Messy Christmas - Homily for the Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Year B

            My favorite Meyer household Christmas decoration is our Fontanini
Nativity set. In the early years of familyhood, we decided to invest in a nice Nativity that we would collect piece-by-piece over the years. That plan quickly changed to two pieces per year after Caitlin and Annie began to fight, as only sisters can, over who owned each new piece. To this day they refuse to accept that Mom and Dad own everything. Aside from our history of collecting the pieces together over the years, what I love the most about our Nativity is that it allows me to step out of the messiness of this world, even if for a moment, into the “heavenly peace” where “All is calm, all is bright!” Today’s readings challenge that image for me, though. It seems that the scene into which Jesus was born may not have been as idyllic as my Nativity suggests. It seems like that first Christmas was a Messy Christmas.

          Today’s Gospel gives us important insight into Jesus’ life. The fact that his parents presented him in the Temple forty days after his birth tells us that Mary and Joseph were devout Jews committed to raising their child under the law of Moses. Their sacrificial offering of two pigeons tells us that they were poor, as only the poor were dispensed from the customary tribute of a year-old lamb and a turtledove. And the prophecies of Simeon and Anna tell us not just that Jesus is a “special” child, to say the least, but also that his family’s life would be marked by both triumph and tribulation. In other words, our Gospel tells us that Jesus was born into an ordinary home, “a home where there were no luxuries, a home where the cost of everything had to be considered carefully, a home where the members of the family knew all about the difficulties of making a living and the haunting insecurity of life.”[1] It tells us that Jesus was born into a home just like ours, a messy home.

          Taken together on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, our readings emphasize the importance of family and community in dealing with the messiness of the world in which we live. “Today’s readings are reminders that the family is a foundational relationship that must be nurtured, and the community is an extension of the family.”[2] You’ll recall that the family is the domestic Church. That phrase, which we find in Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, captures beautifully the vital role that the family plays in building up the Kingdom of God here on earth. As Saint John Paul II said in 1995 not too far from here at Aqueduct Racetrack, “parents must learn to form their family as a domestic church, a church in the home as it were, where God is honored, his law is respected, prayer is a normal event, virtue is transmitted by word and example, and everyone shares the hopes, the problems and sufferings of everyone else.”[3]

          This image of the family as domestic church is exactly what today’s readings call us to be. Our first reading from Sirach is all about strengthening our relationship with God by fostering strong relationships at home. It makes clear that “bettering relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, the young and the old, the rich and the poor ultimately leads to an improvement in the reverence paid to God and to God’s will.”[4] Our second reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Colossians turns to relationships within our community. He calls us to holiness through heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and gratitude. Simply put, Saint Paul challenges us to love God by loving each other, just like Jesus does.

          You may be thinking that this all sounds lovely, but it’s easier said than done. Life is difficult, it’s messy, and our relationships with one another can be messy, too. I couldn’t agree more. The nature of our society and economy drives us to spend more time working and less time building the ties that bind us. Add COVID to the mix, and we become even more isolated from each other and more challenged to build and sustain family and community relationships. Our relationships become strained, and we don’t always treat each other the way we should.

I’d argue, then, that the message from today’s readings is all the more important. It isn’t a call to return to days gone by, to a way of life that’s no longer possible; it’s a call “to return to the roots of human development and human happiness!”[5] Loving relationships are our best protection against the challenges of this messy world. Jesus calls us, then, to look the messiness of life in the eye, and prioritize God, family, and community above it all. That’s what he did. Jesus didn’t choose to stay in the perfect comfort and peace of heaven; he didn’t pick a palace loaded with servants as his earthly home; he didn’t shun suffering or even death; he made his dwelling among us, among real people with real joys, and real sorrows, with the real messiness that a very real human family life brings. Jesus chose our life as his life to show us how to live the Kingdom of Heaven right now, no matter what messiness life may throw at us.

How do we do this? Start small. When dinner time rolls around, but there’s one more thing to finish for work, eat dinner with the family instead. When our children, our spouses, our relatives, or friends scratch our last nerve or wrong us and invoke our right to retribution, forgive them instead. When our sufferings and sadness pile up and overwhelm us, count our blessings instead. Every act of charity, kindness, humility, forbearance, forgiveness, and gratitude slowly but surely builds loving, lasting relationships in our families, in our community, and with God, relationships that build up the Body of Christ, that bring heaven to earth, and that will lead us into the fullness of God’s Kingdom at the end of time.

          You know, when I look at our Nativity set at home, I realize that it isn’t perfect. The wise man bearing gold is scowling, as if he’s thinking that he must have overspent if the other two could get away with frankincense and myrrh. Saint Joseph has a “What in the world did I get myself into?” look on his face, and one of the dogs falls over like a drunkard if it’s not propped up next to the manger. I love it, anyway. It reminds me that Jesus didn’t choose to live in a perfect world; he chose to live in our messy world perfectly. It reminds me that God really knows what it’s like to live in our messy world because he did it himself. It reminds me that that first messy Christmas in Bethlehem brought heavenly peace into this messy world, and that’s what makes our messy Christmas a Merry Christmas.

