NO VACANCY

The gospel passage for this morning‘s mass (Saturday after the epiphany) Has John the Baptist telling his disciples “He must increase, I must decrease“(Jn 3:30). I used that verse as my early morning meditation. 

Then at morning prayer we sang Psalm 24, which had this line “Let him enter the King of Glory!” That got me thinking. What if the Lord were to come to my heart and ask to enter? 

Would he find any room there or would he find instead a “No Vacancy” sign? Would all the space be already taken up by my artificial self: my self image, my pride, my preoccupation with work and so on? That’s the “me” that must decrease. (Thomas Merton calls that my “false self.“)

The situation is what some would call a zero-sum game: The space in my heart will always be filled.  So Christ’s presence there will increase exactly to the extent to which my “ false self” decreases and leaves Him room.

We all know very well how this “decreasing” works in practice. Through humility, gentleness, and serving others in love, our artificial ego-centered self shrinks so that the Lord has room to “increase“ in our hearts.

So, as the Christmas season comes to a close with the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord on Sunday, January 12,  we should be listening to the words of John the Baptist and setting about making room for Christ in our Hearts by the way we act toward others.

Let us all pray that “He May increase as we decrease.”

FAMILY VIRTUES

One of the choices for the second reading for today’s feast of the holy family is from Colossians 3:12-17. It begins this way:

¨Brothers and sisters: Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another...¨

 Paul describes here the kind of virtue that it takes to make a family truly unified. Most of these qualities are pretty familiar: kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience and so on. But I would like to look at the first virtue on the list, “feelings of compassion.” Both of these words are very powerful in the original Greek.

First, some background on the word for ¨feelings¨ splanchna. The Greeks considered the internal organs of the abdomen (intestines, heart, spleen, etc.) as the seat of the strong emotions. We still describe certain situations as "gut-wrenching" or "heart-breaking." For the Hebrews, however, these inner organs were identified more with compassion and mercy. 

The Greek word for the parts of the body involved in emotions is the plural noun splanchna. The King James Bible translates it as "bowels," while modern bibles usually translate it, depending on the context, as "affection" or "compassion." In Philippians, for example, the  KJV has "If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels (splanchna) and mercies…" The New American Bible has "If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion (splanchna) and mercy… (Phil. 2:1)" So the writer of Colossians has chosen Greek's strongest word to express feelings of compassionate love, of being moved in the depths of ones "guts."

The second word, ¨compassion,¨ oiktirmou, comes from the verb oikteiro, which means, according to my dictionary “to have pity a feeling of distress through the ills of others¨. The noun form is used of God in Romans 9:15: ¨For he says to Moses: “I will show mercy to whom I will, I will take pity on whom I will.”

It is very easy, it seems tome, to feel “sympathy“ for someone, because you are standing safely outside of

the situation, a safe distance from their actual pain. But our word here, “empathy,¨ is different. When I feel empathy or compassion, I am  not just an observer sharing the other person’s pain. I am trying to get inside what that person is experiencing, and feeling it myself. 

So when the sacred writer combines these two words, splanchna and oiktirmou to mean ¨feelings of compassion,¨ they form a powerful picture of how we are supposed to act toward others: Allowing ourselves to be moved to the depths of our being by someone else’s suffering by identifying with that other person and feeling their pain as much as they feel it. 

And this little two-word phrase is at the head of the list of behaviors that it takes to make a healthy and life giving family.

So today we ask Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the members of the holy family, to help each of us to imitate their selfless love for one another in their family.

COVID AND CHRISTMAS

 

"The Numbering at Bethlehem" - Brueghel

This morning I took out my postcard-size version of the above panting, "The Numbering at Bethlehem"  by Peter Brueghel the Elder, intending to meditate on the scene of Mary and Joseph arriving at Bethlehem unnoticed to be inscribed on the census ordered by the emperor. But, instead of being drawn to the figure of Mary in her dark blue cape riding on the donkey, my eye was drawn right away to the cluster of people crowded around the window at the left of the scene. Immediately my imagination transformed that image of a crowd of people waiting to be inscribed in the census into the familiar image of a crowd of people on line waiting for a COVID-19 test.

