we can simply  talk to Jesus. 

Do you see your prayer as a conversation with Jesus?

 The story of Bethlehem points to a vision of hope, one that relies not on the exercise of military power but an on appeal to the common instincts of the human heart.  These common instincts of the human heart are very spiritual – a spirit of peace, a spirit of joy, a spirit of family, a spirit of love, the spirit of Christmas.

The meaning of Christmas is to be found in the presence of Jesus among us and in our love for one another.

We are missioned to be the keepers of the mystery of Christmas – God is with us. We give birth to Christ when we allow the light that is within us to extend to our family, and our parish family, and to all of creation.

Our exterior Christmas decorations are up and they are beautiful.  What about our interior Christmas decorations?  May we allow the peace of Christ to enter once again into our lives, calming all of our anxieties and filling with all that is good.   My we fill this world with many stories that mirror and give witness to God’s love for us. 

The real meaning of Christmas is that God is with us.  In the inn of our own hearts, there is an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

Have a blessed Christmas day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The angel Gabriel invites us to say YES and to entrust ourselves to God's plan for our life. And our answer will be....

 

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT  B  2020

 

In the Gospel account today of Mary’s Annunciation, Mary spoke that creative word of God:  “FIAT.”    Let it done to me according to your word.  Here we have Mary echoing the creating word of God in the creation account from the Book of Genesis.  When Mary said Fiat to the will of God in her life, she was not speaking of her ability, but rather her openness, her availability to the plan of God for her life.

From the moment Mary spoke these words:  “I’m the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.”  Her life was changed.  She had given herself over to God’s designs for her life.

This prayer of Mary in the Annunciation has been known as the world’s greatest prayer.  It is the prayer that brought God down from heaven to dwell in the soul and body of a lowly young woman.  It is the prayer that brought about the greatest event in human history, God becoming human in Jesus.  It is a prayer that changed forever the course of human history some 2000 years ago. 

The prayer of Mary is so very different from what has been called the world’s most common prayer, the prayer in which we try to get God to do our will.  The world’s most common prayer says:  “My will be done,” whereas the world’s greatest prayer says, “Thy will be done.”

What does the Annunciation say to us as we prepare for Christmas?  The Gospel reminds us of God’s desire to dwell in the midst of humanity.  As Christmas draws near, Mary reminds us that the best Christmas, in fact the only true Christmas, is that Christ be born not in the little town of Bethlehem but in the inner sanctuary of our hearts.

The best possible Christmas gift to us and to all is God’s continual promise that I will be with you.  God’s presence in our life is the meaning of the mystery of Christmas.  God is with us.

Do you remember what Jesus told us on the 1^st Sunday of Advent:  “Stay awake.”

Do you remember the words of John the Baptist on the 2^nd Sunday of Advent:  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.”

On the third Sunday of Advent, Jesus said:  “Happy is the person who does not lose faith in me.”

What we know and deeply believe is that God is with us.  The important questions that remains is:  “Where are we with God?”  Are we awake?  Have we repented with the Sacrament of Reconciliation?  Have we kept the faith?

And on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, we ask ourselves:  How much do you and I listen to the voice of God’s promise, which is written in our hearts?  How has this pandemic crisis affected our faith life?  Perhaps we will be less selfish insofar as we have been touched by the pain of those who have suffered from Covid-19?

As restrictions lie ahead in our planning for Mass on Christmas and our simpler, scaled-down family celebration of Christmas, I invite you to remember the challenges and struggles of Mary and Joseph on the first Christmas – the arduous journey of the pregnant Mary journeying from Nazareth to Bethlehem; then finding there was no room in the inn; and then giving birth to her firstborn son in the Bethlehem stable in the midst of much simplicity and poverty.

We ask what sustained Mary and Joseph in dealing with these challenges, which were at least as challenging as what we face in 2020 – the year of Covid-19?  Mary and Joseph were sustained by their faith and hope in God’s plan and promise for them. 

