O Christmas Tree!

Knoxville had its annual Christmas Parade on Gay Street tonight. Meanwhile up the hill Immaculate Conception Church hosted a concert of "Down Home Christmas Music with a Twist," featuring hammered dulcimer and penny whistle. Outside the church, our parish Christmas Tree made its informal 2012 debut. (It will go dark again until its official Blessing and Lighting on our parish's patronal feast next week).

There is something special about Christmas Trees - the way they light up the dark winter night outdoors, the way the evergreen smell permeates the indoors. When the Christmas Tree makes its appearance is always cheers people up. I remember back in 1975 setting up a second-hand artificial tree in the living room of the apartment I and two other graduate students were then sub-letting overlooking Lake Carnegie in Princeton. As I strung the lights and hung the ornaments, one of my housemates came home. When he walked into the living room and saw the tree, his eyes lit up, and he commented how nice it was. As I said, it was a used, second-hand, artificial tree - nothing to write home about. But, with just a few lights and some ornaments, it was transformed into an icon of Christmas joy.

Whether it's the monumental Christmas Tree that stands in Rockefeller Center or the small, modest "tree" that graces the lonely apartment of some solitary unfriended soul, somehow a Christmas Tree - just by being a Christmas Tree - speaks so eloquently the story of this season, the intense desire of the human heart for hope and salvation.

Old Prayers, New Words

For four days now, Catholics in the United States (and other parts of the English-speaking world) have been getting used to a new English translation of the 3^rd edition of the Roman Missal. Some of us (myself among them) have been looking forward for some time to this new, more literal translation, with its complex sentences and relative clauses - English as it used to be written and spoken in a pre-internet age. Some others have been apprehensive about it - whether out of fondness for the familiar translation in use for the past 40 years or because of objections of a more ideological nature. Still others are largely indifferent. For some, the introduction of this new translation has probably come as a surprise - despite the fact that it has been long in the making and has been the a major conversation topic within the US Church, as well as the subject of many diocesan and parochial programs throughout the US over course of the last year. Whether it comes as old news or as a surprise, however, and whether it is welcomed or resented, it is a change; and change is always a challenge – any change, but especially one that affects established habits such as the words of our prayers.

That said, I have been impressed by how easily the change has happened here. Of course, we had prepared. The new music had already been introduced; so that part of the Mass was already familiar. We had purchased pew cards with all the new lines the people need to learn; and they are being used! At the beginning of every Mass so far, I have been enormously edified to see people grabbing their pew cards and enthusiastically answering "And with your spirit"! Of course, it will take time for the responses to become second-nature. We will all absentmindedly lapse into an occasional "And also with you." But the line between past and future has been clearly drawn. It won't be long before "And also with you" is but a fading memory - an object of nostalgic humor, along with recollections of 1960s "folk Masses" and "clown Masses."

As someone who still talks at New York speed, I have been given an added gift by the new translation. Reciting long sentences of less familiar words, while trying not to lapse into the older formulas, forces me to speak more slowly - hence, hopefully, more reverently. Hopefully, that may translate into a longer lasting benefit for me as celebrant!

Watching and Waiting

This past week (Not unlike lots of other Americans), I flew back and forth across the country to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my 2 college-age nieces. One could, of course, give thanks at any time of year. But autumn, the season of the harvest, naturally lends itself to such sentiments. Autumn, however – especially late

autumn, autumn turning into winter – also gives this holiday time a somewhat solemn and reflective mood, that the Church’s annual cycle captures so singularly in this season of Advent, which (in most churches of the Latin Rite) begins today (unless you happen to live in Milan, Italy, where the ancient Ambrosian Rite is followed, and where Advent already began 2 weeks ago).

Advent originated as an annual period of repentance focused on preparation for Judgment Day, and this Sunday, rather than starting something completely new, continuesthe end-of-time, Judgment Day themes of the last several Sundays, summing them all up in the warning: “Be watchful! Be alert!” Like the servants in today’s Gospel 9Mark 13:33-37], we have been left with work to do, while we wait for the lord of the house to return.

