Christmas: Mass during the Day Year C 2018

CHRISTMAS: Mass during the Day, (C)

(Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18)

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What a wonderful evocation of joy and gratitude Isaiah offers us in the words:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace!

The city had been under long siege and neighbouring towns and cities had been taken and destroyed.  Hope was no more in evidence than the almost non-existent and much disputed food, as low as the few pitchers-full of water available from what had once been deep, brim-top-lapping, cisterns.  The army had gone out to fight indeed, but they left more in desperation than in expectation; some of the people had cheered them on their way, but the conviction was not there; prayers also had been offered, but with lips that trembled; and now those left inside the city walls waited in silence, with hearts unable to shake off a dark foreboding of what might soon befall them.

Eventually a runner was noticed in the distance by those keeping watch from the protecting walls.  He had been expected of course; but, as they caught clearer sight of him, they began to look at one another in disbelief: this runner is running strongly, running confidently; he is not pumping his arms in agonizing effort, he is raising them, waving them exultantly!   He is, surely:

            Bringing good news, proclaiming salvation!

At such a sight, first of all the watchmen on the towers, then, the citizens within the walls, all in unconscious obedience to those prophetic words of exhortation:

Sing together you waste places of Jerusalem,

broke out into a veritable delirium of thanksgiving and praise, while the priests – with now more firmly solemn voices -- began to intone:

            The LORD has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem!!

Dear People of God, Jesus comes to us each year at Christmas like that runner, bringing supreme cause for our total joy: our God reigns over sin and death!  Whatever the past year may have witnessed and no matter how miserable our own record might have been over that period, Jesus comes to assure us that:

            Our God is King and has bared His holy arm for our salvation!

He comes, as we heard in the second reading from the letter to the Hebrews, as One:

Who (is) the brightness of (His Father’s) glory and the express image of His Person.

Therefore, seeing Him, we can be confident and sure that God is able and willing to reign for us, both in us and through us, if we -- for our part -- are humble and brave enough to turn away from ourselves and faithfully turn to Him in all sincerity.

This Christmas rejoicing calls for much more than mere joy of heart, however; for Jesus, as our second reading told us, is:

God’s Son, heir of all things, through Whom also He made the universe; Who upholds all things by the word of His power;

to which St. John, in our Gospel, adds:  In Him (is) life, and the life (is) the light of men.

Therefore, Jesus’ coming means not only passing joy for our heart, but fulfilment for the whole of our being, since He is most truly our Lord and Saviour: our Light to guide us, our Hope to sustain us, and our Life that leads to the eternal peace and joy of our heavenly home.   His coming manifests and indeed offers to us:

            His glory, as of the only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth;

and, by sharing that glory with us, He wills to transform all who believe in Him from human beings subject to sin and death into children of God, as St. John again tells us:

As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.

Children reborn, that is, no longer from merely human stock through the will and/or passion of our parents before us, but born anew of water and the Holy Spirit: God’s Fatherly gift expressing to the full His infinite Goodness, and our free will responding with sincerely filial longing by the obedience of faith. 

And it is thus -- as children reborn of water and the Spirit -- that we can repeat:

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Dear People of God, our right-beholding of the glory of the Word-become-flesh proves that we are indeed already being made like Him and becoming able to see Him as He truly is; that is our share in the glory which is His as the only begotten Son of the Father, a share making us, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it:

So much better than the angels, as we have, by adoption in Him, obtained a more excellent name than they.

And thus, being reborn and renewed in Jesus, and sharing His glory which enables us to live through faith and by His Spirit, our Christmas joy and hope is crowned and completed by the Father Who now says (2 Corinthians 6:18):

I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters.    

