Old Year/New Year

The other day, I heard some TV personalities talking about how no one ever has fun at New Year's Eve parties. Whether that is actually true at the kind of high-end parties people like them get invited to, I cannot say, since I'm obviously not in that social class.  Only the privileged get to disdain the privileged lifestyles that the rest of the world only gets to envy. My New Year's Eves are usually spent alone. So I probably wouldn't mind the company!

Still focused on Christmas, the Church's liturgy does not formally celebrate the passing of the old year and the arrival of the new. Pius Parsch claimed that this was because "The Church in her mysteries already lives on the timeless level of eternity." It is, however, traditional to sing the Church's ancient hymn of thanksgiving, Te Deum, on the last day of the year. (Since Blessed John Paul II, this has become a standard part of the public papal calendar.)   Just how old this tradition is, I don't know. I did find a detailed Latin rubric for it in a 1942 edition of the Rituale Monasticum. It seems safe to assume the custom was already a long established tradition well before then. 

An unhistorical but edifying legend ascribes the Te Deum's composition to Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine on the occasion of the latter's baptism by the former in 387. Traditionally, it was sung or said at the end of Matins, more or less on days when the Gloria would be said at Mass. (With some exceptions, that is still roughly the case, although the number of days that call for the Te Deum and the Gloria have been significantly reduced in the Paul VI Missal and Breviary.) 

The Te Deum is a prayer of praise, focused on the big picture of salvation history. It incorporates the whole Communion of Saints in praise of the Trinity. In a kind of creedal formula, the hymn proclaims the incarnation, the redemption, and Christ’s glorification at his Father’s right hand, from which he will return as judge. It ends then in petition that we may join the saints in everlasting glory. 

Reciting the Te Deum today, the motive for thanksgiving is, first and foremost, the great things God has done on our behalf and the lasting community we have become a part of as a result. That fits, I suppose, Parsch's claim about the priority of eternity. But eternity also incorporates what Saint Augustine famously called "our own short day of time." ("He who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time," Sermon 185.) 

It is in this "our own short day of time" - now invested with incomparable importance and significance by the Incarnation - that we are all challenged to be thankful, to find occasion for thanksgiving in the highs and lows of our ordinary time, in this Year of our Lord 2013 that is now fast ebbing away.

Personally, as I look back with gratitude at 2013, I am thankful, first of all, for having made it this far - 65 in 2013; God willing 66 in 2014! That's more years than most of humanity has ever had. And they have left me with a treasury of memories (not all good to be sure, but many very good) and a treasury of relationships (some sadly now only remembered, others still real and enriching my life). Looking back over 2013, I am thankful for yet another blessed year of ministry as a priest, for my parish, for the diocesan presbyterate of which I am privileged to be a part and in which I have been called to a ministry of leadership, for my religious community which supports and sustains me in mission and friendship, and for family and friends far and near who help me be who I am at my best.

To all, everywhere, Happy New Year 2014!

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Like the two-faced Roman god, for whom the first month of the year is named, New Year's inevitably invites us to look both ways - to look back at what has transpired and to look forward to what lies ahead. A standard fare of news programs and publications, the year-end retrospective has survived into the changed media environment of the new century because it responds so precisely to the complex of emotions the turn of the year unavoidably unleashes.

The year that began in the afterglow of the 2012 election held out the hope that Washington's political fever would break, that the minority party would accept the popular will and work with the majority to govern. Once again, however, dysfunction would reign supreme in Washington, as society remained hopelessly polarized by ideological divisions. Even immigration, the issue progress on which seemed  so promising and on which the Senate actually did produce bi-partisan progress, still languished unresolved at year's end. At home, another government shutdown seemed to confirm the country's steady decline into "banana republic" status, a status reflected also in the increasing crisis of inequality as the once widely shared promise of the American Dream became increasingly elusive. Abroad, America's status and role as the world's superpower seemed further compromised by the sorry spectacle in Washington and by a war-weary, increasingly inward-looking society's inability to provide effective international leadership, most obviously in the case of Syria. 