Switching back to the snowy scene in Bethlehem, I began to wonder about Jesus, Mary and Joseph and Covid. If his mysterious birth at Bethlehem were to happen today, would Jesus have been immune to the virus? Would his mother and foster-father have stood on one of these long lines with him and wait to be tested with the rest of us? Would he have needed to be vaccinated?

I'm sure that the reason that these questions occurred to me was that I've recently started reading "Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus" by Gerald O'Collins, S.J. Christology is  that branch of Christian theology that "reflects systematically on the person, being and activity of Jesus of Nazareth" (O'Collins, pg.1), asking such questions as "How could Jesus be both human and divine?" So I'm sure that my reading was what caused me to imagine the Divine Savior in the crowd waiting to be tested for the coronavirus.

Especially in this "Covid Christmas" time we need to remind ourselves of the central message of Bethlehem: God became one of us, like us in everything but sin. He keeps being born in our midst at every moment, we just keep forgetting that fact. Ironically, it seems that we forget that fact most easily at exactly those moments when we need his reassuring presence the most -- in the doctor's office, say, or when we're upset at a loved one, or worried about a very sick friend. 

Instead of meditating on the little Jewish baby lying on the straw in Bethlehem, this Christmas maybe you and I might do better to call upon the incarnate Son of God who is standing on line with us waiting for a Covid test. 

May Emmanuel, "God-With-Us," bless you and me 

with a renewed sense of his constant saving presence at every moment of our lives!

Have a Blessed Christmas!

  

FACIAL RECOGNITION FOR CHRISTMAS

Last week I was walking through the deserted halls of our school building, when I met a young man pushing a dust mop - obviously working for our student-run maintenance corporation. Like me he was wearing a face mask.

He seemed vaguely familiar when I stared at him,  but after squinting at his partially covered face for a few seconds I finally said,

“Okay. I give up!  Who are you?”

“Terrance!” he said.

“Hey! Terrance! How are you! Sorry I didn't recognize you!”

It’s so frustrating when you can’t recognize someone because of their mask. Hold onto that thought for a moment.

For some weeks now we have been preparing for the birth of Christ: The church has been presenting us with messianic prophecies every day; we know many of them by heart. The words of the Advent hymns and antiphons have built up the suspense, The figure of John the Baptist stepped onto the stage on the Second Sunday of Advent. We’ve been lighting an additional candle on the Advent wreath for the past four Sundays. We’ve been singing “Soon and very Soon, We’re goin’ to see the King”

But finally Christmas has arrived, and what do we get? Take a look at the manger scene. Take a good look.

Where’s the King? Where is the savior of the Nations? Where is the Wonder-counselor, the Mighty God? The Everlasting Father? The Prince of Peace? All we see is a baby -- lying on a bed of straw, no less!

What a disappointment! This is God become Man? This is the Word become Flesh? Something is wrong here -- this is not the way God is supposed to look! He’s unrecognizable -- like Terrance in the hallway wearing his mask.

Let’s take a moment to look again at the manger scene. We can learn a lot there about God: One lesson is that God is very shy. Rather than risk overwhelming us with his majestic power and presence, God chose to come to us “veiled in flesh,” to make himself more approachable. But of course, the problem is that because of this, God often seems to be wearing a mask, and is difficult to recognize.

Is God really present in this Covid pandemic?

Is God really present in the divisiveness and the hatred that we see all around?

I don’t find it easy at all to recognize God present in the suffering of millions of people around the world.

Last week an article published in a scientific journal reported the results of research on the effect that face masks

have on our ability to recognize faces. It seems that our brain, which is so good at recognizing a face instantly, does not analyze individual features such as nose or eyebrows, but instead, it recognizes the entire face at once as a single pattern. This explains why we find it so difficult to recognize a familiar face on the basis of a single feature only -- say the eyes, and why it's so easy when we’re given an entire facial pattern to look at.

