Advent "Non-Doing"

A couple of days ago, the first real snowfall of the year made its way through southern Ontario.  At my present location there is a vast open field behind the building, with grass, trees and some flower gardens.  As I walked past a rather wide window and looked out on the entire scene covered in a blanket of snow, I just said to myself, "Now it's Advent!"  What did I mean by that?  Well certainly there is very much an association with snow in my mind with this time of year, coming from Montreal originally, we know what real snow is.  As I reflected further on my own exclamation, there is a good connection between snow and what the season of Advent is really all about.  When snow is covering the ground, all of creation is asleep, waiting.  Plants and trees are not growing, they are dormant, storing up energy for the spring time when they will bud forth into new life.  Advent is about waiting, and it is about not doing.  Out in the consumer world, the time leading up to Christmas is about anything but not doing, it's about endless shopping, and "holiday" parties, to the point where Christmas just becomes an anti-climax, as we collapse exhausted after the pre-Christmas hustle and bustle.  Perhaps we can take a clue from God's creation around us, as it waits calmly, serenely, patiently, and quietly for the coming spring, so we in this holy season of preparation are invited to wait in the quiet of our hearts and homes for the coming of our Saviour.  This Advent let's pull back from the doing, and enter a bit more into the being, the patient and quiet waiting for the springtime of our Saviour's arrival.

Sunday Homily - Keep Awake

Last evening I was chatting with come colleagues, and I noted that unlike any other important season in the liturgical year, Advent really does not have any important feast or event to mark its beginning. Christmas starts with Christmas Day and ends with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.  Lent starts with Ash Wednesday and ends with the Paschal Triduum.  Easter begins with Easter Sunday, and ends with Pentecost.  Advent though, advent just happens.  There's no important feast or event, it just happens, the First Sunday of Advent comes along with no fanfare, we just roll from Ordinary time right into Advent almost unnoticed.  It's probably the reason we add things to this day, the blessing and lighting of the Advent wreath, just to have some mark.  The fact that Advent just "happens" is, I think, very significant, and says something about the nature of the this season, and what we are looking forward to, since the word Advent means that something is coming.  As our scriptures point out to us today, we are looking forward to Christ's return in glory, but no one knows when it will take place, there will be no warning, it will just happen.  Some years back I began to wonder to myself, why it is that we have two occasions in the liturgical year when we focus on the Second Coming of Christ, after all, we just spent the last four weeks of Ordinary Time focused on Christ's return, and now we spend the first part of Advent doing the same thing.  It was only when I realized the slight shift that I understood the reason.  As our readings begin to unfold over the next days and weeks, it is clear that we are looking towards Christ's return, but unlike the end of Ordinary Time, we are not looking at the time leading up to His return, but to the time after.  We are looking forward to that time of glory and joy, the new creation when God will show us true love and majesty, and we will know joy unlike anything we have ever known or experienced here in this life.  I'm sure many have and will continue to use the prospect of Jesus' Second Coming as a reason for fear, for scrupulosity, trying to be perfect in the face of judgement.  But the invitation we are being given this day is to "keep awake", not in fear, but in anticipation.  We are invited to make ourselves ready, not in expectation of judgement, but eagerly awaiting the joy and glory of what will follow Christ's return, we prepare ourselves, because we want to be a part of it, we want to be there when it happens.  Therefore we are invited in this holy season and always to keep awake.

The Last Week of Advent - December 23rd

John the Baptist is born, and when Zechariah writes the words the angel instructed, "His name is John" his tongue is freed, and he begins to praise God.  This is the gospel for today.  Everything about this gospel points to the fact that God works outside of the natural order of things, even the fact that the other relatives protest. Elizabeth says the child is to be named John, but there is no one else in the family with that name.  The child's name, like the child's birth, is given by God.  We are part of a world of nature, we function within that world, and so often we are trapped by that world, when we encounter problems and difficulties we seek natural solutions rather than turn to God in prayer.  The person of faith should never have any reason to be discouraged, because that person knows that even though things might be impossible in the natural order, God does not work that way, God's ways are not ours, and God sees the bigger picture.  The person of prayer knows there is never any reason to be discouraged because through constant prayer we begin to see God's hand at work in our midst, outside the natural order of things.  When we are faithful to prayer, it's like turning a tapestry around and seeing how all the threads are woven and joined together, even though we may only see a few threads at a time.  Pray always!

The Last Week of Advent - December 22nd

Today Mary proclaims her Magnificat in the gospel.  After receiving Elizabeth's greeting, Mary, filled with the Holy Spirit burst forth into this hymn, a hymn to humility.  The Incarnation itself is an act of utter humility, the Almighty and All-powerful God hiding his divinity, becoming a human being to dwell with us.  In every celebration of the Holy Mass, God engages in an even greater act of humility, hiding his divinity to come under the appearance of bread and wine.  These acts of humility are ultimately motivated by love, God's love for us.  God calls us to humility as well, as I said in another post, God does not ask much from us, but he does call us to be humble.  Pride seeks the self, pride is self-love in the extreme, humility is always focused on the other, putting the other before self, and it is always an act of love.  I once heard the definition of Joy as Jesus, Others, then You, in that order, true humility motivated out of love leads us to find true and lasting joy.  May we be humble, so that God might raise us up.

