In the Desert

This Tuesday, the Church celebrates one of our most popular saints, St. Nicholas (nowadays best known as Santa Claus). St. nicholas was a 4th-century Bishop known for his generosity. In those countries where St. Nicholas still comes to bring gifts on his actual feast day, his appearance is a sure sign that Christmas is coming soon. Here in the United States, where his arrival is delayed until Christmas, I guess we’ll all have to continue on our best behavior a few more weeks! (Right now, he’s making his list and perhaps checking off how many times we absentmindedly say “And also with you”!)

Of course, St. Nicholas is not the only figure whose annual appearance heralds the coming of Christmas. From the harsh Judean desert, John the Baptist returns each Advent, as we hear his shrill voice shouting up and down the Jordan Valley: “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

In The Wizard of Oz, the Good Witch wisely advised Dorothy “to begin at the beginning.” That is exactly what the Church invites us to do today as it announces: The beginning of the gospel [that is, the “good news”] of Jesus Christ, the Son of God [Mark 1:1]. We are, literally, at the title page of Mark’s Gospel, a title that tells us the central facts of the Christian story. Jesus is the Christ, that is, the Messiah, God’s Anointed One. In Jesus, God himself has come among us. And it’s all supposed to be good news.

All the more noteworthy, therefore, that the story doesn’t actually start with Jesus, but begins instead with John the Baptist, who appeared in the desert – almost, as it were, out of nowhere. The result is that every year at this Advent time, the Church takes John the Baptist out of storage, so to speak, so he can try to outshout the deafening din of our ordinary everyday noise and our holiday pandemonium, with his ancient and ever timely warning, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”

For most of us, I suspect, John the Baptist seems a somewhat mysterious, elusive figure. He appears, ever so briefly, as a kind of warm-up act at the beginning of Jesus’ public life. Then, when we’ve barely even gotten to know him, he gets himself arrested – and is soon dead.

Were we today to encounter such an apparently odd-looking character, clothed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey, chances are that many – maybe most - might try to ignore him. Fortunately, that did not happen the first time John’s jarring message was heard in the land. On the contrary, so we are told, the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan River as they

acknowledged their sins. What, one wonders, did they see in John that we cynical, sophisticated moderns and post-moderns might be more tempted to ignore? Whatever it was that they saw, the point is that they listened and acted. They acknowledged their sins. So, when we hear him now, our task too is to listen – so as to act on what we hear.

One thing we know they saw in John – or hoped they were seeing, or perhaps feared they were seeing – was another prophet Elijah. The Christian Old Testament, ends with these words of the prophet Malachi: Lo, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and terrible day, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with doom [Malachi 3:23-24]. (I keep looking for a Christmas card with the words of that Advent prophecy, but so far haven't found one!)

The key word in Malachi’s prophecy is, of course, lest. Elijah’s role is to make the day of the Lord a day not (what it would otherwise be) a day of doom, but a day of blessing. The gospels record elsewhere that Jesus himself saw in John the fulfillment of this prophecy. So, however shrill John may sound to our super sensitive ears, attuned as we are to very different kinds of marketing appeals, we need now to hear his call to repentance for the forgiveness of sins as an invitation to the true blessing that Christmas offers.

John’s mission, as clarified by the Gospel’s reference back to Isaiah’s prophecy [Isaiah 40:1-5], was about filling in valleys, leveling mountains and hills, and repairing whatever is rugged and rough – picturesque, ancient imagery that suggests not environmental catastrophe, but fixing things. For us it suggests facing up to all those gaps and flaws and failings and sins in our personal lives, in our relationships, in our work, and in our world, and allowing God to lead us in fixing them. It’s a challenge we may be tempted to try to evade - but dare not, for, as Isaiah says so pointedly: Here is your God.

Advent invites us to prepare the way of the Lord – not just as some abstract idea, detached and divorced from whatever else is going on in our lives right now, still less as just another item to be worked on in some ever-lengthening list of things to be done before Christmas. Rather, the point of Advent is to let the anniversary of Christ’s 1st coming concentrate our attention on his actual presence among us in the here and now and so prepare us for his final coming for which we say we wait in joyful hope. The challenge of Advent is to transform our anxious and fear–filled present that hopeful future promised by Christ’s 1st coming in the past.

Advent challenges us set aside our self-destructive sophistication and internalize John the Baptist’s invitation in every aspect of our lives and so bring John the Baptist’s message into the very heart of our society – through our participation in the community of the Church, a community acutely conscious of Christ’s coming and eager to share him and so remake our conflicted, anxiety-ridden world.

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 4, 2011.

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!