So, one great gift that we’re given by God at Christmas is the eyes of faith; we might call it the gift of divine facial recognition. With the eyes of faith we can look past the mask and recognize the pattern of God’s love working itself out in the world. With these eyes we can look at the baby lying in the manger and see the Second Person of the Trinity 

With these eyes we can look at our everyday frustrations and difficulties and recognize them as part of the pattern -- we recognize in them something of the mysterious face of our infinitely loving God. In the divisiveness and the hatred that we see all around us we can sense that somehow this is part of the pattern of God’s loving plan for the world.

Of course, it’s not easy at all to recognize God’s face in the suffering of millions of people around the globe, but the eyes of faith prepare us to believe that it is at least possible..

When I get discouraged and weary, and ask myself, “Is God really present in this Covid pandemic?” the eyes of faith will not reveal a nice clear picture of God’s love at work -- my ability to recognize facial patterns doesn’t go very far when it comes to the mysterious, infinite face of God.     

                                               

So, let’s turn one last time to the manger. God invites us to come to the stable this Christmas and gaze on Jesus, who is Love incarnate: With the eyes of faith we recognize the infant lying there as the sacrament, the physical presence of God’s tender loving care for the world. 

Look on the scene at Bethlehem with the eyes of faith, with your best pattern recognition skills, and then when you return your gaze to your everyday world, you may find that your eyes of faith will let you recognize some of the Pattern in even the most painful and absurd events.

During this unusual Christmas Season may you have the eyes to recognize all around you the face of a God who loves you and each one of us with love beyond our understanding -- and beyond our recognition.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT GIFT

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The following is a post from eight years ago. I think it's still worth our reflection.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT GIFT

I recently read about some research on people's attitudes toward gift-giving. (John Tierney, “In Pursuit of the Perfect Gift? It’s a Lot Closer than You Think,” NY Times Dec. 12, 2011.) Social scientists have done various experiments and interviews probing the complex interactions that underlie the practice of gift-giving. Some of what they found out disappointed me.

One of the findings that particularly struck me was that although giving a gift that you found after hours of painstaking thoughtful shopping may make YOU feel great as the giver, the recipient is far less likely to share your enthusiasm about the surprise gift, and would, truth be told, much rather have received something that was on his or her wish list. One researcher put it this way:

“… The recipient usually doesn’t know how much time and effort you put into finding just the right thing, so it doesn’t necessarily strike them as particularly thoughtful. Instead, your idea of the right thing may strike them as just wrong.”
Then there’s the whole thing about online gift registries; do you dare ignore them? “With a gift registry, they’re telling you what they want, and you’re saying, ‘No, you want something else, because I know more about you than you know about yourself.’ The result is not joyous gratitude, as Dr. Flynn found in a series of studies with Francesca Gino of Harvard.”
Do you like to be creative and surprise people with your gifts? Well, consider this (from the same article): "When married couples were asked about the wedding gifts they’d received, they reported liking the ones from the registry more than the unsolicited ones. When people were given money to buy presents for one another on Amazon, the gifts chosen from the recipient’s wish list were more appreciated than the surprises."Oh well!

CHRISTMAS WITHOUT GIFT-GIVING?

At a meeting of our Benedictine Oblates two weeks ago an African woman remarked that in her country Christmas was celebrated without the exchanging of gifts; people got new clothes, dressed up and went to midnight mass to celebrate the birth of the Savior, then spent the day visiting one another’s homes. There was no feverish “Christmas shopping” or giving of presents.

This got me trying to image what Christmas would be like if there were no gift-giving involved. I was surprised at how much of the celebration would still be left if we were to drop the custom of exchanging presents. Many of us have lots of other ways of marking the celebration, including rituals such as the Advent wreath, the putting up of the manger scene, trimming the Christmas tree, putting up decorations, cooking and baking, and enjoying Christmas music -- and this isn’t even counting going to church!

