Church of St. Mary at Clinton Heights

Last weekend, I shared numerous suggestions for each of us to engage in during this Advent Season in order to make the most of these short weeks (for example, blessing Advent wreaths and calendars as we did last Sunday, blessing straw for the manger and the Christmas tree that we are doing this morning, blessing bambinelli next Sunday, and so on).  And here’s the reason why: earlier, during our opening prayer for today’s Mass, we prayed, “Almighty Father, may no earthly undertaking hinder us, who set out in haste to meet your Son.”  We are seeking to move toward Christ with haste.  But there are so many earthly undertakings that can hinder us, aren’t there?  The winding turns of roadways that take us from this shopping center to another; the rough ways that have us scrambling to this party or that engagement; the deep valleys that provide all sorts of distractions in decorating, cleaning, cooking, mailing, and so much more…all of these things done in the name of preparing for the Christmas feast, but these might just hinder us.

Fly, instead, as the crow flies; make a bee line for the Christ!  Cooperate with God’s promises from the prophets Baruch and Isaiah; from our current paths, from our present endeavors, we are invited to stop, lay them all aside…as we set out on a new path and move with great haste to meet the Christ.

• This is the purpose for leveling mountains: to ease our haste.
• This is the purpose for filling up valleys: to ease our haste.
• The purpose for crooked ways to be made straight: to ease our haste.
• The purpose for rough ways to be made smooth: to ease our haste.

In the Advent Season we speed our return to God, we run to find Him as He reveals Himself in a child, we hasten to see the true Lord & Savior…He and only He who even rules over powerful Caesar, Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas and Annas.  This is the reason He is born: to save us who need saving!

But we’ll only be able to hasten toward Him and the salvation He brings, if we listen attentively to the voice in the desert, and if we desire to set things aright.  If wein the midst of crooked ways, temptations, and trialscan hear John’s invitation to seek Christwho is the source of all love, purity, justice and righteousnessthen we know He will also be with us until the day of Christ Jesus.

That was our prayer this morning: that we hasten toward the One who has come, who comes again and again, and who brings salvation for the end of our days.

May your paths this week be straight; may no valley consume you; may every hill rejuvenate you; and may the voice of the Holy Spirit remind you always that you are destined to live life with God for all eternity, through Christ our Lord.

A blessed second week of Advent to each of you.

As we enter the Advent season today, we could settle for the same as last year and accept that our lives will be pretty much unchanged by this season and every season of this new year.  But we’re a people of HOPEas we recalled in our introductory rites of this Masshope that will not disappoint.  But I would suggest that our hope be enflamed and our faithful waiting be active.  I suggest that each of us and our families enliven our waiting in Advent this year: rediscovering the blessings of our faith and the Church…there’s much in store for us who prepare well in Advent!

When I was growing up, I recall that the Advent season was filled with hustle & bustle: not shopping for Christmas gifts (we were a regular family with modest means).  No, our preparing in Advent centered around the traditions of my family:

• My mom and dad would stock our family’s Advent calendar with goodies: maybe small tokens or pieces of candy or some coins…little things that piqued our curiosities each morning when we would open the window or slide the hatch and discover the day’s trinkets.
• On the first Sunday of Advent, my dad and mom would bless our fresh wreath and candles before supper, and while lighting that candle on successive nights we would sing “O come, O come Emmanuel“…okay it wasn’t pretty but it had an impact on us kids: our waiting was active, looking for One who was to come.
• On December 6^th the feast of St. Nicholas we’d polish our shoes the night before (that was the one polish they got all, year!) and leave them outside our rooms before bed.  Waking in the morning, we’d find them filled with chocolate coins and candies.  As did any kid, we always looked forward to St. Nick’s feast.
• On the second Saturday of Advent, we would shop for a Christmas tree and decorate it, setting up our manger scenes throughout the house.  On Sunday, after Mass, we would say a prayer of hope and blessing upon the tree and mangers.
• On December 12^th the feast of St. Lucy we didn’t use electricity that evening, just tons of lit candles scattered throughout the house.  Since television wasn’t an option, we would hold a game night in the dining room.  We all got to choose a game we wanted the family to play and we would stay up late, enjoying the festivity of our little clan.
• On the third Sunday, we each would get our little baby Jesus figurines for our mangers and bring them to church for Fr. Starks to bless; of course, as soon as we got home we would hide them again until Christmas morning.
• And beginning on December 17^th, as we sat down for dinner and lit the advent wreath, we would sing the day’s “O antiphon“.  We could feel we were getting so close to Christmas!

These are the traditions of my childhood in Advent.  They were activities that each and every day helped me to grow in my hope and appreciation for the Savior who is to come at Christmas.  Every year it felt new, and alive, and excited.

May this year’s Advent season be filled with that kind of excitement for each of us; may it be a time for us to grow in faith-filled hopean active and excited hopethat the One who is coming will come to bring us the newness of His own divine life.

“Come, Lord Jesus!”

A blessed Advent!

As we celebrate the final weekend of our entire Church year, it stands as a kind of summation to all that we’ve encountered during these last 52 weeks in our liturgies.  In the endthis end of the yearwe are presented with the final meeting of Christ and Pontius Pilate.  The Roman Procurator stands face-to-face with the King of the Universe.  They are having a conversation: Pilate is agitated by the circumstances; Jesus is exhausted from the first twelve hours of his passion, but surely his eyes glow with the love and determination that had led him to this meeting.  For he came to dwell among usamong Pilatein order to save usto save Pilate’s soul.  And now providence has brought them together.