Once reborn in Jesus with the right to become children of God for all eternity, we have an endowment that our sincere endeavour to live a life of faith and filial love will bring to glorious maturity.  Each year Jesus comes to visit us, to see and encourage our progress, and that is why, during Advent, Mother Church cries out to us encouragingly:

            Behold, the Bridegroom is coming; go out to meet Him! (Matthew 25:6)

Every Christmas we do just that, we go out to meet the Lord with lighted lamps that shine with love, praise, and gratitude.  Ultimately, the time will arrive – and we are now already preparing, at the deepest level, for that time -- when the Lord will come for each and every one of us, calling us from this world as He did Lazarus from the tomb, to meet Himself.  Let us, therefore, dear People of God, welcome Him this day as we wish to embrace Him on that our final day, when earth’s fading and fitful light will be transformed into the prospect of eternal glory.       

4th Sunday of Advent Year C 2018

4^th. Sunday of Advent (C)

(Micah 5:1-4a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-44)

It has been noted from very early times in the Church that John the Baptist, while still in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, ‘leapt for joy’ at the presence of Jesus being carried by Mary whereas Elizabeth responded to the presence of Mary:

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.   And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  

Why did not Elizabeth -- together with her own as yet unborn son -- rejoice at the presence of Mary’s baby which she acknowledges as being ‘her Lord’, rather than at the immediate presence of Mary herself?

As of old, many of our Protestant brethren still feel jealous for the honour of Jesus; but we Catholics should rather gratefully rejoice in and learn from the sublime truths contained in St. Luke’s gospel account of The Visitation.

Listen again carefully to Elizabeth’s words of greeting to Mary; her first words– at the instigation of her own child leaping for joy at Jesus’ proximity -- are words with reference to Mary as mother of the Child she was carrying

Most blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

But then she goes on to speak adult to adult, woman to woman, Israelite to Israelite:

Blessed are you WHO BELIEVED that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.

Dear People of God, the whole story of God’s dealings with His Chosen People started with God making a promise to Abraham that he and his wife Sarah would have a child despite their old age.  Abraham believed that promise of God, he believed you might say against all medical probabilities and despite the deep disappointments he and Sarah had suffered repeatedly over many years because of their childlessness, a state so alien to Israel’s traditions.  Abraham glorified God by putting more trust in His spoken promise than in his own years of bitter experience and the no doubt snide words of other Israelites not above commenting on their lack of offspring.  St. Paul tells us that such trust in God:

            Was credited to his (Abraham’s) account as righteousness.  (Romans 4:3)

Thus, he was to be the father of all who believe, so that to them also righteousness may be credited.  (Romans 4:11)

He is our father in the sight of God, in Whom he believed, Who gives life to the dead and calls into being what did not exist. (Romans 4:17)

That is how God’s People came into being, through FAITH, and that is why Elizabeth, herself rejoicing in the fulfilment of a promise of God, greeted Mary personally saying:

Blessed are you WHO BELIEVED that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.

St. Augustine puts it very clearly when he writes that Mary conceived Jesus in her heart by faith before she conceived Him physically in her womb; words which are an echo of the teaching of Jesus Himself (Luke 11:27-28):

A woman from the crowd called out and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that carried You and the breasts at which You nursed.”   He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and (believing) observe it.”

And so, dear People of God, we who follow St. Luke’s lead and join with Elizabeth in her greeting to Mary, are brought back to Jesus immediately and with deepened conviction, for Mary’s faith is in the miraculous Gift of God’s own Son which no human mind could then conceive without God’s most special grace … given to Joseph and now to Elizabeth thanks to the closeness of their spiritual relationship with Mary.  Give thanks to God, dear Catholic people, for the wondrous beauty of His truth!

And how much we need Mary’s example and Elizabeth’s spiritual awareness this Christmas time where all the celebrations seem to trumpet but one thing: GIFTS manifesting human GOOD WILL!!  And people say, “Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?”  In our modern western world God’s Gift to man is forgotten, ignored, while so many people publicly rejoice about their own giving-gifts-goodness, without the need of any God interfering in their lives.

However, Mary has another supremely important lesson for us to appreciate in this Advent time.