In addition, visiting family and friends at Christmas without the exchanging of gifts might help us to appreciate more the deep message of the Nativity of our Lord: God’s becoming present to us in the flesh points us toward a more conscious and more loving presence to one another. What if instead of worrying about presents we were to concentrate on this new kind of “Christmas Presence” and become a gift to each person around us?

So dropping the shopping part of Christmas would actually enhance the celebration. Of course it would bankrupt the whole retail sector of the U.S. economy in the space of two months, so it might not happen any time soon!

GIVING GOD A GIFT?

All of this thinking about gifts made me reflect on the idea of giving God a gift. (Talk about finding a gift for someone who has everything!) The idea is a very old one, of course, prompted by the gospel account of the magi coming to Bethlehem to present their gifts to the newborn King.

Here is a lovely meditation on the theme:

……..…..ROYAL PRESENTS
The off'rings of the Eastern kings of old 
Unto our Lord were incense, myrrh and gold;
Incense because a God; gold as a king;
And myrrh as to a dying man they bring.
Instead of incense (Blessed Lord) if we
Can send a sigh or fervent prayer to thee,
Instead of myrrh if we can but provide
Tears that from penitential eyes do slide,
And though we have no gold; if for our part
We can present thee with a broken heart
Thou wilt accept: and say those Eastern kings
Did not present thee with more precious things.
…………………-. Nathaniel Wanley, 1634-1680
So, I started thinking about what gift I might give God for Christmas. Maybe I could be extra nice to a certain brother monk, or be a little more careful to avoid distractions during my meditation period... Then I suddenly thought: Does God have a gift registry?

GOD’S GIFT REGISTRY

Some entrepreneurs have picked up the popular wish for an orderly and practical way to get the gifts you want and need while avoiding the totally useless and unwanted ones. Enter the Christmas Gift Registry! This spin-off of the “bridal registry” and the “baby registry” is a grownups’ version of mailing your Christmas list to Santa c/o the North Pole. If it sounds a little tacky and unsentimental to publish a list of what you really want for Christmas, you have to admit that it is at least extremely practical – and we Americans are famous for our pragmatism.

So then it hit me: instead of giving God what I want to give, what if Jesus had a Divine Gift Registry intended just for me where I could find out with complete certainty what he wants from me this Christmas? If I could access such a list on the internet would I dare to look at it or would I just keep trying to surprise the Lord with my own ideas of what he wants from me?

The researcher’s words quoted above now took on an ominous tone, “With a gift registry, they’re telling you what they want, and you’re saying, ‘No, you want something else, because I know more about you than you know about yourself.’” I asked myself, “Do I have the guts to ask the Christ Child what He really wants from me this Christmas? And if I were to find out, would I be willing to give him what he was aking for?” Maybe I’d be better off not knowing.

Quiet introspective prayer, the prayerful reading of scripture, and the insights of a good soul-friend can all be pretty effective ways of accessing Jesus's Gift Registry, personalized uniquely for me. I pray that I’ll have the courage to consult mine and then, of course, have the courage to give him at least one of the things on the divine list!

Have a blessed and a Joyful Christmas!

..........Haitian nativity set, clay figurines

CHRISTMAS IN PERSPECTIVE

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What event do Christians celebrate at Christmas? Most folks would answer "The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem." This is certainly what most of us celebrate on December 25: Nativity scenes, the carols and Christmas cards and dozens of other charming traditions all celebrate the birth of the infant lying on the straw, with the ox and the donkey, Mary and Joseph looking on in adoration. Reflections on that scene are standard fare for preachers -- and bloggers -- during this season.  

On this Saturday before the Solemnity of the Birth of the Lord, though, I'd like to invite you to expand your vision of Christmas. First of all, like any feast on the Church's calendar, it's not an isolated event, hovering in space and unattached to anything before or after it. In this brief post I'll hint at a couple of connections that we need to fit Christmas into its proper place in the wide sweep of the history of our salvation.