The Last Week of Advent - December 21st

Today we find the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth in our gospel for Mass.  Notice the dynamic at work, Mary goes to Elizabeth, the mother of God to the mother of the forerunner, the greater goes to the lesser.  Even Elizabeth herself acknowledges how out of place this all seems when, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, she says, "And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"  But isn't this the perfect symbol of what God was doing at that moment, the Incarnation had just happened a short while before, in Mary's womb, God had come to us, the great God to the creatures he had made from the dust of the earth.  God still comes to us even now, most especially in the Holy Eucharist, but he comes in other ways too.  Whenever we go to pray, pick up a prayer book, pick up a bible to read and meditate, go to the church to visit Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, it may seem as though we are the initiators, that we are the ones going to God, but not so.  God comes to us first, he tugs on our heart to inspire us to pick up that book, or to make that visit to the church.  In theological language we call that 'prevenient grace'.  Whenever you feel that tug on your heart, that inspiration to pray, it is God coming to you at that moment, don't ignore him, just marvel at how this happens, that the Lord should come to us, his unworthy creatures.

The Last Week of Advent - December 20th

Today in the Diocese of Hamilton we celebrate a feast day for the Dedication of the Cathedral of Christ the King, but like yesterday, this brief reflection will be on the gospel proper to December 20th.

In today's gospel, we Annunciation to Mary, the moment of Christ's Incarnation in her virgin womb.  The angel tells Mary that "nothing is impossible to God."  Quite true, God can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants, but God always respects our freedom, God will never act unless we let him.  Our gospel also shows us once again, that God's ways are not our ways.  The event of the Incarnation is completely outside the natural order, it is a supernatural event.  When we encounter those times when God seems not to be acting, we might ask whether what we are hoping for, what we want, is part of God's will.  We might also consider though, if God seems not to be acting, are we letting him, or are we getting in the way.  Let me tell you from my own experience that it is harder to get out of God's way than we might think.  If we really want God to act in our lives and in our world, we need to learn how to really get out of God's way, and to let him act.

The Last Week of Advent - December 19th

This posting will be focused on the gospel proper to December 19th, rather than the gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (especially since it is the same gospel we heard yesterday).

Today the gospel presents us with the scene of the Annunciation to Zechariah.  Zechariah, we are told, was praying for a son, but now in his old age he no longer believed it possible.  The angel Gabriel appeared and told him that his prayer would be answered, God was going to give him exactly what he wanted, but Zechariah strangely, still did not believe it could happen, and so was rendered speechless until after his son's birth.  How often do we have to accept those times when God sends us trials, when God answers our prayers but the answer is "no", but in those rare moments, when God does say "yes", when God gives us exactly what we want, why do we still have trouble, why do we still fail to believe?  Is it just our own weak faith?  Is it just part of our human nature to question, to doubt, to wonder why we don't get what we want, and to doubt even more when we get it?  I don't claim to have an answer for this one, but the question is certainly worth pondering.

The Last Week of Advent - December 18th

Today our gospel passage introduces us to St. Joseph.  St. Joseph, it tells us, was a righteous man.  St. Matthew's audience was primarily Jewish, and they would have understood that term in its proper context.  To be righteous meant to carry out the law of Moses fully and faithfully, and that his life was judged to be pleasing to God.  Our gospel though, goes beyond, and tells us that not only was St. Joseph a righteous man, but he was a holy man as well.  If he were perfectly observant of the law, he would have been well within his rights to expose Mary to public humiliation perhaps even to stoning when he found her to be pregnant, and knew that he was not the father.  His concern however was not for his own wounded pride, his concern was for Mary, and so he planned to dismiss her quietly.  This humility, this concern for Mary's well being over his own, shows forth that deeper holiness, a holiness no doubt born from a deep life of prayer, which is probably why St. Joseph not only recognized God's word in the dream, but carried it out without question.  We too are called not just to live out the externals of faith, but to true interior holiness, a holiness that looks to the good of others over ourselves, a holiness born out of a real prayerful relationship with God.  St. Joseph was not a rabbi, not a religious scholar, he was a carpenter, a working man.  Prayer is not just for priests and monastics, it is for all of us, to grow in our relationship with God.

The Last Week of Advent - December 17th

As we enter the final week of Advent, our Church's liturgy begins to move away from its focus on the second coming of Christ, and toward preparation for the celebration of Christmas, the commemoration of his first coming among us.  I think it would be very worth while to offer just some brief prayerful reflections for each day of this week.