God the Father Himself, by His Spirit, made Mary of Nazareth one with Jesus through faith, love, and body-and-blood physicality; in no way are they to be separated. Mary is now living eternally in heaven for the glory of God, and her prayerful influence on earth is totally for the glory of her dear Son in the hearts of all men, so that those well-known words of Jesus:

            What God has joined together, let no man separate

are most important and significant for our considerations today.

In Luke’s story of the Visitation of Our Lady, Mary is shown as a figure, a foreshadowing, of the Church:  Mary is, by Jesus’ gift, our heavenly mother; the Church is our spiritual mother on earth, for as Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Church gives birth to disciples of Jesus who are born from her proclamation of His Good News or birth from her womb -- the baptismal font -- by the power of the Holy Spirit bequeathed to her by Jesus; Mary is praised in Scripture as ‘she who believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled’ while Mother Church ‘unfailingly adheres to the faith … delivered once for all to the saints’.     We have to recognize this mystery of the real oneness between Jesus and Mary, and also the spiritual oneness between Mary and Mother Church; and we should learn from St. Luke to reverence the Church as Elizabeth reverenced Mary; it is only the devil who works to separate what God has joined.

Jesus has promised to be with His Church to the end of time; He has given His Holy Spirit in fullness to His Church, to guide her into all truth; when His disciples gather together as Church Jesus is infallibly in their midst; and He has promised that He will defend her against the Devil’s attempts to destroy her.   As we heard in the second reading that:

For this reason, when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me; holocausts and sin offerings You took no delight in.  Then I said, ‘As is written of Me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do Your will, O God.’”

The Son of God took a human body from Mary in order to do His Father’s will on earth for our salvation; so, now in heaven at the right hand of the Father, He still uses His body to continue His Father’s work: but not the fleshly one -- which is, as I have said, at His Father’s side in heavenly glory -- but a mystical body, His Church, of which He is the Head.

Human beings, even those most highly placed in the Church, even those subsequently recognized as Saints, are weak, and at times may manifest those weaknesses, failings, and even sins.  Mother Church is greater than any individual, even greater than Mary who is a member of the Church, and as such is of the Church, in the Church, not above her.  And so, we must reverence Mother Church given to us for our salvation by the Lord Who is her Master and ours.  He uses His Church, our earthly Christian-and-Catholic Mother, to guide us and bless us; and He never allows the inherent human weakness of her individual members to betray His divine Truth committed to her for protection and proclamation for the salvation of mankind.

People of God learn from Elizabeth; she was, as the Gospel tells us, ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ and the Holy Spirit led her to cry out:

And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  

Reverence and love, honour and delight in, Mary, now Queen of Heaven but ever our deeply-concerned Mother and occasional visitant; and in the same spirit pray and stand up for, serve and trust in, Mother Church, not because of her earthly pomp, prestige or influence, but because she is the instrument Christ wills to use, she is His Mystical Body; He is her Head and His Spirit is her very life …. Such is the purpose of God that, as loving and obedient children of her He has chosen to serve His purposes of salvation, His Spirit will fill our lives and form us ever more and more into the likeness of Him Who is to come, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who is our present hope and will be our future reward.

3rd Sunday of Advent Year C 2018

 3^rd. Sunday of Advent (C)

(Zephaniah 3:14-18; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18)

Today is traditionally called ‘Gaudete’ Sunday; now, it is not easy to ‘gaudere’, that is, to rejoice, as our readings encourage us: it is not easy because such rejoicing is not natural, it is supernatural, a gift from God. Let us, therefore, for a short while just think about our human rejoicing and God’s gift.

Most commonly -- apart from family love -- it is success, pleasure, or advantage of some sort, that leads most human beings to rejoice.   But success, pleasurable feelings, and advantageous circumstances or events are all natural experiences, and all of them are dependent upon and subject to so many natural influences, that we can never know just how and when they might be lost or taken away from us: perhaps a disappointment, or an ailment of some sort; again, it might be a disagreement, some vague feeling of unease or foreboding, some unexpected and unfortunate turn of events, and, of course, always human weakness and wickedness, all such things can mar or embitter our success, thwart or spoil our pleasure, deprive us of anticipated advantage without warning.  In countless ways our hoped-for joys of whatever sort – including family joys, alas -- can be turned, surprisingly easily and unexpectedly, into disappointment, sorrow, frustration, or anxiety.