Let's start with the gospel passage assigned for the "mass during the day" on Christmas. (There are three different sets of mass readings assigned for the feast: one for "Mass During the Night," another set for "Mass at Dawn, and the third for "Mass During the Day"). The gospel for the Mass During the Day is from the prologue of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ..." What a disappointment! You go to mass on Christmas day expecting to hear the beautiful familiar stories of the shepherds, the stable, and no room in the inn; and instead you get this highly abstract, cold theological tract about the logos, the Word, becoming flesh. But remember, the liturgy is a great source of instruction for us, so we should try to learn what we can from it, especially when it presents us with surprises such as this reading from John on Christmas day. In this case the reading from John offers us a great place to start taking a deeper look into the meaning of Christmas.

The nativity, the fact that God took on human form, is a central belief of Christianity, but this belief was not celebrated as a liturgical feast for the first few centuries of the Church's history; the great central feast was Easter, the resurrection of Christ. When the feast of the nativity finally began to be observed, it celebrated the fact that the Second Person of the Trinity took on flesh  for our salvation. There was no heavy emphasis on the infant, on Jesus' condition as a baby -- the "cult of the manger" was a later development. (See last week's post.)

The coming of the Word as man was closely connected with the paschal mystery (the suffering-death-resurrection of Christ). This connection is a specifically Christian idea of God's incarnation: Incarnation means not only that God is with us but also that we are redeemed and with God. Fallen mankind is redeemed and shares the very life of God. In the truly traditional thinking of the Church, there's nothing poetic about the incarnation. On the contrary, the emphasis is, if anything, on a brutal fact: The Word came to do God's will, even to the point of dying on the cross.

As second consequence of taking a wider perspective of Christmas is this: the Christian view of the incarnation is that God became a human being not so that he might be be with us, but so that we might be with him. In other words, the nativity is the starting point of our divinization. This is a favorite truth expressed by the Fathers of the early church: God became  human so that we humans could become divine." But this "divinization" is not an end in itself, nor is it some abstract theological principle with no consequences for you and me. Rather, it has practical consequences in our everyday lives. It comes about so that we, having become in a sense divine, may be capable of working with Christ to rebuild the world for the glory of the Father, and be his coworkers in establishing the Kingdom on earth.

We are not passive bystanders at the incarnation (contrast this with the awed onlookers in the stable at Bethlehem). Seen from this broader perspective, the incarnation radically transforms the history of the world and the personal history of each one of us. Because of it, each of us has our proper role in God's plan, and we're expected to play that part enthusiastically and generously.

Keep this broader perspective in mind when you gaze on the familiar warm scene of the babe in the manger: You are not a passive bystander, but someone who, by virtue of the incarnation, has become divinized, and shares in Christ's work of building the kingdom on earth by your deeds and your words.

 Have a blessed and holy Christmas!

THE VISITATION

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As we get to the end of Advent, the lectionary invites us to reflect on the scene of the young virgin Mary visiting her older cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth is six months pregnant with John the Baptist, while Mary has just been told that she herself is going to have a child. Luke, the great story-teller, narrates the meeting with wonderful emotion:

Mary set out
and traveled to the hill country in haste
to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth.
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,
"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?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled." (Lk 1:39-45)

The Visitation   - Raphael

In the Prado museum in Madrid there is this large painting of the Visitation. Elizabeth is clearly an older woman, holding the hand of the much younger Mary. Off in the background, to the left, you can see a future event: the tiny figure of John baptizing people in the Jordan River. 

The painting is hung well above eye level, inviting you to look upwards to contemplate the mystery of these two women who are depicted as monumental figures. I remember standing, staring in awe at this masterpiece and marveling at the way the artist has made both women seem larger than life, reflecting their central roles in the story of salvation.