May the simplicity of our Christmas celebrations this year purify our Christmas spirit – less consumerism and more trust in God’s promise that his love for us is unending.  Maybe, just maybe, we can open ourselves to the blessings of celebrating Christmas in ways that are similar to the way Mary and Joseph celebrated the first Christmas.  Yes, you and I will miss being together with our extended family.  Yes, this is sad.  But instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, may we be led to trust even more deeply that God is with us; that God indeed accompanies us and leads us to let go of what we want and open ourselves to the ways that God speaks in Christmas 2020.

May Mary be the model of faith for us, the faith community of St. Joseph’s.  In saying yes to the plan of God for her life, Mary gave birth to the Savior.  God came into our world as Mary responded:  I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.” 

Looking to the example and the intercession of Mary, the faith community of St Joseph’s is missioned to bring the love of Jesus into our community – the love of Jesus that shares, that forgives, that accompanies all who are in need.

May we be a faith community that generously shares our resources with those in need through Penfield Hope, through our commitment to St Mary’s School in Mazinde Ju, Tanzania, through our generous support of the diocesan CMA, and through the tithing commitments of our parish.  As God has blessed us financially, may this be an opportunity not just to raise our standard of living, may it be an opportunity to raise our standard of giving.  What if everyone in our parish made a commitment to support the Catholic Ministry Appeal?

May we be a community that forgives – there are no outsiders in our faith community; all are welcome.

May we be a community that accompanies all those in need.  We seek to be a people that look for ways to wash the feet of God’s poor.

Advent is our time to ponder the promise that God is among us, that the Word of God is asking our consent to become flesh in our lives.  Mary invites us to share in the mystery she carried and bore in her human life.  The angel Gabriel invites us to say yes and to entrust ourselves to God’s plan for our life.

And our answer will be….

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.

 

Third Sunday of Advent  B  2020

 

Who are you?  The Jews from Jerusalem asked this question of John the Baptist.  As we pray over today’s Scriptures, this same question is asked of us:  Who are you?  After you give your usual contact information, the question is still asked of you before the Lord:  Who are you?

John the Baptist knew his identity.  He knew who he was and who he was not.  John said: “I am not the Christ…I am the voice of one crying in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord.”  John went on to say: “There is one among you whom you do not recognize.”

John’s mission was to help people recognize the presence of Christ who is in our midst. 

As disciples of the Lord, do we know who are and who we are not?

In today’s Scriptures the prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist are models for all of us.  We are called to be prophets in our world; we are to bear witness to Christ; and in the wilderness of human greed, injustice, racism, and falsehood, we are called to make straight the way of the Lord.

The mission given to us at our Baptism is the same mission that was given to John.   We are to witness to the presence of God in our midst.  In so doing, we rejoice.  We rejoice even in the midst of the violence that surrounds racial conflict and the threat of terrorism that we live with. We rejoice during these Advent days even though Covid-19 has forced many, many restrictions on our way of life.  We rejoice because God is present among us.

The question of faith for all of us:  Can we genuinely rejoice when we struggle with all the challenges that we are dealing with?  We rejoice because God goes with us.  Are these just pious words or is this the truth of our life?

 

 

 

 

This third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday -- Rejoice Sunday.  We light the pink candle of the Advent wreath.  We wear the pink vestments expressing that the joy of Christmas is beginning to invade the Advent season.

In ten words, St Paul expresses the theme of today’s liturgy:  Rejoice always.  Pray without ceasing.  In all circumstances give thanks.

My hope for myself and for you is that the joy of Gaudete Sunday is the joy that you experience everyday as a disciple of Jesus:  rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in all circumstances give thanks.

How can one possibly pray without ceasing?  St Augustine gives us a beautiful example of praying without ceasing.  St. Augustine tells the story of his life as a prayer to God.  He shares his anxieties, successes, discoveries, frustrations and even his sinful behavior in his classic autobiography entitled Confessions of St Augustine.  Augustine shows how every moment of his life can be a conversation with God.  May you have a faith perspective that enables you to view your whole life as a conversation with the God who created you and loves you with an unending love.

