Saint Nicholas

In California for Thanksgiving last month, as I was helping my mother decorate for Christmas, I took this picture of my old toy Santa Claus, originally given to me by a family friend for my first Christmas in 1948. At that time, it was a new model, and it sang Jingle Bells when you turned the little handle in his back. Old now (like its owner), the handle no longer works, and Santa no longer sings Jingle Bells. But, otherwise, he seems to have held up pretty well these past 65 years!

Our familiar Santa Claus got his outfit and physical appearance from the famous 1823 poem by Clement C. Moore, A Visit From Saint Nicholas (from its opening line now more commonly called The Night Before Christmas). The familiar poem is responsible for many of our popular current conceptions of Santa Claus. But, as the poem's original title leaves no doubt, our Santa Claus is just a variant of a more ancient figure who once really lived, Saint Nicholas, whose feast day is today. The fourth-century Greek Bishop of Myra (in modern Turkey), who attended the great Council of Nicea in 325, was widely venerated for his many miracles as Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker and for his generosity and anonymous gift-giving that eventually made him the model for our Santa Claus. Devotion to Saint Nicholas spread far and wde, and he is considered the patron saint of children (and also of sailors and of Greece, among other people and places). Very popular in Eastern Orthodoxy, he was also widely venerated in the West, where he still comes to give gifts to deserving children - either on his proper day, December 6, or on Christmas. (Spain and Portugal and Latin America have a different tradition of the Three Kings coming with gifts on Epiphany. Italy has its own variant, La Befana, who brings gifts on Epiphany.)

In my 10 years as Associate Pastor at Saint Paul the Apostle in New York, one part of my job was to dress up as Saint Nicholas every year on the Monday after Thanksgiving at what was called "Winter's Eve" - an annual tree-lighting and neighborhood holiday party in the Lincoln Center neighborhood of midtown Manhattan. I would appear in the church to tell the story of Saint Nicholas and distribute Christmas candy. It was always fun, and it gave me an opportunity to reflect on the significance of Saint Nicholas/Santa Claus in the way we celebrate Christmas.

Of course, like anything else, Santa can be misused. His coming can replace the holiday's proper focus on the coming of Christ. His gift-giving can be distorted to reinforce commercialism and greed. That's all true enough. But, as the old saying goes, abusus non tollit usum. Properly part of the total Christmas experience, Saint Nicholas/Santa Claus exemplifies the generosity that should be at the heart of our seasonal gift-giving. Despite being told "you'd better watch out, you'd better not pout," the reality is that Santa seldom skips a visit because a child has been less than perfectly well behaved the past year. He is a good metaphor for generosity that really has little to do with the recipient's merit. As such, he's actually not a bad metaphor for grace, which of course is what Christmas is all about - God's free unmerited gift to us of himself .

Mandela

Challenging times often produce larger-than-life leaders. In the 20th century, the story of the catastrophic world-wide calamity that was World War II cannot be told apart from the heroic leadership of Britain's Winston Churchill and our own Franklin Roosevelt. It has often been observed that few leaders in the post-war era - the whole second half of the 20th century - displayed comparable stature. 

But at least once exception was Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), who died today. Mandela was - to use an absurdly overused and much misused but here appropriate word - the iconic figure of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle. After 27 years of harsh imprisonment, he emerged to lead his people to freedom and create a new nation. His commitment to a peaceful transition to majority rule and the building of a multi-racial society facilitated a degree of reconciliation seldom achieved elsewhere and made possible only by the force of his own personality and his profound moral sense of the meaning and value of honorable reconciliation with one's enemies. As free South Africa's first President, he - like George Washington in another place and time - set the much needed (and seldom seen in Africa) example of peacefully leaving office and handing over power while still alive.

The people of South Africa have lost the Father of their country. The rest of the world has lost a moral model of the use of power to transcend bitterness, to unite rather than to divide - a lesson for all of us in our personal relations and especially for all the leaders and would-be leaders of nations in this new and already so troubled century.

Sacrosanctum Concilium at 50

December 4 marks the 50^th anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the 2^nd Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Perhaps few ecclesiastical documents have had such direct and long-lasting impact upon ordinary Catholic life as this one, adopted at the end of the Council’s second session and on the 400^th anniversary of the conclusion of the Council of Trent.