What makes these women such towering figures? Neither of them seems rich, nor do they evoke military might or political power. How is it that these two women are so important in the unfolding story of salvation? The answer is in the masterpiece itself. Look at humility in Mary's expression, and her lowered eyes. Look at Elizabeth's body language, holding young Mary's hand and leaning forward affectionately as if about to embrace her. The scene is filled with things that our world does not seem to value: tenderness, humility, meekness, self-giving love. 

It seems to me that the artist has captured in these emotions the essence of "Emmanuel," "God-with-us:"  By bringing Christ to earth by giving him birth, the humble young virgin is inviting us to make him present every day ourselves. Not by power and might, not by wealth and domination, but by imitating her in her humility and meekness and in her trusting, as Elizabeth puts it, "that what had been promised her by the Lord would be accomplished".

This will be the lesson her divine son will teach as well. But it will turn out to be a hard sell indeed: He will die trying to show is that God is not about power and punishment, not about retribution and domination, but about self-giving love and redemptive suffering. Most religions seem to prefer a God that we can comprehend, that is, a God whose actions reflect our own tendencies toward vengeance, anger, strict unforgiving "justice" and the desire to dominate. But the little child soon to be born of Mary will challenge our presuppositions and preferences by revealing a God who washes our feet, who acts out of humble self-sacrificing, self-emptying love. Just like his mother.

CHRISTMAS IN PERSPECTIVE

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This year when we set up the manger scene in the church we relocated it from just inside the front entrance, where you could easily touch the figures, to the other side of the sanctuary, where it is visible by everyone in the church, but considerably farther away. The first reasons for the move were practical ones (e.g. it saves a couple of hours of setup time). But I find that placing the infant in the manger at a little distance also has another effect.

Sitting in the nave for 8:45 mass this morning, I noticed that the nativity set was about 20 yards in front of me, off to the left, leaving this “empty” space between me and the empty manger. This distance was, it seemed to me, a good counterbalance to our usual way of thinking of the nativity. I think that many of us, in reflecting on the mystery of Christ’s birth, concentrate on the romanticized scene of the cute infant lying on the clean straw and wearing a shiny white tunic. The deep mystery of the incarnation gets reduced to a cuddly object of pleasant meditation, associated with gentle carols and memories of childhood holidays.  

At my 5:30 meditation earlier this morning I decided to read Luke’s familiar account of the birth of Jesus not in English but in the language in which he first wrote it -- Greek. I was betting that, although I know the meaning of the Greek words, they wouldn’t evoke the warm feelings (what the linguists call “affective connotations) that they do in the English translation.

I was right. In Greek, “She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” was not a picturesque and familiar episode of a nice, sanitized story, but a stark account of a child’s being born in unsanitary squalor, without even a proper place to sleep. A pretty unpromising start to the story of the Savior of the world! I’m fairly sure that this is the way that Luke intended for us to read it: Jesus came to identify with the poor and oppressed, and so chose to be born in poverty, among unpleasant animal smells, with no real place to lay his head.

As I reflected on the unemotional Greek text, it was easy to recall that the story of Bethlehem is connected with all the other “mysteries” of the “Christ event”, including his miracle- working, his preaching, his suffering, death, resurrection and ascension. We tend, naturally, to neglect these interconnections and concentrate instead on one mystery at a time, separating each from the entirety of the Mystery. The liturgical celebrations that seem to concentrate on just one event at a time always use the orations and readings to place that particular mystery in the larger context of the entire Christ event.

So, having the nativity scene a little less accessible this year can be a thought-provoking and, I hope, unsettling lesson for us who worship in St. Mary’s church this Christmas. “Jesus isn’t in the familiar place, where I’m used to finding him!” Maybe this is an invitation to look for him coming to earth in some new and different places in your life. “Baby Jesus is no longer close enough for me to look into his eyes and touch his hand!” Maybe this new distance can remind you that the birth of the Word made flesh is, after all, a deep and incomprehensible event.

