Background Notes for Homilists for Advent and Christmas 2014
Year of Strong Catholic Parents
Father Louis J. Cameli
Keep us alert, we pray, O Lord our God,
as we await the advent of Christ your Son,
so that, when he comes and knocks,
he may find us watchful in prayer
and exultant in his praise.
Who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen
Introduction
Advent and Christmas are about many things. For families, however, one theme is of paramount importance—welcoming Christ the Lord.
The Christian home is a place of welcome. Of course, the home welcomes those who dwell there as a family. They all have a place that they can claim as their own. The Christian home also extends a welcome to others, so that they can come in and find refreshment and peace. Above all, the Christian home welcomes the presence of Christ who finds a place among us in the middle of our closest relationships.
Across the Advent and Christmas season, we hear God’s Word summoning us to live well together in our families and to be people who welcome Christ with joy. In the Archdiocesan Year of Strong Catholic Parents and Strong Catholic Families, the Sunday readings offer us enlightenment, challenge, and encouragement.
The homily notes that follow suggest ways to reflect on the mystery of Christ coming among us and the mystery of our vocation to welcome him.
1 December 2013First Sunday of Advent
Every family, especially those with young children, struggle mightily to coordinate and balance schedules—school, sports, work, and household chores. Often, it can be a challenge just to sit down and eat a meal together.
We live intensely, and there never seems to be enough time for everything. Then our time becomes a precious commodity, which we try to protect and portion out carefully. In faith—and particularly in Advent—we come to know that there is more to the story of time than our owntime.
We do live in our time, but today’s readings tell us that we also live in God’s time. Woven even into our time of sleep—Saint Paul says—we can sense the reality of God’s movement and time. And we must wake up to that. Jesus, in the gospel, speaks about ordinary life activities that fill our time, for example,eating, drinking, marrying, and working in the field and at the mill. Within that time, Jesus says, there is the movement and time of God, and we need to be ready to live in that dimension.
During Advent, in our churches and in our families, with signs, symbols, and songs, we need to remind each other that we live in God’s time. When we do so, we shore each other up in faith and hope. We pray and we sing for the coming of the Son of Man. He has come, he comes among us even now, and he will come again in glory—all in his time, God’s time. It becomes our time. And then as we live more and more aware of God’s time working deeply in our lives, we will make ourselves ready to welcome Christ with joy.
8 December 2013Second Sunday of Advent
John the Baptist seems to be a rough character. He certainly sounds that way in today’s gospel. Dressed in animal skins, eating insects and wild honey, he bellows out harsh language, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the coming wrath?”
If you have young children, you probably would not want to bring them to hear the preaching of John. He could frighten them with his appearance and his words. He might even frighten us who are adults. It can be unsettling to meet a religious wildman. Still, as difficult as it can be to look at him or listen to him, there is something about him that draws our attention and even attracts us. Beyond his roughness, John witnesses a passionate hope that he proclaims. We should not fail to hear the message. His point, he says, is to “prepare a way for the Lord” and to proclaim “the one who is coming after me.” With his intensity, he means to stir our hope and to change our hearts.
Hope marks the other readings as well. The prophet Isaiah envisions the hope of a world transformed by peace—“Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall like down with the kid.” And Paul recognizes the purpose of the Word of Scriptures, so that “we might have hope.”
In our churches and in our families, how can we welcome Christ with joy? We can only do so, if we hold fast the hope proclaimed by Isaiah, Paul, and John the Baptist. And that hope is stirred every time we celebrate the Eucharist together, “…as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”
15 December 2013Third Sunday of Advent
On this third Sunday of Advent, we once again encounter John the Baptist in today’s gospel. Last week, John proclaimed a baptism of repentance and announced the coming of the one who “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” This week, we meet a different John the Baptist who now languishes in prison put there unjustly by Herod who will eventually have him executed.
In the darkness of that prison experience, John struggles to understand the meaning of Jesus as messiah and hope for the people. John sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is come, or should we look for another?” And we may know something of what John felt from our own dark hours of questions and struggles. So, we are anxious to hear Jesus’ response to John’s question.