We will do that waiting - in what we might call “liturgical time” - by looking back, to get to the future. Like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Advent introduces us to Christmas, our annual remembrance of Christ’s 1st coming in the past. Thus, the 4th Sunday of Advent will recall Jesus’ conception in his Virgin Mother’s body. The 2nd Sunday, however, will recall the adult Christ’s public appearance on the historical stage as announced by John the Baptist. Then, on

the 3rd Sunday, we will hear John’s challenge to recognize Jesus, here and now, in the present, between Christmas and the end. Finally, this 1st Sunday puts past and present in perspective, focusing on Christ’s final coming, when (as we say in the Creed) he will come to judge the living

and the dead.

Hence this Sunday’s somber tone. What we see and observe are autumn’s withered leaves, winter’s barren branches, and the imminent end of another year. What we feel and fear is the end of ourselves. As Isaiah laments in today’s 1st reading [Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2b-7]: we have all withered like leaves, and our guilt carries us away like the wind.

Yet, while Advent starts out being about fear, it is also about faith and hope – both the passing of an old year and our hopes for the new, both the enveloping winter darkness of a dying world and the dawning brightness of Christ’s coming to save us. As Saint Paul assures us in today’s 2nd reading [1 Corinthians 1:3-9]: God is faithful, and by him you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the true spirit of winter – winter as it used to be experienced when people actually lived according to the rhythm of the seasons – Advent challenges us to slow down and take stock, to pay attention. Of course, everything about the way we live nowadays conspires against slowing

down – let alone taking stock of ourselves and paying attention to anything. After all, in our work-obsessed society we all, understandably perhaps, brag about being busy – even if that means ignoring Bertrand Russell’s warning that “one of the signs of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”

The older I get, the more I think I begin to appreciate how much sense Advent makes. The older one gets, the more aware one becomes that time is running out, and thus the more one appreciates the importance of the present. Time – this time, our time – is so precious, precisely because it is limited, but also (and that’s the Christian spin on what is an otherwise universal human experience) because it has a future. Advent annually ritualizes for us our ongoing present reality, where we actually are right now, living and waiting between Christ’s 1st coming at

Christmas and his final coming for which we claim as Christians to be waiting.

Advent is not, therefore, some irrelevant interlude on the way to Christmas. Much less is it some artificial exercise in make-believe, created by ecclesiastical kill-joys to compete (as if one could complete) with the joyful Christmas season in which we find ourselves. In any case, the liturgy isn’t a play. We’re not reenacting God’s entry into our world a long time ago, or pretending

Jesus hasn’t already been born, so that we will be somehow surprised on Christmas morning - as if Jesus were Santa Claus.

The point of Advent is to let the anniversary of Christ’s 1st coming concentrate our attention on his coming again, while we, meanwhile, recognize his action on our behalf in the present. The challenge of Advent is to let our anxious and increasingly fear–filled present be transformed into that hopeful future promised us already by Christ’s coming in the past.

At no other time of year does the world seem so receptive to the story that is told and retold throughout this season. So we need to let this Christmas season speak to us – and through us to the world.

Advent is a wake-up call to respond to Christ’s coming and so live as people for whom the Christmas story really matters – matters enough to make everything different from what would otherwise be in a world without the presence of its one and only Savior, Jesus Christ.

Homily for the Frist Sunday of Advent, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, November 27, 2011.

Giving Thanks

It is arguable that the great American national holiday of Thanksgiving, which we have just celebrated once again, is actually about many things, admittedly about a lot more than just giving thanks. For most people, probably, it is, first and foremost, about family. It’s no accident that Thanksgiving may be the most travelled holiday of the year. We travel, most of us, to share Thanksgiving Dinner with important people in our lives. The dinner is the occasion for the sharing. But, while the sharing part is key, so certainly is the dinner; and so Thanksgiving is surely also about food. And it’s also – in no particular order - about parades, dog shows, football, and, of course, the beginning of Christmas shopping. All that having been said, still for Americans the 4^th Thursday of November remains the pre-eminently privileged day for giving thanks.

Back home in Knoxville from Thanksgiving with my family in California, I am thankful for many things. I give thanks to God, first of all, for the mere fact that I am alive. Making it to 63+ may not seem like the accomplishment it once was, but I know (or, rather, knew) enough people who didn’t make it this far. For all my many health concerns, I am OK – not in the best of shape, by any means, but I’m still standing. And that itself merits a fervent prayer of thanks – maybe even a rousing chorus of Now Thank We All Our God!