The twenty yards of distance between you and the manger leaves room for the other mysteries of Christ’s life, such as his passion and death and resurrection. In fact, I have to go to a funeral two days after Christmas. Thanks to the new location of the manger scene, maybe the contrast with the birth of the Savior won’t seem as jarring.

All of that being said, let us rejoice and be glad, for Christ is Born for us! Come, let us adore him!

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A BLESSED CHRISTMAS!

ALEX AND THE GNOSTICS

The first reading at mass for this Saturday began this way:

Who is the liar? Whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Whoever denies the Father and the Son, this is the antichrist. No one who denies the Son has the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well. Life from God’s Anointing. As for you, let what you heard from the beginning remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, then you will remain in the Son and in the Father (1 John 2:22-24).

Rather a strange and grumpy-sounding passage for the Christmas season, right? Well, in fact, the background of it gets to the very heart of the mystery of the incarnation.

Scholars are pretty sure that this letter was written against a heresy that was beginning to make its way into certain Christian communities.

“Gnosticism,” as this error was called, is itself shrouded in a lot of mystery as to its origins and even its dates. It seems to contain a wide variety of different beliefs, but one in particular is of importance here: God is so pure that he cannot possibly come in contact with the material world, which is intrinsically evil; so God creates “emanations” to be in contact with the world. One of these emanations is Jesus Christ. Thus that second sentence in the passage quoted above, about people who deny that Jesus is the Christ.

When I came upon this sentence and then reread some information about the Gnostics, I was reminded of an experience I had on Christmas Day. I held in my arms three-week old Alex. He seemed to weigh almost nothing as he slept in my arms. The most beautiful creature you could ever imagine. It made me wonder what the Blessed Mother must have felt when she held her newborn son. Every baby is, obviously, a wonder and a mystery, but our Christian faith adds to the mystery the fact that God actually chose to take on the flesh of a helpless babe in arms, to become one of us, in order to bring us salvation.

Well, the gnostics would say that God would never -- could never -- lower himself to come into such intimate contact with the concreteness of material reality.

But for us Christians, the mystery of the incarnation means that now the whole of material creation is somehow sanctified, and that our human nature has been elevated above the angels by the divine Word who took flesh and dwelt among us. God became human so that we could become divine.

When the sacred writer tells his readers, “let what you heard from the beginning remain in

you,” he’s telling them to stay true to the original teachings that they inherited from the apostles, and to reject the new-fangled gnostic influence.

Watching baby Alex as he slept was a beautiful meditation in itself. But add to that the mystery of God becoming a little babe like Alex, well, that’s beyond the ability of words to express.

That’s why we need all those beautiful songs at Christmas.  

HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

My Benedictine liturgical upbringing is pushing me to write a post about the beautiful liturgies I’ve celebrated in the last two days; another part of me wants to write about the experience of holding in my arms, on Christmas afternoon, three-week old Alex. But I can’t manage to just ignore the most powerful experience of the week.

Tuesday afternoon I got a phone call asking me to come up to the trauma center at UMDNJ Medical Center just up the hill. It seems that my friend’s mother, a 93-year old whom I’d been with at a wedding reception just two weeks ago, had injured herself so When I got to the rather spacious ER trauma center there were fourteen members of the family already gathered in or near the bay where the woman’s bed was located. (The nurses were bending all sorts of rules for us.) She was being kept alive by a respirator until her sister could arrive, and then, by agreement, the breathing machine would be disconnected.

They’re a very religious family, so it wasn’t surprising that at one point there were three priests there praying with them. We did some scripture readings, a psalm, the litany of the saints, all interspersed with chatting, and with various relatives whispering words of love into the dying woman’s ear. I remarked to my friends that we were “walking her home” as we stood there with her at her bedside.

It was one of those occasions where you know at the time that this is an experience you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

There was lots of crying, but it was like the weeping of Jesus at the tomb of his friend, Lazarus; not like the weeping of “those who have no hope.” Finally the woman’s sister arrived, and joined the husband at the bedside. We chatted, prayed, and spoke to the apparently unconscious woman. After a while we called the wonderful nurse and told her we thought it was time to remove the breathing tube. She said that anyone who was comfortable with the experience was invited to remain, so a few of us did. The privacy curtain was pulled around the bed.