Because of this, we recognize that neither pleasure, success, nor advantage, all of which so often promise to promote human rejoicing, can in fact bring us to that desired state of constant rejoicing recommended by the prophet Zephaniah and St. Paul.

Moreover, natural pleasure, of its very nature, is fickle, repeat it too often and it easily becomes tasteless; and success won or advantage gained, frequently provoke antagonism and animosity in others, which is by no means conducive to our rejoicing.

How, then, should we appreciate and can we hope to attain such full and enduring joy?

With such thoughts and experiences in mind, there have been those who have sought to find, if not rejoicing, at least a measure of peace in mind and heart, by cutting themselves off from the world by philosophical or ascetic practices whereby they aspired to become indifferent to the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ as Shakespeare puts it.  But surely, such practices are non-starters for those who want to know how they can learn to rejoice in this life?

We are on a more promising track if we can rejoice over beauty and truth … but, what are true rejoice-able beauty and authentic rejoice-able truth??   The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and there is both unimaginable beauty and life-serving and inspiring truth to be found in the glory of the world around us and in the heavens above us for those simple ones (before God!) whose eyes are open, whose mind is humble, and whose heart is pure.   But, precisely, how, oh how, are we to attain and develop rightly those qualities of openness, humility, and purity of heart??

We are now, however, and despite all the difficulties, beginning to see that it might be possible for us to rejoice continually in this world, with the help of some blessing that would enable us to accept the trials of life, to transform or overcome them, by directing them to a transcendent end, one not subject to human favour or worldly fortune.  Such a blessing, moreover, must not only help us become more ‘open’, more ‘humble’, and ‘purer of heart’, it must not only afford us strength to accept and overcome the trials of life; it must also enable us to appreciate our new selves, because, such is our nature, that we can only rejoice over something when that something makes us feel or regard ourselves as in some way special, specially blessed.

Here we begin to recognize why the prophet and St. Paul exhort us to constant rejoicing: it is because of our Christian birthright!  Because we belong to Jesus Whose Holy Spirit is forming us in Him as true children of the Father, we have a heavenly inheritance that makes us special, not of our particular human selves, as if we were of ourselves superior to and better than others, but because of the Lord Who died and now lives for us and we in Him, because of the Spirit Who guides us, because of the Father Who calls us.  That is why St. Paul is able to tell us:

            Rejoice IN THE LORD always. Again, I will say, rejoice!

Nothing whatsoever in this world can rob us of that birthright we have received through faith in Jesus, nor of the inheritance being prepared for us personally in heaven by the Father.   Moreover, we rejoice all the more because we will -- by the Holy Spirit now at work in us -- ultimately be integral members of that eternal family where each one is appreciated for their own unique identity by every other member of that family, the family of God.

The early Christians -- those disciples who were closest to the Lord -- had a firm conviction that Mother Church is not of this world even though she exists in this world, because she exists for the Kingdom of God, that is for God’s Messiah and all those who -- thanks to her proclamation of His Good News -- will believe in Him Whom God has sent as Saviour.  In Christ, the Kingdom of God has entered this world and that Kingdom continues both to endure and to grow through the ministry of Mother Church, with the result that, although Christians are flesh and blood of this world, nevertheless, their real life is ‘hid with Christ in God’, and their earthly living is for eternal beatitude.  It was that overwhelming and transcendent joy and confidence that enabled the early Christians -- men, women, and even children -- to lovingly face up to the most atrocious persecutions.  They were indeed special, for, having received a special birthright, they became -- as St. Paul most forcefully puts it -- a new creation:

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

There is, however, a modern, pseudo-spiritual, way of thinking that says it is wrong to regard oneself as special; it is wrong to think oneself different from, and in some way better than, others.  Christians, true Christians -- such thinking goes – should esteem all men as good as, even better than, themselves. 