In all circumstances, give thanks.  At every Mass, we begin the Eucharistic Prayer with the preface dialogue, we say:  Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

The Gaudete message is true joy and happiness is found only in God.

But we get fooled because John the Baptist is in the desert eating locusts and wild honey.  He may not seem like a person with an infectious smile out there in the desert.  Yet, make no mistake about it, John the Baptist experienced the joy of knowing the Lord.  Joy is one of the characteristics of God’s spirit in the human heart.

So, we ask ourselves the question:  What helps us to recognize the presence of Christ that is in our midst?  Also, we need to humbly ask what blinds from recognizing the presence of Christ in our midst.  We might be so intent on something that we miss the gem right before us.

 John was filled with a faith-filled vision in recognizing Christ.  John lived his life deflecting attention away from himself so that the focus might be fully and directly on Jesus.  John had plenty of time to focus on Jesus because nothing else mattered to John.

May we in this Advent season exercise a John-like role directing attention away from ourselves and witnessing to the Christ who is in our midst.  May we find joy, Gaudete, in helping others recognize the presence of Christ.   It is my prayer that my preaching can help others know Jesus in their lives.  Yours is an even more important witness.  You are to preach without words.  How?  By a simple smile that communicates friendship, and in all the ways we wash the feet of God’s poor, we witness to the mystery of Christmas.  Our God is present to us in human flesh – in your human flesh and in mine.

As we well know, for months our pandemic has prompted the letting go of a million things everywhere.  Here in Church, we are wearing masks; we are keeping socially distant from one another; our sharing of the sign of peace is very constricted; and we are asked to receive Communion in the hand. To keep the coronavirus from spreading, we have asked everyone to receive Communion in the hand.  I realize full well for some Catholics, receiving on the hand is a challenging, even disturbing practice.  For some, receiving in the hand fails to give the body of Christ the reverence it is owed.  Again, it can simply feel wrong.

I invite you to revisit the way we think about receiving Communion.  Because for some it is a profound sacrifice to receive in the hand, maybe it is a profound opportunity to serve the sacrificial lamb himself.  Taking Communion on the hand could be a way to shed the usual contours of how we think we must receive God and let God in fact receive us.   Perhaps Communion is as much about God receiving us as we are receiving God.  God wishes to receive us in our helplessness before this disease, our frailty, our sacrifice, our shedding of habits and customs we thought were non-negotiable.  For what reason we ask:  all for the common good, for preserving the life of the wider body of Christ.  I invite you to consider:  Who are we to deny how God comes to us?  Who are we to deny that Jesus can come to us as we receive Communion in the hand?

At the Last Supper, at the First Mass, Jesus simply said:  Take and eat.  For this is my Body.  The real grace of this sacrament is not so much how we must receive God; the grace of Communion is that God wishes to come to us in our unworthiness.

May the Church of the Holy Spirit in this Advent season herald, give witness, give voice to the presence of Christ in our midst.  May our Advent attitude be: “Rejoice always.  Pray without ceasing.  In all circumstances give thanks. 

Come Lord Jesus.  Marantha.

To repent is to see things differently and, as a result, to live differently.

 

 

Second Sunday of Advent  B  2020

Today we move along on our Advent journey towards the celebration of the Son of God entering our world, our humanity, and our community.  John the Baptist calls us to move from the wilderness of sin and discouragement to a state of hopefulness and trusting expectation.

This Advent season is a waiting season for us in capital letters.  We are waiting to get beyond the restrictions of these pandemic days.  We are waiting for a vaccine.  But may this forced time of waiting be an invitation for us to enter into the blessings of the Advent season of waiting.  For me a slower pace of life is getting me in touch with the grace of the Advent season. I am trying to step back from the busyness of day to day activity and to simplify my day.