But the biggest news story of 2013 left secular politics behind. The surprise resignation of Pope Benedict XVI broke new historical ground and upended established expectations. Seen in secular, political terms, it was a story that could easily have reinforced a growing popular impression of the Church's weakness. Yet, the world was about to see the ultimate inadequacy of such secular, political analyses about the Church. The election of Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, the first Jesuit pope (and the first in centuries from any religious order) might have seemed news enough. But even all of that has seemed secondary to the positive impact Pope Francis has had personally on the world. Celebrity, of course, is a two-edged sword and can cut both ways. Some of his secular admirers will likely be disappointed by the deep substantive continuity that is at the heart of the Church's life. But the Pope has captured the world's attention in no small part simply by being disarmingly genuine - not unlike his famous namesake. And both in his actions and in his words (especially his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium) he is very pointedly challenging the entire Church to break out of caricature, to free ourselves from the ever-growing influences of individualism, consumerism, and libertarianism, and to embrace again the perennial challenge to exemplify what we profess and so be able to bring good news to our hurting world. 

To the extent that the Church's energies are effectively mustered at all levels in support of this effort - in individual lives, in parishes, in religious communities, among Bishops, and in the Synod of Bishops - that will be the truly important story of 2014.

Holy Refugees

On Christmas, I spoke about a book, Mr. Ives’ Christmas, the hero of which had been significantly shaped by his experience of being abandoned as a baby, then raised in a Foundling Home, and finally adopted one subsequent Christmas – all of which had left him with an intense desire for a family of his own, a theme that permeates the entire book.

Everybody begins life (biologically at least) as a member of a family. Families come in all kinds, of course, and in all shapes and sizes, but family life in some form is universally the basic unit of social organization. And for most people it is the focus of their day-to-day lives. Even those of us without families of our own treasure our extended family relationships and family-like connections. “The family is the wellspring of all fraternity,” Pope Francis has written in his New Year’s Message, “it is the foundation and the first pathway to peace, since, by its vocation, it is meant to spread its love to the world around it.”

One of the striking things about God’s relationship with the human race, as revealed in both the Old and the New Testaments, is how it is largely a series of family stories - beginning with the creation of a family, from whom the whole human race is descended. Then, after several generations during which things seem to go from bad to worse, God singles out one particular family to be his agent for renewing his promise to the entire human race. The rest of the Old Testament follows the story of God’s promises to Abraham’s and Sarah’s descendants, culminating, in the New Testament, in the homeless, immigrant family, known ever since as “the Holy Family.”

We’re all familiar with countless artistic portrayals of the Holy Family. It’s safe to say there are more portraits of the Holy Family than of any royal family, let alone any ordinary family. And, of course, we have them here on display in the familiar Christmas scene. Such nativity scenes invite us to appreciate the circumstances of Christ’s birth, to consider the concrete reality of God becoming one of us, a human being like ourselves.

But, of course, nativity scenes are also somewhat artificial. The figures appear frozen in time. All the participants who came and went at different times in the actual story all appear together and seem stuck in one moment. And, of course, we have so sentimentalized the story that, even though we are staring at a less than optimal setting in which to give birth under obviously sub-standard conditions, we hardly think at all about that aspect of the story.