Jesus answers John’s question indirectly by pointing to what he has done: restoring sight to the blind, making the lame walk, cleansing lepers, enabling the deaf to hear, raising the dead, and proclaiming good news to the poor. These are the works of the Messiah as the prophet Isaiah had described them. They validate and affirm Jesus’ identity as “the one who is to come.” These words reassure John, and they reassure us. We can put our hope in Jesus who will save us. Still, there is even more meaning in these words.
If, as we have been considering during this Advent, we want to welcome the Lord especially in our families, we must receive him with the hope and confidence that stems from knowing him as the one who will indeed save us. He does the works of the Messiah, because he is the Messiah—that is our conviction. At the same time, he makes us a messianic people. In other words, we share in his work as Messiah. And so to welcome him in our families also means to carry on his works. How do we do this?
Can we restore sight to the blind or cleanse lepers or raise the dead? Not likely. We are, however, summoned to be a healing and life-giving presence in this world. We try to bind the wounds of those who are hurt. We try to steady the shaky limbs of those who struggle to move forward in life. We try to strengthen hearts that falter.
In our homes, we learn the works of the Jesus the Messiah. And in our homes as well as in the world, we strive to welcome him by continuing his works. At this Eucharist, through the power of his death and resurrection, we pray for the grace to make our hearts firm in that resolve.
22 December 2013Fourth Sunday of Advent
With our families and friends, we are fast approaching the celebration of the birth of the Lord. We hear Paul’s words today addressed to us—“you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ…called to be holy.”
Across this Advent in the Year of Strong Catholic Parents, Strong Catholic Families, we have been attentive to how we can welcome Christ with joy in our homes. Today’s gospel offers us a key to understand how we can indeed welcome Christ with joy and generosity into our families.
The angel speaks to Joseph and says, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her.” Joseph listens attentively and moves beyond his hesitations and questions. Later, the gospel says, “…he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.” In receiving and welcoming Mary, Joseph also receives and welcomes the child she carries within her.
The story of Joseph shows us a path to welcome Christ in our homes. It begins with a willingness to listen to God’s message and invitation. Joseph receives God’s word spoken to him by the angel. That word does not coincide exactly with Joseph’s plans or thinking. He must set aside his own expectations to move in a direction that God offers him. He is then able to see Mary in a new way, as the one who bears a son who “will save his people from their sins.” In and through his betrothed, Joseph senses the presence of God. And in all of this, we find a similar path in our own day.
All of us who live in families know that we carry bundles of expectations of each other. We each have our own set way of thinking and anticipating how reality ought to play out. If, like Joseph, we can set all that aside and listen attentively to what God is saying, we may begin to detect the presence of God in the closest relationships of our lives and in ways that we never anticipated—in joy, struggle, success, illness, tears, and laughter. We begin to know and understand that others in the family can bear the presence of the Lord. And once we do, then we accept each other and so welcome the holy presence of God.
In sign and sacrament, the Lord is truly present to us in the Eucharist we celebrate. We welcome him and so learn how to welcome his presence among us in our homes and families.
25 December 2013The Nativity of the Lord
When Jesus is born, the gospel tells us that there was no welcome for him. In fact, Saint Luke writes, his mother Mary “laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” John’s gospel also speaks of this lack of welcome: “He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.”
Jesus is born, it seems, into a heartless world that cannot accommodate him, much less welcome him with joy. This part of the gospel account of Jesus’ birth appears to raise a question for us: will we or will we not receive and welcome him? And we quickly answer, “Of course, we will.” But it may not be that simple, and perhaps we do well to think before we respond.
Where did that lack of welcome stem from? Jesus came among us, like us in all things but sin. He was so ordinary a baby that he was unremarkable. There was no drama about him, no power of majesty that could compel people to receive him and welcome him. Everything about him seemed so ordinary, but within the ordinary rested the Word made flesh, Jesus the Son of God.
Now, two thousand years later, we believe in his Word and sacraments. We believe that he dwells in us by the power and grace of his Holy Spirit. Still now, however, even as at the time of his birth, his presence among us is wrapped in ordinariness. He is close at hand, for example, dwelling with us in our homes and families. Unless we are attentive, he may go unrecognized. If unrecognized, we may not welcome him. Our task is to stir our faith and to see more deeply, so that we can appreciate his presence among us, especially in those closest and most familiar relationships.