Readings: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128; Colossians 3:12-17; Luke 2:22-40

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[1] William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 30.

[2] James L. Waters, “Family and Community,” America 223, no. 7 (December 2020), 69.

[3] John Paul II, Homily for the Mass at Aqueduct Raceway, Queens, NY (October 6, 1995).

[4] Catherine Coy, et al., Workbook for Lectors, Gospel Readers, and Proclaimers of the Word, 2021 Year B (Chicago, Liturgical Training Publications, 2020), 37.

[5] John Paul II.

O Come All Ye Faithful

 We weren't able to live-stream or record our "Christ in the Carols" presentation this afternoon due to audio challenges, so I thought I would post my reflection on O Come All Ye Faithful. Since I encourage you in the talk to look up a particular Luciano Pavarotti rendition, I have added a link to it at the end of the text.  Enjoy!

         John Francis Wade left England for France in 1745 to escape anti-Catholic persecution. To support himself, he took up work copying music scores by hand at the renowned Roman Catholic College and Ministry Center in Douay, France, famous for producing the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible. Two years earlier, Wade published a Latin Christmas carol that became popular among his fellow exiled Catholics in France. While historians long thought that Wade had merely transcribed an ancient hymn by an unknown composer, most now believe that he wrote the song himself. About 100 years later, in 1841, an Anglican priest named Frederick Oakley, who was deeply moved by the hymn, took a crack at translating the original Latin version into English. He dubbed the rousing hymn, “Ye Faithful, Approach Ye.” That didn’t catch on, so four years later, after becoming a Roman Catholic priest and thereby improving his Latin, Oakley tried again with much greater success.  From then on, Adeste Fideles would be known throughout the English-speaking world as O Come All Ye Faithful.

         Although its lyrics and score are fairly simple, O Come All Ye Faithful is laden with deep theological meaning. As a little background, Christology, the study of Jesus Christ, has two basic starting points: ascending and descending. Ascending Christology starts with Christ’s humanity, moving with Jesus as he grows in wisdom and understanding, ministers to God’s people, suffers, dies, rises from the dead, and ascends to the Father. The synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, present predominantly an ascending Christology.

Descending Christology starts with Christ’s divinity. God’s eternal Word present at the beginning and through whom all of creation came into being, humbles himself to take human form, experiences every aspect of human life, except sin, and remains obedient to the Father through suffering and even death on a cross. As a result, God highly exalts him and gives him the name “LORD” so that every knee shall bend before him in adoration, a gesture reserved only for God. John's Gospel is solidly in the descending Christology camp.

As for our hymn, O Come All Ye Faithful is descending Christology at its best. In it, we learn that the “King of Angels,” was “born this happy morning,” and that the “Word of the Father” is “now in flesh appearing.” We join the “choirs of angels” as we “sing in exultation”: “Glory to God, glory in the highest,” together acknowledging the name that is above every name, “Christ the LORD.

The clearest indication of Christ’s divinity in the hymn is found in the refrain, when we’re invited to “come” and “adore him.” While we venerate the saints, we only adore God. So, in true trinitarian fashion, each refrain bids us three times: “Come let us adore him.” Note that we’re not called to adore individually, but together. This beautiful hymn profoundly proclaims a fundamental tenet of our faith: Christ the LORD, the Word made flesh, dwells among us and calls all of us to find communion and salvation in him.

O Come All Ye Faithful is, by far, my favorite Christmas hymn. I love it loud and proud, the way Luciano Pavarotti sang it at Montreal’s Notre Dame Cathedral in 1978 (look it up on YouTube, it’s magnificent). I love it soft and soulful, the way Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole croon it on their still-popular Christmas albums. I love it sung solo, by the likes of Celine Dionne, Luther Vandross, and Susan Boyle, and I love it sung in groups—like the Irish Tenors, Il Divo, and the Priests. I love O Come All Ye Faithful so much that I have twenty-five renditions of it on my playlist, including two by Josh Groban, three by Andrea Bocelli, and two by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They may not be Catholic, but they sure can sing! I listened to all twenty-five recordings while preparing this talk, and I’m not sick of it at all. I can’t wait to hear Katie and David perform it. I have no idea how they’re going to present it this afternoon, but I do know that I’ll love it.

            I will admit, though, that there is one version of O Come All Ye Faithful that I love the most. It’s the version that gives me goosebumps every time, and it never fails to put a lump in my throat and a tear on my cheek. It’s the version we sing right here at Immaculate Conception as the processional hymn at Christmas Mass. It’s the version that we sing on that most blessed day when together, as the body of Christ in Annandale, NJ, we “come” to “adore him.”

 

The Preachin' Deacons! Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B - December 20, 2020

Welcome back to the Preachin' Deacons! Links to our homilies and this week's readings follow, along with the text to my contribution. 

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8B-12, 14A, 16; Psalm 89; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

 

 Behold!