And yet, if we but read the Christmas story as told by Matthew and Luke – certainly if we do so without passing it though the filters of holiday sentimentality, if we read it as if we’d never heard any of it before – then what do we find? An unmarried teenage girl is inexplicably pregnant, but her fiancé marries her anyway, based on a dream he had. She gives birth far from home, in a barn, with some animals for company and some strangers for visitors. In the ancient world – indeed for much of human history in most of the world – childbirth was a dangerous, life-threatening experience. Assuming mother and child both made it safely through that, there were further threats in the form of diseases that carried away both rich and poor. And, of course, most people were poor, and so everyone in a typical family – adults and children – lived close to the margin, often hungry or in danger of becoming so. And if you were poor – then as now - you were almost certainly also politically powerless, and that could pose problems too – as it definitely does for the Holy Family in today’s Gospel reading. It should not challenge our imagination to picture the Holy family’s situation. Our contemporary world is full of political refugees. We think of the especially tragic situations in Syria and parts of Africa and all the people those conflicts have displaced, perhaps permanently. But, right here in our own country, we also have immigrants who came here to escape political persecution or oppression. That’s what Jesus, Mary, and Joseph had to do, immigrating to Israel’s ancient enemy Egypt, to escape King Herod the Great’s “killing fields.”

Many families – then as now – experienced similar problems. The Incarnation wasn’t some sentimental novel.  When for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven (as we say so routinely in the Creed), it was for real. God became one of us, part of our world, a member of a family, a family struggling to make ends meet from crisis to crisis.

I remember a friend of mine, talking to me about the challenges of being a parent, saying that he thought the fact that the human race has survived at all is itself a tribute to how families have struggled, stuck together, and pulled through.

Of course, the Holy Family had some special help – Joseph’s dreams, for example. But, if the Incarnation means that in the Holy Family God himself has experienced and identified himself with our lifelong stresses and insecurities, then the corollary also follows from that – that God is present with us too, to sustain us in our stresses and insecurities. And even without any special dreams, we do have God’s word directing us to stick together and support one another – as the saying goes, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health. We have God’s word directing us to put on, as Paul says, heartfelt compassion, kindness humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 29, 2013.

The Saints Speak at Christmas

All but one of the six intermediate days between Christmas and New Year's are associated with specific saints. In fact, in the old calendar, even Christmas Day included a "commemoration" at the Second ("Dawn") Christmas Mass - of Saint Anastasia, martyred during the persecution of Diocletian. So, until recently, six of the first seven days of Christmas commemorated saints - Anastasia, Stephen the Protomartyr, John the Apostle and Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, Thomas Becket (1120-1170), and Sylvester I (Pope 314-335). It is noteworthy that, apart from John and Sylvester, all are martyrs, which surely suggests something about the centrality of martyrdom in Christian life and in the Church's history. Note also how, apart from the Holy Innocents, none have any particular connection with Christmas. Saints Anastasia, Thomas, and Sylvester all just happened to have died on December 25, 29, and 31 respectively. Even so, all of them by their lives - and in the case of the martyrs by their deaths - gave eloquent witness to the consequence of Christmas, to the impact of the Incarnation, of the Word becoming flesh in our human world. And, of all these saints, only one of them, Thomas Becket, ever actually celebrated Christmas.

The new calendar de-emphasizes Becket and this year (when December 29 will occur on a Sunday) ignores him completely. But he remains one of my great favorites. The commemoration of his martyrdom on the 5th Day of Christmas is a serious reminder – amid all the cheery sentimentality of this season – that the world into which God chose to become human is a dangerous and challenging world, one in which (as I have been known to say in homilies) saying “Yes” to Christ inevitably means saying “No” to (at least some) other options.
 
It was on the occasion of my first visit to Britain during Christmas Week 1992 – a London-based holiday with an old friend from high school - that I attended Evensong at Canterbury Cathedral on the actual feast of St. Thomas Becket, thus marking not only the date but the very hour of his martyrdom. Becket’s Anglican successor led the celebration, the highlight of which came at the end of the service when the Archbishop led the congregation down to the exact site of St. Thomas’s murder, where we listened to a contemporary medieval account of the infamous event.

Quickly canonized within three years of his death, Becket rose to become one of the Church’s great heroes in the perennial conflict against the ambition of secular power. Famously, his shrine at Canterbury also became one of medieval Europe’s popular pilgrimage sites. Then in 1538 a new pharaoh, Henry VIII - much more ambitious to control the Church (and everything else) than Henry II probably could ever even have imagined being – destroyed the shrine. (A candle now burns on the bare floor marking the site of the former shrine, and a modern altar adorns the location of his martyrdom). 