I was in high school at the time. Our religion teacher assigned us chapters to read and report on to the class. My assingment was (of all things) the chapter on the Divine Office - the chapter that directed pastors "to see to it that the principal hours, especially Vespers, are celebrated in common in church on Sundays and on the more solemn feasts"! )

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was itself the fruit of decades of scholarly study and pastoral development that had already resulted in a number of liturgical reforms – among them, the reform of the Divine Office by Pope Saint Pius X in 1911, the reform of Holy Week by Pope Pius XII in 1955, and the introduction of afternoon and evening Masses and changes in the Eucharistic fast introduced by the same Pope during the 1950s. Earlier Pius XII had also issued the first encyclical devoted entirely to the liturgy, Mediator Dei. The fact that so much preparatory research and reflection on the liturgy had already taken place before the Council undoubtedly helps explain why the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was the very first of the Council’s documents to be adopted.

Sacrosanctum Concilium did not require Mass  “facing the people” (something it never even mentions and which was a legitimate option in the old rite, just as Mass with everyone facing the same way remains a legitimate option in the new). Nor did it mandate Mass entirely in the vernacular, but it did permit “a wider use” of languages other than Latin in the celebration of Mass, the sacraments, and other liturgical rites. Its principal concern was to highlight the centrality of the liturgy in the Church’s life as “a sacred action surpassing all others” and “a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy celebrated in the Holy City toward which we journey as pilgrims.” It declared that “the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the fount from which all her power flows.” For this reason, it sought “to ensure that the faithful take part fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by it.” Hence, the Council’s concern to restore the liturgy in such a way as to promote “the full and active participation by all the people.”

What are some of the specific prescriptions of Sacrosanctum Concilium that have had a major impact on how we now worship? In addition to encouraging “full and active participation,” the Council highlighted the centrality of Scripture in the liturgy, especially in the Liturgy of the Word, and called for “a more ample, more varied, and more suitable reading from sacred scripture.” The eventual result was a completely new Lectionary, replacing the annual cycle of epistles and gospels with a 3-year cycle of Sunday readings, based on semi-continuous readings of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), with a 1^st reading normally from the Old Testament and a 2^nd reading from one of the epistles. On weekdays, every single day now has its own Gospel reading, preceded by a 1^st reading (from either the old or new Testament) alternating in a two-year rotation. The importance of preaching during the Liturgy of the Word was also emphasized. Scripturally-oriented homilies are now the norm on Sundays and holy days (and here in the United States are common on weekdays as well). The Council also required the restoration of the “Universal Prayer,” in which intercession is offered for the varied needs of the Church and the world. The Council also re-introduced the practice of priestly concelebration and showed a modest openness to Communion being offered to the people under both forms. Both these practices are now quite common, much more common now than anyone would have anticipated 50 years ago.

Many of the unexpected changes ordinary Catholics experienced in the aftermath of the Council - for example, the decline in the quality of church music and the free-for-all adaptations introduced by individual priests on their own authority - were unanticipated in 1963 and have no warrant in either the words or the spirit of the Council. Unfortunately, such developments and reactions against them have divided the Church and often made the liturgy into an occasion of conflict and symbol of polarization instead of a sign and source of unity. That said, no one should underestimate the genuine spiritual and pastoral wisdom of Sacrosanctum Concilium and the very real benefits it has brought to the Church.

A different question, of course, is whether those benefits have been sufficient to respond to the Church's contemporary challenges, and the answer to that obviously has to be No. The advantages to be derived from enhancing people's participation in the Mass has to some extent been offset by the decline in attendance at Mass. Nobody anticipated that in 1963, when the Church was still basking in its post-war golden age. It would be unfair to blame the liturgical changes for the decline in Mass attendance. So many secular factors have obviously played a part. But neither have the changes been able to stem the tide of those secular changes. Perhaps some modest "reform of the reform" along the lines of what Sacrosanctum Concilium seems to have intended might have some merit. Perhaps the two currently co-existing forms of the Roman Rite - the ordinary and the extraordinary - could each influence the other for the better, But I suspect such enrichment, while desirable, would be modest, compared with the wider socio-cultural challenges facing the Church and faith itself in our post-modern world. 

As a practical matter, continued quarrels about the liturgy remain destructively divisive and do little to enhance the Church's life or advance her mission. Indeed, as Pope Francis has reminded us in Evangelii Gaudium: "an ostentatious preoccupation for the liturgy ... without any concern that the Gospel have a real impact on God's faithful people and the concrete needs of the present time" risks turning the Church's life "into a museum piece of something which is the property of a select few" (EV 95).