I am thankful too for my vocation, for being a priest of the Church, for the joy I experience in celebrating the sacred liturgy and preaching the Good News, for the great privilege priesthood has given me to be a part of the lives of so many people, families, and communities, and for the faith-filled parish communities it has been my privilege to minister in – at St. Peter’s, Toronto, St. Paul the Apostle, New York, and now Immaculate Conception, Knoxville.

I give thanks for my family (both immediate and “extended”) and my friends (both the “faithful friends who are dear to us,” who “gather near to us” as in the familiar Christmas song, and also the distant, more marginal ones, including even all my Facebook “friends”).

In a world which seems so distressed in so many ways, Thanksgiving challenges one to prioritize. In a very different 1^st century world (a very different – but certainly also distressed – world), the 3^rd Pope, St. Clement the Martyr wrote, in his letter to the Corinthians: “The stronger should care for the weak, and the weak should respect the stronger. The wealthy should give to the poor, and the poor man should thank God that he has sent him someone to supply his needs. The wise should manifest their wisdom not in words but in good deeds, and the humble should not talk about their own humility but allow others to bear witness to it. Since, therefore, we have all this from him, we ought to thank him for it all. Glory to him for ever. Amen.”

Amen, indeed!

Is the Euro Worth It?

To aid my Italian study, I have been watching (and listening to) historic Italian newsreels on YouTube. I recently watched one featuring the annual ceremony for the Opening of Parliament sometime in the 1930s. Everything followed correct constitutional protocol. The King and his son, the Prince of Piedmont, rode in their state carriage from the Quirinale Palace, followed by other carriages containing the Queen and other Highnesses of the House of Savoy. The members of Parliament stood respectfully and applauded vigorously before and after the Speech from the Throne. Everything appeared correct and normal. It could have been Sweden!

Standing on the sidelines in his respelendent uniform, however, having arrived not by carriage but by car, was the Head of the Government - il Duce, Benito Mussolini. For all the external forms of constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, I presume that every single person there, from the king on down, understood perfectly well who was really in charge and where the direction of public policy was coming from.

I thought of that video this morning as I read Ross Douthat's column in today's New York Times, in which he highlgihts what he calls "the cold reality of 21st-century politics," Europe's progressive abandonment of democracy and national sovereignty to salvage the Euro (which it probably should never have created in the first place) and the even more fundamental, underlying mistake which is the European Union itself.

Sure, it's convenient to cross borders without having to show one's passport all the time; and there can be no doubt that the original Common Market was a wise move, and that a certain level of economic integration is desirable and beneficial for Europe. Being a big believer in the benefits of national sovereignty in modern nation states, however, I have always been skeptical of the larger EU project, especially as its elitist, anti-democratic, bureaucratic character comes more and more to the fore. As Douthat reminds us: "the fact is that the project of European union has never enjoyed deep popular support. Its advocates were always adept at re-running referendums until the vote came out their way, or designing treaties that bypassed the voting public entirely. The people of Europe have always been wary of trading their sovereignty for ever-greater unity — and now we can see why".

History offers many models for organizing human societies, and the modern nation state is only one of them - and a relative latecomer at that on the political scene. I've always believed, for example, that the pre-World War I Austrian Empire was a lot better for that region than the 20th-century Nazi and Soviet horrors that replaced it. Geographically, the original Common Market (of the Six) corresponded fairly closely to the Empire of Charlemagne, a testament to the enduring commonality of Western Euopean culture, as well as to a residual historical sense of connection and the fittingness of the region as a single economic market. No political arrangement - including the modern, democratic, national state - has transcendent significance, and none is beyond criticism or irreplaceable.

Still, that said, the human benefits made possible by the modern democratic national state are enormous. Certainly, one contributing factor to the present social malaise is that, thanks to globalization, the supposedly still sovereign state can no longer so effectively protect people from the consequences of economic inequality as well as it could back in the 20th century. There have been enormous economic benefits to European integration (as there have been world-wide with globalization). But that should not make us any less vigilant about trying to preserve the social, cultural, and just plain human benefits which - in the modern world at least - can only be fostered and protected - by sovereign states. And those are precisely the social cultural, and human benefits least well fostered and protected by supranational, unrepresentative, anti-democratic, militantly secularist, technocratic bureaucracies like the EU.