On the specific issues which precipitated the conflict between Becket and Henry II, the modern state has long-since staked its claim and won. The underlying principle, however, that the Church represents a superior claim on people’s consciences than that of any human loyalty still stands as a perpetual challenge to the worldly ambitions of states, societies, and cultures - certainly no less so today than in ancient and medieval times.

On Christmas Day 1170, Thomas, only recently returned from exile, celebrated Pontifical Mass in a packed Canterbury Cathedral. He based his sermon on Luke 2:14 - the song of the angels to the shepherds. But the peace he spoke of was definitely not a worldly one. During his sermon, he is said to have alerted his audience to the imminent possibility of his own martyrdom, invoking one of his famous Anglo-Saxon predecessors, Saint Alphege, who had been abducted by Viking raiders in 1011 and then martyred on April 19, 1012. He would again invoke Saint Alphege, commending both himself and the Church's cause, four days later just before the first sword struck his head, .

In an "Interlude" in his famous play, Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Elliot recreated Becket's Christmas sermon. Elliott's Becket devotes about half of his sermon to the meaning of martyrdom. "A martyrdom," Elliot's Becket says, "is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr. So thus as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, and are seen, not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being." Subtly resonating with the words of the ancient Christmas Preface, Becket's sermon identifies martyrdom with an analogous self-emptying to what we celebrate in the Incarnation.

In Elliot's sermon, Becket goes on to invite his congregation to remember his sainted predecessor Saint Elphege - "because, dear children, I do not think I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last."

 

Christmas Continues

Practically everyone can comfortably sing along with The 12 Days of Christmas. It can get confusing towards the end, as there are different versions in which the pipers piping, drummers drumming, ladies dancing, and lords a-leaping arrive in different order. But, other than that, it's an easy carol to join in and actually invites popular participation. It also reminds us that the real Christmas continues for quite some time after December 25.

For some that may mean taking vacation time as if one were still in school. For others it may mean a frenzy of bargain-hunting at post-Christmas sales that rival the pre-Christmas shopping binge. For still others, it may mean continued catching up with family and friends one didn't get to see on Christmas Day itself. There are, in short, many ways to acknowledge that Christmas continues.

On this 2nd Day of Christmas, the Church holds up of to us the figure of Stephen, one of the "Deacons" of the Apostolic church, the first martyr, whose martyrdom is edifyingly recounted in Acts 6-8. This is the famous "feast of Stephen" on which the events recounted in the carol Good King Wenceslaus take place. Saint Stephen today, Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist tomorrow, and the Holy Innocents the next day form a unique post-Christmas triduum. In a typical example of a certain style of medieval symbolic interpretation which may strike us moderns as much too forced, Saint Bernard saw three different expressions of martyrdom on display this week - Stephen a martyr in both will and deed, John a martyr only in will, and the Holy Innocents martyrs only in deed. 

Not quite so forced is the connection drawn by Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe (468-533) between Christmas and Saint Stephen's Day: "Yesterday we celebrated the birth in time of our eternal King. Today we celebrate the triumphant suffering of his soldier. Yesterday our king, clothed in his robe of flesh, left his place in the virgin's womb and generously visited the world. Today his soldier leaves the tabernacle of his body and goes triumphantly to heaven."

Obviously, Stephen never celebrated Christmas. But his life and death effectively exemplified how Christmas continues in the lives and deaths of the saints. Stephen's final words, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (Acts 8:60), uniquely unite his death with that of Jesus himself

Important as it may be in its own terms for us to continue Christmas, celebrating it seriously through at least Epiphany, it is even more important to continue Christmas all year long and all life long - not with trees and lights and carols and presents, obviously, but with the confident conviction of the shepherds, who made known the message that had been told them and who returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. What would be a better New year's resolution?