Responding to the immense challenges facing the Church and faith itself in our post-modern world is the task of the new evangelization - to which recent Popes have summoned us and for which Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium is offering us a programatic blueprint. As "the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed," the liturgy is inextricably essential to this new evangelization. As Pope Francis has again reminded us: "The Church evangelizes and is herself evangelized through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelization and the source of her renewed self-giving" (EV, 24).

The Pope and the Economy

When I was an academic (way back when) I liked to theorize about capitalism's negative impact on what I called a "capacity to care." Recalling that now, I was accordingly delighted to see some similar sounding language (actually much better language) in the recent Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, in which Pope Francis speaks of "a globalization of indifference" as "the culture of prosperity deadens us."

Actually, as with so many of the Pope's words, the entire paragraph deserves quoting in full:

54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.

Of course, there is nothing new about popes' pronouncing on economic questions. Popes have been challenging the spirit of capitalism at least since Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum in 1891. Pope Francis is hardly here saying something that is unprecedented in comparison with the pronouncements of his predecessors, in particular some of his more recent predecessors. He is, however, expressing himself in his distinctly personal style, making clear the importance he personally attaches to his words. And, very importantly. this latest critique of capitalist economics comes not in some separate encyclical exclusively about social questions but in an exhortation on evangelization.

The post-conciliar Church, it seems to me, has suffered from a certain unfortunate compartmentalization. Whereas, with the pre-conciliar liturgical movement, for example, an emphasis on good liturgy and a concern for social action often went hand-in-hand, in later decades they became, so to speak, separate specializations. Evangelization likewise has somehow come to be seen as its own separate specialization - in an unintended kind of competition with other ecclesial concerns like liturgy, with social justice, etc. What may be one of Pope Francis's distinctive contributions is how he seems determined to hold all these important elements of Catholic life together.

This is a document about evangelization. It is a challenge to be a Church which “goes forth” ... a Church whose doors are open. It is a challenge to be a Church going out to others in order to reach the fringes of humanity [EG 46]. It seems to me that it is in no way inconsequential that the section I quoted above is part of a larger discussion of economic inequality that follows directly from the Pope's challenge to the evangelizing Church to "go forth." Speaking of where and to whom to go when the Church "goes forth," the Pope takes his inspiration from Luke 14:14 ("blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you") and argues There can be no room for doubt or for explanations which weaken so clear a message. Today and always, “the poor are the privileged recipients of the Gospel”, and the fact that it is freely preached to them is a sign of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish. We have to state, without mincing words, that there is an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor [EG 48].

In situating questions about economics at the center of Church' evangelizing mission, the Pope righty recognizes that it is not his task to offer a detailed and complete analysis of contemporary reality. Rather he exhorts all the communities to an “ever watchful scrutiny of the signs of the times” [EG 51]. It is under that evangelical rubric of scrutinizing the signs of the times that the consideration of economics - of poverty and of inequality - arises. It arises when the Church's mission of universal inclusion collides with the economics of exclusion:

Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape. ... It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”. [EG 53]

One of the particularly regrettable developments in contemporary American religion has been an increased tendency for many of the more religiously-oriented to identify with a type of politics that resonates more with market assumptions and caters to the economically successful. Perhaps the Pope's personal popularity may make it possible for his evangelizing message to break through our current capitalist fog, that seems to have forgotten the priority of society in human existence and the imperative of solidarity in human relationships.

Advent's Call

A friend of mine claims that one of the surest signs of getting older is that the holidays seem to come quicker every year. Whatever! November and December have always been my favorite months of the year. So that’s one part of aging I’m not complaining about!
 

Inevitably, in our contemporary style of life, when Advent arrives we are already immersed in our annual, year-end Christmas extravaganza – Christmas shopping, Christmas parties, Christmas shopping, Christmas cards, Christmas shopping! Advent, with its penitential purple vestments, seems somewhat restrained amid all the holiday exuberance. Our modern holiday season is an exciting, extravagant, celebratory time. In comparison, Advent doesn’t seem to fit.
 

So I think the first thing we have to say about Advent is that it is not in competition with Christmas. Actually, Advent is not in competition with anything – except complacency.
 

In the Church’s calendar, these final weeks of the year, beginning with All Saints Day on November 1 and continuing into Advent, invite us to focus on the coming of God’s kingdom. If November’s emphasis is on a sober consideration of our natural human limits and the eventual end of all things, Advent continues that but with increasing emphasis on the hope-filled joyful expectation of the renewal of all things in Christ. Last Sunday’s celebration of Christ the King already anticipated the final fulfillment of Christ’s promise of eternal life in God’s kingdom.
 