Such talk, coming ultimately from the Devil, has -- as is usual with the Devil – an over-stretched and twisted grain of truth in it.  The Devil did, after all, quote Scripture correctly to Our Lord in the desert, even though he had no right understanding of the words he so glibly quoted.  It is like that here.  It is true that we Christians are not to think of ourselves, personally, as better than others.  That does not, however, in any way prevent us from considering, and firmly believing, ourselves to be wonderfully blessed by the fact that, of God’s great goodness, we are Catholics and Christians: gifted with the True Faith, whereby we can know Jesus in the Scriptures and in the Eucharist, and receive His Spirit given to us through the sacraments of Mother Church, herself our sure refuge and abiding beacon in this world, as we journey along the way to our heavenly home.

To pretend that good Catholics and Christians should not appreciate such shared gifts and the many individual blessings we have all received is the devil’s talk: talk that would rob us of the ability to rejoice, and would lead us to become ungrateful and unworthy beneficiaries of God’s great and merciful goodness.

What do you think was in Mary’s heart after hearing the angel’s message and receiving God’s only Son into her womb?  The prophet had said:

Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!  Sing joyfully, O Israel!   Be glad and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!

Can you possibly think that Mary, the supremely holy and truly spiritual human being, thought to herself that it would be wrong to rejoice as if she was in any way special?  The prophet had foretold, and the angel had assured her:

Rejoice, highly favoured one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!

Can you imagine her saying: “I mustn’t think that He is with me more than He is with other people”?  We know what she felt, we know what she thought:

My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour, for He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant.  For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed, for He Who is Mighty has done great things for me, and Holy is His name.

Again, the prophet had gone on to say:

The Mighty One will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in His love, He will sing joyfully because of you.

Should Mary have closed her eyes and stopped her ears to that prophecy?  Should she have thought it a sin to believe those words “He will rejoice over you”?  Without such a joy and confidence in her heart how could she have faced up to the private trials and public opprobrium of the virgin birth?

Mary should indeed have been filled with confidence in God for she needed to be … she should have been filled with unimaginable gratitude and joy at the thought that God took great delight in her, because she had to be a perfect mother for God’s only Son.

And, for our part, how could we, dear People of God, do what Saint Paul tells us (Philippians 4:9):

The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me THESE DO, and the God of peace will be with you ,

if we were too holy to practice the Apostle’s other most pressing advice to:

            REJOICE IN THE LORD always. Again I will say, rejoice!

We must not allow ourselves to be influenced by those who would condemn such rejoicing on the pretext that it is uncharitable, presumptuous, and proud; for those without faith, those who reject obedience to God, have no right understanding of the words they bandy about, they have no living awareness or appreciation of Catholic truth and the divine beauty reflected in what is spiritually wholesome and salvific. People of God, we can in no way live up to our calling without finding overflowing joy in, and taking supreme confidence from, our Christian blessings. 

John told those who came to him at the Jordan that the hope they had in God must manifest itself in works, and today, Gaudete Sunday, we meet together to give witness to the whole world of the power and beauty of faith and life in Jesus, by the Spirit, for the Father.

Therefore, we need that supreme confidence and joy which led eleven ordinary Galileans, together with the educated Paul, to go out and teach the nations, ignoring mockery and overcoming torments.  We need the strength of which Paul spoke when he declared (Philippians 4:13):

I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.

Dear People of God, do not let yourself be robbed of your birthright, cling to it with both hands, so to speak, and with all your strength of mind and heart.  Hold in contempt the teaching of pseudo-Christians which, far from being imbued with divine spirituality, is tainted and poisoned by human pride and sanctimoniousness.                                                                               

            Rejoice IN THE LORD always. Again, I will say, rejoice!