         I learned a new word this week. Actually, I learned a new meaning for an old word— “manifest.” I always understood “manifest” to mean “to reveal” or “make known,” but my daughter informed me that young people use it more broadly these days. It now means “to make something happen.” For example, “I wanted to do well on my test, so I studied hard and manifested an A.” To be honest, I like the old meaning better, perhaps because I like old words. Old words have a certain charm, a certain character and power that we just don’t find in today’s “made for Insta” words. Take the word “behold,” for example. I think our Gospel makes clear that it doesn’t need a new-fangled definition. The old meaning suits it just fine.

          The word “Behold” is defined as “a call to observe something that is remarkable or impressive.” Well, “behold” is just perfect for today’s Gospel, then, because our Gospel certainly gives us something remarkable and impressive to observe. In fact, it gives us two. In the first use of the word “behold,” the angel Gabriel announces that Mary will bear a Son named Jesus, the Son of God, who will sit on the throne of David and whose kingdom will never end. In the second, Mary, the young maiden from Nazareth, bravely accepts her role as Mother of God. That one word, “behold,” calls our attention both to the miraculous, merciful mystery of the Incarnation, and the very human, heartfelt, humility of Mary’s fiat.

          As I mentioned in my homily two weeks ago, Advent is a time of exclamation and excitement. Well, I can’t think of a better exclamation to end our four weeks of Advent with than “Behold.” Our Gospel tells us that something big happened that’s certainly worthy of our attention, but we also have to remember that there’s more to come. In Advent, we anticipate both Jesus’ birth at Christmas and his second coming at the end of time. So our Gospel passage doesn’t simply recount a “one and done” historical event, but, rather the first offer and acceptance of the new, permanent, and eternal covenant between God and humanity that we hear about in our first reading and our Psalm.

 Interestingly, the etymology of the word “behold” further suggests that the thing we “behold” is worth holding onto and retaining as our own. So, we’re not just summoned to observe Gabriel’s annunciation and Mary’s “yes.” We’re invited to cling to it and incorporate it into our lives. We’re beckoned into a new relationship with God through his Word made, well, manifest to the world. We’re called to experience Emmanuel, “God with us” in word and sacrament so that by our own words and actions, we can announce to the world that Christ’s real presence among us is something to behold.

The Preachin' Deacons - Second Sunday of Advent, Year B, December 6, 2020

The Preachin' Deacons are back for the Second Sunday of Advent, with Deacon Bill Bauer and Deacon Mike Meyer preaching. For those who prefer to read, a text of my homily is posted below the video, although this one might be more effective on video!

Readings: Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11; Psalm 85; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1: 1-8

 

                                                                           

Prepare (phhh, puht)!

         When the Danish Comedian Victor Borge arrived in the United States, he didn’t speak English at all. He said many times that the hardest thing about understanding English was that people spoke too quickly; he wanted them to use punctuation when they spoke so he could follow along better. So he invented a way to hear punctuation, as well as see it. Here’s how it works. A period sounds like this: puht; A dash like this: phhh. An exclamation point is a vertical dash with a period under it: phhh, puht.  A comma is a clicking noise: click, and a semicolon is a period with a comma underneath it: puht, click. So if we were to take a few lines from today’s readings, it would sound like this: “Go up on to a high mountain (click), Zion (click), herald of glad tidings (puht, click); cry out at the top of your voice (click), Jerusalem (click), herald of good news (phhh, puht)!” You get the idea. Why all this attention to punctuation? Our readings explain.

 If you look at all of the readings for the four weeks of Advent, you see a lot of exclamation points—15 altogether, and 4 in today’s readings alone. That’s because Advent is the season of exclamation and excitement. We’re excited about Christmas, of course, but there’s more to it than that. In Advent we joyfully await not only Christ’s coming at Christmas, but also the parousia, when Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. We don’t know when Jesus will come again, so for the time being, we wait.

 Now, if I were to channel my inner teenager, I would say, “Waiting’s boring (phhh, puht)!” Well, not if we listen to our readings. All three of our readings tell us that now’s the time to prepare. They call us to “prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths!” They instruct us to conduct ourselves in holiness and devotion.” What does all of that mean? Well, remember, when Jesus comes again, we’re going to be judged. We’re going to find out, as we heard a few weeks ago, whether we’re the sheep who get into heaven, or the goats who land in H-E- double hockey sticks.

 You may be wondering, then, “If we’re going to be judged, how is our expectation joyful?” The answer’s simple, we wait joyfully because Jesus gave us all we need to prepare ourselves for his final judgment and to pass it with flying colors. Jesus gives us Scripture and liturgy, so we can prepare ourselves by conforming our lives to his teaching. Jesus gives us the Sacrament of Reconciliation, so we can prepare ourselves by seeking forgiveness for our sins. And Jesus gives us himself in the Eucharist, so we can prepare ourselves by receiving his grace and carrying it out into the world. You see, we have every reason to await Jesus’s second coming joyfully. We just need to listen to the exclamation that resounds throughout today’s readings: “Prepare (phhh, puht)!”