The proximity of Christmas meanwhile invites us to remember Christ’s 1^st coming, which we will soon commemorate on Christmas and which we are already anticipating in all our pre-Christmas celebrations. That 1^st coming challenges us to recognize and respond to Christ’s presence and action among us here and now, which in turn prepares us for Christ’s promised return – Christ yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
 

Ostensibly the most future-oriented of seasons, Advent is thus really a sort of symbol for the entire Christian life, lived (as it inevitably must be) in the present - between the 1^st coming of Christ and his hoped-for final advent. As Christians, we live our lives literally in this interval between Christmas and the end. And that is what Advent is all about.
 

So Advent is not in competition with Christmas. As I said earlier, Advent is not in competition with anything – except complacency.
 

Jesus’ warning words to his disciples in today’s Gospel and Paul’s parallel challenge to the Christians in Rome both reflect this fundamental fact about the Christian life here and now. The point is not when Jesus will come but being ready for his coming – not as something to be put off to some far off future, but as our present preoccupation. The future will indeed come – at its own time and on its own terms – but our task is the present, which is what, in fact, will determine who we will be in the future.
 

As Blessed (soon to be Saint) John Paul II said in 2002: “the whole of our life must be an ‘advent,’ a vigilant awaiting of the final coming of Christ. To predispose our mind to welcome the Lord who, as we say in the Creed, one day will come to judge the living and the dead, we must learn to recognize him as present in the events of daily life. Therefore, Advent is, so to speak, an intense training what directs us decisively toward him who already came, who will come, and who comes continuously.”

Now Advent, as we celebrate it in the Church today, relies a lot on the seasonal imagery of darkness and light that defines this time of year in our northern hemisphere. Folkloric customs like Advent wreaths with their evergreens and candles all attempt to tap into that. Symbolic beings that we are, we readily respond to such imagery. But we must be careful. Advent uses seasonal symbolism to make a point, but Advent is more than some sort of seasonal pageant. The Christian life is not a season, nor is it a play. The world really was in darkness before Christ – the darkness of alienation from God. But unlike natural darkness the world’s alienation from God is not some abstract natural force. We are the ones who have contributed – and continue to contribute - to this world’s darkness. For this reason, Advent was long considered a penitential season. Pope Innocent III even prescribed black as the liturgical color for Advent - although purple eventually beat black to become the season’s official color. Conveniently, purple simultaneously symbolizes both royalty (Christ the King coming in glory) and repentance.
 

The penance appropriate to Advent is, of course, to throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. So, I need to ask myself, exactly what is it that keeps me in darkness? Why isn’t the light of Christ shining forth from me and through me to light up the world around me? Paul’s words challenge us to be attentive to what is happening right now. Living as we do in a culture of institutionalized irresponsibility, Advent’s message is a radical wake-up call to mean what we say - really to throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
 

At Christ's final coming, of course, darkness will be destroyed. Meanwhile, in this interim time – between Christmas and the end – darkness and light coexist, and are in constant conflict.
 

But, as our annual rush to start celebrating Christmas earlier and earlier each year suggests, most of us aren’t very good at waiting. We want to know as much as possible in advance, so that we can rush into the future. The good news of the Gospel, however, is that it is precisely the present that matters. Jesus’ warning about the days of Noah, reminds us how common, how universal, the experience of the present really is. We are still eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage – just as it was up to the day that Noah entered the ark. The fact that the present time is limited just makes it all the more precious, makes it matter that much more. So, stay awake, Jesus warns, be prepared – now - because what I do now, the way I live now, the kind of person I am becoming here and now, that is the kind of person I will be when the Lord comes, and so the person I am going to remain for all eternity.
 

As Pope Francis has written in his recent Apostolic Exhortation: “We become fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being."  (Evangelii Gaudium, 8)

Whatever surprises any of us may be hoping to find under the Christmas Tree this year, the coming of Christ is not one of them. Christ has already come. (If he hadn’t, none of us would be here at Mass today!) The question is whether his presence in our world today matters enough to make a difference in the way we live and what we care about – whether and how we are making the most of our limited but precious present time to become now what we hope to be when he comes again.

Homily for the 1st Sunday of Advent, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 1, 2013.