Today, our gospel is the genealogy of Jesus as presented by St. Matthew.  It is a list of names and not much more, a list of kings and commoners, heroes and scoundrels, but they all played a part in God's plan of salvation, they all lead to the Messiah.  What does that tell us?  We think we know who the important people are in the world, and who the bit players are, but when it comes to God's plan, we need to look differently.  The standards by which the world judges who and what is important simply is not the way God judges.  Our goal should not be to be a star in the world's drama, but a star in God's drama and, quite often, a bit player as far the world is concerned.  When the final account is taken, it won't matter how many pages we occupy in history books, it won't matter if we had fame and fortune, but it will matter if we fulfilled the role God gave to us, it will matter if we carried out God's will, and it will matter if we were faithful to the call to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ our Risen Lord.

Sunday Homily - A Rose by any Other Name, Except Pink

The following is the text of my homily for this past Sunday, (the image is not of the chasuble I wore, but it makes the point):

"By now you would have probably noticed that I'm wearing a new vestment, one that you would not have seen before.  I acquired it over the summer, but I'm willing to venture a guess, that most of you here have never seen a priest wearing a vestment of this colour before.  Certainly we're aware of the candle for this Sunday in the Advent wreath, but rarely do we see a priest wearing a vestment in this colour.  That's likely because, following the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, this particular liturgical colour, which we only use two days a year (the third Sunday of Advent, and the fourth Sunday of Lent) became optional, and sadly, so often when things become optional, they tend to become obsolete.  If we take the principle, though, that in her liturgy, the Church never does anything without a reason and explanation behind it, we have to ask the question, why does the Church give us a liturgical colour that we only use on these two occasions, what is the significance behind it?  To answer that question, we need to first make a very fine, but very important distinction.

So often, when we see the third candle in the wreath, and on those rare occasions when we see the priest wearing vestments of this colour, we describe it with the word 'pink', but the Church says that the colour we may use today is not pink, but 'rose'.  So what's the difference?  Well I don't want to turn this into a lesson on colour theory, but how do you get the colour 'pink', you combine the colour 'red' with the colour 'white'.  How do you get the colour 'rose', you combine the colour 'violet' with the colour 'white', and there is the key distinction.  Two weeks ago we examined what the colour 'violet' means, that it is a colour associated with 'penance'.  What does the colour 'white' symbolize, to answer that, all we need to do is look to those occasions in our liturgical calendar when the colour is used, Christmas, Easter, the feast days of saints; the colour 'white' symbolizes 'joy'.  So in this rose colour, we have that combination of penance and joy.

You might be asking yourselves right now how can we combine these two seemingly opposite things, penance and joy.  However, so many of the important beliefs and truths of our faith are a combination of things which seem to be opposites, even contradictions.  All we need to do is look at the person of Jesus Christ himself, is he God, or is he a human being, well he's both.  How is that possible, that is the mystery of the Incarnation, but he is fully God, and fully a human being.  Is God one, or is God three, again he's both.  He's one God in three divine persons, how is that possible, that is the great mystery of the Holy Trinity.  What about the Holy Eucharist, is it a symbol, or is it the real presence of Christ?  Again, it is both, it is the real presence of Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity, it is the sacrifice of the Cross made present to us on the altar, but all we see is bread and wine, a symbol pointing to the greater reality.  So how can we have this combination of penance and joy, two seemingly opposite and contradictory things, very easily, we just call it Hope!

If we think about it, Hope, by its very definition is something that is unfulfilled, something that we are waiting for, something that we are longing for, and we human beings really don't like to wait.  Particularly now in our fast paced, instant gratification culture, it so often seems that if we have to wait for something, it's almost not worth getting.  That can be a penance in itself, but if it is a spiritual reality that we are waiting for then we must prepare ourselves as well, and that preparation takes the form of prayer and penance.  As we wait though, we do not do so in fear and trepidation, we wait with joy, because what we await is the glorious return of our Lord, a day when, as our gospel tells us, 'the blind will see, the lame will walk, the deaf will hear, and the dead will be raised'.  Even more than that, we wait with joy, because our Lord has already come, and by his sacrifice on the Cross, he has already freed us from the power of sin and death.

We are called to be a people of Hope, which means that we need to have both of these elements.  If we eliminate the penance, the waiting, the longing, the preparation, then all we are doing is living for the moment.  It may seem good for a while, but ultimately we know that it will prove to be unfulfilling.  If we eliminate the joy, then all we have left is despair, we wait, but we do so with fear and trepidation, we don't look forward to a glorious reality.  Not only are we called to be people who live in hope, but we are called to proclaim that hope to a world so often filled with despair, sadness, and fear.  As the prophet Isaiah says in our first reading, 'Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God."'  We are called to proclaim the hope we have to all those around us, the hope we have in Christ Jesus, and the glorious day of his return.

So why does the Church give us this colour, this rose colour, in the mid-point of this Advent season.  In the midst of this time of penance and preparation, as we wait for the coming Christmas celebrations, and as we wait for our Lord's glorious return, it is a reminder that we do so in a spirit of Hope.  What we await is a glorious day, when all things will be made new.  We look forward in joy, knowing that Christ has already freed us from the power of sin and death.  We proclaim that hope to all those we meet, in this world marked by fear and despair.  Above all, we proclaim our need to prepare ourselves worthily and well, to celebrate the glorious day of our Lord's return, so that we may be truly ready to greet him when he comes."