The grace that was given to me was that way down underneath all the busyness someone waits for me to come home to who I truly am.

My wish for myself and for all of us is for the Advent grace of pausing.  Keep vigil with your life and keep vigil with the God who welcomes you with His merciful, forgiving love.

In this pandemic Advent season, John the Baptist still calls us to repentance in our Advent journey.  Additionally, in the second Scripture reading, Peter also calls us to repentance.  Peter says: “God is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

I would like to reflect with you the on the meaning of repentance that the Lord calls us to in our Advent journey -- a kind of repentance that is given to us when we encounter the Lord.

For many the word repentance is a word that belongs to yesterday.  It is equated with sackcloth and ashes.  Some see repentance as something that we do only if we get caught.  But repentance is far more than blurting our “I’m sorry” if we get caught cheating on our taxes or are engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior.

When John the Baptist calls us to repentance, he is not talking about self-incriminating scruples but for a radical open-mindedness.  The Greek word is metanoia. It means going beyond our normal mindset.  It speaks of a change in our vision of life.  It is about placing God first in our lives.

Repentance means to “rethink.”  Repentance calls to rethink and to reform our lives.  To repent means to see things differently and, as a result, to live differently.

When we place God first in our lives, the joy of the Gospel motivates us to share what we have been given.  We then prepare our hearts for the coming of the Prince of Peace.  Repentance is not negative and down faced.  Rather, it looks up and looks forward.  It breaks the chains of sin and death that hold us down.  Don’t get stuck in the notion that repentance means feeling sorry and miserable.  It is simply this.  It means you have stopped doing what is wrong, and now you are going to do the right thing.

Make no mistake about it, John the Baptist calls us to confront sin in our life.  One of the temptations of our times is to applaud the absence of guilt.  Some people are pleased that guilt has been dethroned.  In some quarters, the absence of guilt in today’s society makes it very difficult to talk about sin and the need for repentance. 

True repentance means a willingness to confront sin in our lives.   May I give you an Advent suggestion this week that I did during this past week in one of my long walks.  Sometime when you are alone, say your sins out loud.  Speak about the way you have not responded to the love that Jesus shares with you, how you have not lived up to your identity as a daughter or son of God.  If you think about it this way, it will be less a list and more of a conversation with the Lord, but a conversation about my sins which I speak out loud.

There’s something very real about hearing yourself speak your sins.

But we are not to be bogged down in our sinfulness.    While are of us are God’s beloved and made in the image and likeness of God, none of us are perfect.  All of us are sinners.  All of us have need for the Savior.  All of us are called to repentance in this beautiful Advent season of repentance.  But be assured that God’s judgment is that we are worth saving.  God’s judgement comes to us in in His grace and mercy.

“Prepare in the wilderness a way for the Lord,” says the Prophet Isaiah.  That prophecy has great meaning when we apply it to our own hearts.  It is in our hearts that we need to prepare a way for the Lord.  It is in our hearts that we need to make a straight highway for God.  It is the valleys of sin in our own hearts that are to be filled with God’s mercy and healing.

One of the beautiful ways to experience repentance is the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  In this Sacrament, we encounter the merciful and healing love of Jesus who fills the valleys of sin in our hearts with God’s mercy and healing.  When we realized how much we are loved and forgiven, we are motivated to metanoia.  Like Zacchaeus, we then want to share the love we have received.

This Advent we salute the forerunner John the Baptist who prepared the way by challenging the people’s sins. He was not after the popular vote. He had eyes only for God. With eyes fixed on God, John announced that the judgment of God was to be revealed in the love and the mercy of Jesus who came not to condemn but that the world might be saved through Him.

Are we ready to share in the work and mission of John the Baptist?  In recognizing our need to repent, may we be led to announce the merciful love of Jesus to one and all?

I conclude with the Advent prayer we will hear again and again: “God of mercy, may this Eucharist bring us your divine help, free us from our sins, and prepare us for the birth of our Savior.”  Amen

Have a blessed day.