While Jesus is eager to draw this Roman patrician close to his heart; while all the conditions are right for Pilate to detect in Jesus the God for whom his own heart longs…he doesn’t.  He is in the same room with Jesusconcentrated & without interruptionspeaking with Jesus alone…yet, he remains unmoved, untouched.

Why?

“Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  Here Jesus teaches us the secret to intimacy with God.  And isn’t this the great summation of the mission of the Church?  Isn’t this why we have come to believe and have worshiped together throughout this year?  And this is the secret: whoever lets himself be led by what is true will be drawn into communion with Christ and will hear and heed God’s ceaseless invitations to follow him more closely.

But being led by truth requires humility.  It requires recognizing a higher authority than oneself.  Here’s the surmountable challenge: if I am obliged to discover, accept, and conform to what is objectively true, thenin truthI am not autonomous, I am not the master of my universe, I am not God.  And such an act of humility is very difficult to make, because our fallen nature tends toward pride, towards self-sufficiency, control and dominance.  So, to resist such tendencies requires courage.  It takes courage to obey the truth and expose oneself to the burning love of Godbut that is what it is: love.

Our friendship with Christday in and day outis not easy; if it were, we would clearly not be pursuing friendship with Christ.  Christ’s own daily lifeespecially seen in today’s gospel, is furthest from easy.  By befriending Christ, Pilate would risk being dethroned and marked as an enemy of the Emperor; he would risk being ousted by the Jewish authorities, hauled back to Rome for his own execution. Look to the saints, the martyrs, the holy ones: ease is not a condition of following the Lord of the Universe: humility, courage and truth are the conditions that lead to a universal Kingdom of justice, love and peace: that same universal Kingdom for which Christ is the King.

So, may our Lord grant each of us abundant graces that we will need in this new year: to listen to Him, to accept Him, and to conform ourselves to Him as we seek to enter into His universal Kingdom.

I wonder if it might be good to consider the two different widows we find in today’s first reading and gospel.  In doing so, we’ll consider the activity of both the widows and of God…and find a possible pattern for us to follow.

• Both widows are destitute…like all widows in ancient societies.  They have no one to care for them, no one to protect them, no one to house them…basically, outcasts: unloved, unwanted, completely disconnected from husband and community.  In fact, from the first half of our gospel, we hear of a new abuse overtaking widows of Jesus’ time: some scribes devouring widow’s homes, perhaps living in their homes and acting as their guardians, under the pretense of piety, all the while supporting their aberrant tastes for wealth and power…a further denigration of the helpless and the lonely.
• Elijah approaches one widow, and even upon hearing of her plight in a year-long drought, he still asks her to bring him water and the little food she has left.  And she does!  Amazing isn’t it?  But why does she do so?  She is placing all of her trustand her livelihoodin the promise given by the Lord, the God of Israel, to keep her jug of oil and jar of flour filled until He sends rain upon the earth.  And God remains faithful to His promise and the widow and her son are kept close to Elijah, close to the Lord always.
• The widow in today’s gospel approached to give her last two, small coins to the temple treasury.  I would propose that it took great courage and humility on her part: keep in mind that so many who were giving were rich (we know this because of Mark’s comments: “Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.” And so, presumably, made sure that they were seen by all, flaunted and witnessed).  Humble because of her poverty, courageous because of her trust: this woman now approaches and is seen by Jesus as giving the little she has left for the works of the temple, God’s house.  And Jesus raises her up in the sight of the disciples: she is praised for her extreme generosity and humble trust when she reaches out for relationship with the Lord, the God of Israel.

In both stories, we witness widows who have no reason to trust in a God that they cannot see, yet they trust him anyway.  They have found that their faith, as nascent as it is, inspires trust and imparts hope; their hope bestows a generous love that is then returned to them by a manifold grace.  Yes, in trusting and sharing as they do, God can then bless them abundantly.

In our own time, as so many financial fears press upon us: the fiscal cliff, growing financial uncertainty, poor national employment stats, and so on, remember how God made promises to these two widows of old.  And because they trusted and put their faith in Him, He was then able to keep His promise and bless them in return.  You see, ultimately, fear is useless, what is needed is trust.  Let each of us find new ways to place our trust in God, filled with the confidence that is borne from our faith: that God will always and everywhere, provide.

Over the last several monthsbut seeming like an eternitywe’ve been engulfed by political ads and campaigns of one side and then the other, and now, every single one of us is praying for next Tuesday to come and go!

In the heat of ugly political conflicts, we can easily lose sight of our real vocation as Christians: holiness. We’re called to be in the world but not of the world.  Powers and nations including our own sooner or later pass away.  But God’s word does not pass away.  Neither does the witness of the holy men and women we call saints, and whose memory we celebrate on All Saints Day and throughout the month of November.

Politics is important.  But in the end, all of the passion, all of the egos and even all of the issues in this election will fade.  In the end, for each one of us:  the only thing that matters is to be a saint….

That was the goal of Kateri Tekakwitha, Marianne Cope, Issac Jogues and so many others from right here in our own diocese.  And while we can be proud of our local heritage, we can never be content with sainthood as part of our past.  God made each of us to be saints.  That means you and me.  The hunger for holiness needs to animate every moment of our lives today, right now, and into the future.

May God grace us…and may the saints pray for us!