2010

Twelve months ago, I welcomed the year 2010 from the balcony of a friend's West Side Manhattan apartment, watching the midnight fireworks over Central Park. For all I knew at the time, I would have expected to be back there again tonight - in the same place, celebrating with the same friends. Instead, my 63rd New Year's will likely find me sitting alone in front of the TV in the old Victorian house that has since become my home here in Knoxville.

Taking my cue from the venerable Roman tradition of marking the end of the year with the singing of the Church's ancient hymn of thanksgiving, the Te Deum, I suggested to the congregation at mid-day Mass today that spirit in which to approach New Year's Eve should be primarily one of thanksgiving. To me, New Year's is always ultimately an invitation to hope (as I will suggest once again in my New Year's Day homily tomorrow). Hope, however, has to be based in something substantive, lest it be just optimism, which is another animal entirely. That something, for me, can only be the experience of grace.

The state of the world at the end of the 1st decade of the 3rd millennium is perilous to be sure - more so perhaps than it seemed even a short decade ago, before 9/11, two wars abroad, and the continued deterioration of of our civic community at home. Even so, the human story continues and the evidences of grace are abundant to all those disposed to discern them. And so it is in a spirit of thanksgiving - with genuine joy and gratitude to God - that I look back on this soon-to-expire Year of Our Lord 2010, the year of my first "tender Tennessee Christmas."

And to all who have been a part of my life especially this year - family, friends (especially old friends in New York and new friends in Knoxville), brother priests, fellow Paulists, co-workers in the mission - I wish you all a very blessed and happy new year 2011.

Murder in a Cathedral

On this day 18 years ago, during my first visit to England – a London-based week with a friend from high school - I attended Evensong at Canterbury Cathedral on this feast of St. Thomas Becket (1118-1170), the Archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred at Vespers in his Cathedral on this date. In 1992, it was Becket’s Anglican successor as Archbishop of Canterbury who led the celebration of Evensong, 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 famous event.

We heard the familiar story of how four of King Henry II’s knights demanded that Becket “restore to communion those whom you have excommunicated.” Becket responded, “I am ready to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace.” After the four knights had split off the crown of the martyr’s head, someone put his foot on the dead bishop’s neck and “scattered his brain and blood over the pavement, calling out to the others, ‘Let us away, knights; he will rise no more’.”

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. Sadly, that shrine – his burial place in Canterbury’s Trinity Chapel – is long gone. A new pharaoh, Henry VIII - much more ambitious to control the Church (and everything else) than Henry II had been or probably could ever even have imagined being – destroyed the shrine (and the saint’s relics) in 1538. (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).

The issue which precipitated the conflict between Henry II and his long-time friend is hardly one which would likely endear Becket to too many modern audiences. It involved “benefit of clergy,” the right of medieval clerics to be tried exclusively in church courts rather than civil courts. The underlying principle, that the Church represents a claim on people’s consciences superior to that of any state, still has some resonance in some quarters – but likely less and less. The words of one of Becket’s killers – “No faith, nor subjection do I owe you against my fealty to my lord the king” – have echoed continually through the centuries, seldom louder perhaps than in this most recent one.

The commemoration of St. Thomas Becket’s martyrdom on this 5th Day of Christmas is a serious reminder – amidst all the sentimentality of this season – that the world into which God has become human is a dangerous and challenging world, one in which saying “Yes” to Christ inevitably means saying “No” to (at least some) other options.

That is not to say that one should go around looking for fights! I suspect Becket would have preferred to remain on good terms with his old friend the King, if he could have done so. Being a faithful Christian is not about saying “No” all the time to the world, but about saying “Yes” all the time to Christ. Certainly saying “Yes” to Christ sometimes means saying an unequivocal “No” to the world, but at other times it may mean saying “Yes” – maybe even an enthusiastic “Yes,” or, more likely, a qualified “Yes.”

Speaking about being Christian in the contemporary world in his recently published conversation with Peter Seewald, Pope Benedict XVI emphasized the importance of being part of both, striving “to integrate the two, insofar as they are compatible with each other.” The point, according to Pope Benedict, “is to try to live Christianity and to think as Christians in such a way that it incorporates what is good and right about modernity – and at the same time separates and distinguishes itself from what is becoming a counter-religion.”