I was not close enough to see exactly what was involved; all I knew was that within about three minutes a young doctor came in and put his stethoscope on her chest, and did a couple of other things, and then turned to the nurse and pronounced the words “six-thirty.” And that was it. Rita had always been in a hurry, in a good sense, and she was true to her personality when, as soon as the machine was disconnected, she was out of there to spend Christmas in heaven.   

Only two days later I had the privilege of celebrating her mass of Christian Burial  in her parish church in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, where she had been a parishioner for 93 years.  

I preached on the gospel passage from Luke 24, the appearance of the risen Christ to the

two apostles who were walking to Emmaus. I reminded everyone that this story was particularly appropriate because it spoke about Jesus walking these two men home. The risen saviour had appeared to these to men and had walked them home -- just as seventeen of us had done for Rita only two days before.

I know this wasn’t a Christmas story, but it’s about a beautiful gift that I received, and that’s close enough, right?

CHANGING THE WALLPAPER

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Last week’s Christmas post has really stayed with me during the whole eight days of the Church’s Christmas celebration. (If you haven't read that post, you may want to give it a quick look.)

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me Christmas is completely dominated by what Fr. Nocent calls “the cult of the stable,” so it was interesting to read that this was not the Church’s original intention, nor was it the primary focus of the feast. It’s like changing the background wallpaper on your desktop: the feast is not about the stable, with all other events being played out against that backdrop (the slaughter of the innocents, for example, or the martyrdom of Stephen celebrated on Dec.26).  The early Church saw it this way: The wallpaper is the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection, and everything else, including the incarnation, is played out against that background and takes its meaning from it.

I’m used to seeing the Paschal Mystery as the background for Lent and Easter, and meditating on the suffering and pain in the world and in my own life against that background. All the suffering of the world takes on a new and mysterious meaning in light of the mystery of Calvary. But Fr. Nocent’s Christmas meditation extended the wallpaper of the Paschal Mystery to include every day of the Church's calendar, and in fact every day of my life --even Christmas!

So the birth of the babe in Bethlehem, as crucial as it is, takes its meaning from the Paschal Mystery because it’s the point in time in which the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word, takes on our human flesh and becomes like us in everything but sin. He takes on our humanity in all its pain and suffering and death, and overcomes all of these, and allows us to share in that victory.

Against this paschal wallpaper we see, too, that the Word’s becoming flesh is “God’s becoming

human so that we might become divine.”  Because of this “divinization” that the early Christian writers were so fond of pointing out,  we now have the duty to be Christ’s presence in this world wherever we are, with every person, at every moment.

In the Church's rich liturgical celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours during the past ten days I’ve heard themes I’d never noticed before. Thanks to Fr. Nocent’s “heads up” I began hearing what was really happening in those early sermons on the Nativity and in the the lyrics of the ancient Latin Christmas hymns: They leave no doubt that the Paschal Mystery is what this feast is ultimately all about. The adoration by the shepherds, the loving gaze of the virgin mother, the song of the angelic choir are always subordinated to the overwhelming fact that God has become one of us in order to save us from our sin by giving His life on the cross.

I’ve discovered an additional advantage to this new wallpaper, this new perspective on Christmas, namely that when Christmas break comes to an end on Monday morning I won’t feel as if something is coming to an abrupt ending. Rather, the return of the kids and the start of a new semester will play out against the very same wallpaper as the Christmas feast: Christ’s mysterious self-giving love that gives meaning to all of our pain and suffering, all of our human limitations and even death itself. That’s a welcome background for whatever the new year of 2015 might bring.

Let’s pray that all of us will be able to let that beautiful paschal wallpaper  color our lives long after the Christmas decorations have been packed into their boxes and returned to the attic.