In receiving and welcoming each other, we receive and welcome him. The Eucharist we celebrate trains our minds and hearts to know beyond appearances how Jesus has linked himself with our lives. And once we know him that way, we are bound to receive him and welcome him with joy.
29 December 2013Feast of the Holy Family
When we hear today’s gospel drawn from Matthew on this feast of the Holy Family, we need to pay close attention to the description of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Put aside the images that you may draw from holy cards, the sweet and soft portrayals of the Holy Family. The family described in today’s gospel is a beleaguered family but also a tough and faithful family.
Recall that the gospel tells us that King Herod wanted to harm the new-born Jesus. The angel of the Lord says to Joseph in a dream, “Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” This is the worst kind of menace that a family could face—forces that want to destroy an innocent child. In the face of that threat, Mary and Joseph listen carefully to God’s message, take action, resist, and protect the child by fleeing the land. That is a faithful and tough family. They have not only welcomed this child into the world, but now they are determined to hold and protect him.
When we leave our holy cards behind and catch this gospel portrait of the Holy Family, we can begin to identify our own families with the Holy Family. In so many ways, we can feel threatened and beleaguered. There are hostile forces at work in the world. There is no doubt about it. At the same time, we believe and are convinced that the responsibilities that God has entrusted to us come with the necessary graces to help us fulfill those responsibilities, even in the face of overwhelming odds.
We can stand strong together by God’s help in a world that fosters greed over generosity, glamorizes violence at a cost to peace, and extols short-term satisfactions and pleasures over enduring love. The challenges to family life are so many and so daunting that we can become dispirited. That is why we need to be here today—and every Sunday for that matter—to know that, while the many challenges are indeed daunting, the grace is even more abundant and available to us.
1 January 2014Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God
To call Mary the Mother of God affirms our faith in Jesus Christ, her son. He is one person who is both human and divine. The one born of Mary is true God and true man. So, it is accurate to say that she is the Mother of God. She does not generate divinity but rather gives birth to him who is both God and man. These theological affirmations, however, make much more sense when we look directly on Mary, the handmaid of the Lord.
Mary is entirely immersed in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Word made flesh. Her relationship with her son could not be any closer. But as much as her physical motherhood is wonderful and powerful, Saint Augustine says that her relationship to her son in faith is even more wondrous. Today’s gospel tells us, “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” She continuously drew within herself the mystery of God who had come so close to humanity, God who had taken on the human condition in all its dimensions. Mary drew from the mystery and continued throughout her life to re-affirm her loving surrender to God, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”
In this Year of Strong Catholic Parents, we can draw from Mary the true source of strength for mothers and fathers. Their attachment to the mystery of God at work in the life of their family and their children gives them strength and power. And that attachment means prayerful living, going back to what matters, keeping things deep within, and reflecting on them in our heart.
If we follow the trajectory of Mary, the Mother of God, and seek inspiration for ourselves in family life, we know that continuous prayer and surrender are her mainstays and should be ours as well.
The Eucharist returns us to the heart of the mystery of Jesus Christ, Word made flesh, who died for us and rose for us. Here we contemplate and hold the mystery. Here with Jesus we surrender ourselves into the hands of God.
5 January 2014The Epiphany of the Lord
The story of the Magi is relatively simple. It is the story of searching and finding. In those few words, we also have the heart of the matter of the Christian life. We search intensely and find the Lord and do him homage. With that experience of finding him and that experience of adoration, like the Magi, we return to our routines of daily existence but changed by the one whom we have encountered.
When we consider our family life in this Year of Strong Catholic Parents, we recognize that we do not travel as the Magi did. We do, however, search as they did. And that is very important.
The Magi begin their search with their observation of a star. They leave home. They endure the hardships of the journey. They seek counsel wherever they can find it. They cannot and will not rest until they can move toward their destination. Their perseverance in searching inspires us today. When families move forward today, they can feel the pressures to conform and to settle down for less, whether that is material well being or social status or whatever. The story of the Magi tells us that nothing less than finding the King of Kings will satisfy the desires that began our searching.