The King's Speech

I don't generally think of myself as a movie critic - except insofar as everyone is. But I do like movies and they have become one of my main recreations in my old age. Today, I finally got to see The King's Speech. It's been in limited release in certain cities since late November, but here in Knoxville only since Christmas Day. I had, in fact, originally planned to go and see it late on Christmas Day, but our "White Christmas" intervened, and I thought better of it. Today is bitter cold, but no snow or sleet or ice. So, after the noon Mass, I drove to the only movie theater in reasonable distance that was showing it.

It was worth the wait. All the actors turned in great performances, but especially the two principals - Colin Firth as "Bertie"(HRH, the Duke of York, later King George VI) and Geoffrey Rush as his idiosyncratic speech therapist, Lionel Logue. Helena Bonham Carter also does a great job at the Duchess of York, whose actual historical role in helping her husband was even greater than is obvious in the film, which is largely focused with the dynamic of the personal relationship between the therapist and his royal patient.

Apart from a few dubiously historical minor scenes (e.g., a conversation with Winston Churchill that hardly reflects the historical fact that at the time Churchill was more a supporter of Edward VIII), the film rings true to what is known historically. The true story of a man of limited talent from whom little was expected, - a man utterly lacking in charisma and used to being overshadowed by his glamorous elder brother, but loved by his supportive wife and children, who overcomes his limitations through heroic effort - such a story, if well told and acted, is the sort of story almost certain to be well received. That it is a true story and that it mattered not just for one man and his family but for a nation on the verge of a war for its very survival give it a grandeur that goes beyond sentimentality.

In the process, it provides a useful civics lesson on duty - highlighted by the contrast with the glamorous but unworthy older brother, King Edward VIII.

Finally, the film highlights how modern technology - radio, then - has impacted political leadership and burdened it with the expectation of celebrity and personal charisma, a development that has been vastly exacerbated in the 65 years since the end of the war. Since this was, after all, the "greatest generation," duty, dedication, and integrity trumped celebrity and charisma (and Western Civilization was saved in the process). Could that happen today?

The 2nd Day of Christmas

Back when the Christmas season really began on December 25, the 12 days from Christmas until Epiphany Eve really were "the 12 Days of Christmas." Today is, of course, the 2nd Day of Christmas. In the song, one's "true love" (God) is supposed to give one "two turtledoves" (representing the Old and the New Testaments) today. Mainly what we've gotten here in Knoxville today has been more snow, which has made this "tender Tennessee Christmas" the whitest Christmas in years.

In Canada, where I was for six happy years, the day after Christmas is called "Boxing Day," after the British fashion. In those Catholic countries where December 26 is still holiday, I presume it is known as "St. Stephen's Day," after St. Stephen, the first martyr, whose feast day it normally is. Since 1969, the Roman calendar has assigned the feast of the Holy Family (previously celebrated in January) to the Sunday between Christmas and January 1. So that is what the hardy worshippers who made it to Mass got to observe today.

It's a thoroughly modern, notional feast - dating back only to Pope Leo XIII's 1892 Apostolic Letter Neminem Fugit, which dedicated Christian families to the Holy Family. In an age when so many social institutions increasingly seem to be in disarray, there has been a corresponding impetus to uphold somehow the primordial institution of the family. Of course, the modern "nuclear family" (one father, one mother, and one or more children biologically belonging to that couple) is only one representation of the more complex and varied experience of "family" in human history, and even today may appear less and less typical in this age of divorced and "blended" families, single-parent families, unmarried straight couples (with or without children), gay couples (with or without children), etc.

For most of human history, the family unit (whether "nuclear" or "extended") has served as the fundamental social institution through which society institutionalizes its commitment to the next generation - an important value for any community which hopes to have a future. In all the current noise about the form and structure of family life, that is a value no society can afford to lose sight of.

That said, of course, for Jesus - and, therefore, for the Church - the kingdom of God takes us beyond the immediate inter-generational social unit of the family and commits us to a larger community in which our new relationship with one another in Christ entwines us in a whole new network of relationships, necessarily wider and more inclusive than any family unit.

Situated at the heart of the Christmas season, the contemplation of the Holy Family fits easily into the family-centered sentiments that are so much a part of our contemporary Christmas. But it also invites us to consider the great theme of the incarnation, what Christmas is ultimately all about, the divine Word becoming part of our fragile and (as today's gospel illustrates) frightening world as one of us. Born into a human family, with a mother and an adoptive father, Jesus highlights for us the significance of the ordinary, day-to-day networks of relationships of which we are a part - and must be part of if we are to survice in our world. It is within families of all shapes and sizes, as well as other sorts of relational networks revolving around work, neighborhood, nation, etc., that we must live now so as to become who we will be in eternity.

Christmas Day

“Christmas comes but once a year – which is unhappily too true, for when it begins to stay with us the whole year round we shall make this earth a very different place.” So spoke the narrator in one of Charles Dickens Christmas stories, The Seven Poor Travellers. As with all good Christmas stories – including the more familiar Dickens story A Christmas Carol – while a lot happens during the night, it’s on Christmas morning when it all seems to come together.

When I was growing up, Christmas morning followed a set, perfectly predictable pattern. It was a ritual really. We kids got up, bright and early, and woke up our parents. Then all of us (including my grandmother, who as always was awake and up before any of us) went into the living room, lit the Christmas Tree, and immediately began opening the abundance of presents so neatly arranged under and around the tree. Before long, there were gifts - and torn wrappings and ribbons - all over the place. After that, it was time to get dressed and go to Mass, then breakfast, then more time with our toys, before bundling up for the trek to Westchester for an Italian Christmas feast at my uncle’s mansion. (It was actually a typical 1950s suburban home. But, since my uncle was the only relative around, who actually owned his own home, it seemed like a mansion to us).

Times have changed since then, to be sure, but people everywhere (including, no doubt, many in this church this morning) will be doing similar things today – visiting relatives and friends, and, of course, giving gifts and receiving presents in return. Perhaps, some of those visits will not be as wonderful as we would wish – whether for the visitors or for those being visited. Not all the gifts will be appreciated, and some will be returned to the store in search of something better, bigger, or brighter. Our modern Christmas is a lot of work, and it can exhaust even the hardiest reveler. Even worse, with all the emphasis on satisfaction and consumption, a lot of folks can get left out, and end up feeling, if anything, even more lonely or more poor on Christmas than at any other time. We all know that. Still, Christmas is, as Dickens again so delightfully described it: “a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time … on the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open up their shut-up hearts freely.”

Now, of course, we all know how difficult opening our “shut-up hearts” can be. Hence the perennial appeal of every Christmas story that confirms Christmas’s peculiar power to do just that – whether for Ebeneezer Scrooge in Victorian London or the Grinch in 20th-century Whoville. In my own favorite Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th Street, Kris Kringle somehow gets all sorts of people to believe in him and be reconciled with one another – simply by doing just the sorts of things all those other people would have been completely incapable of doing on their own, had it not been for his presence in their lives, changing their entire world.

Christmas – the authentic Christmas that unites us together in this church this morning – challenges us (to paraphrase C.S. Lewis) to believe that, in a world like ours, the Son of God became a man – and then to imagine what must happen as a result!

We already know – all too well – what would happen in our world without him! How much have you loved us, kind Father, exclaimed St. Augustine. If your Word had not become flesh and had not dwelt among us, we would have had to believe that there was no connection between God and humanity and we would have been in despair. At best, we would have been like the merchants in Miracle on 34th Street (and all the other ordinary people in the film) completely incapable of opening up our “shut-up hearts,” desperately in need of someone special to do it for us.

Christmas challenges us to believe that the Son of God is really present in our lives, transforming our world, doing it for us – and then to act on that belief and imagine what must happen as a result!

Christmas challenges us to believe what we just heard in the letter to the Hebrews – that God has in these last days spoken to us through his Son, through whom he created the universe and who sustains all things by his mighty word – and then to imagine what must happen as a result!

Christmas challenges us to believe (if I may quote St. Augustine one more time) that he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time – and then to imagine what must happen as a result!

Christmas challenges us to act on the belief that all this has already happened – that God has spoken to us through his Son, that the Word has become flesh and does dwell among us, in our own short day of time.

In Dickens’ story The Seven Poor Travellers, the narrator, continuing on his way on Christmas morning, said he “felt as if all Nature shared in the joy of the great Birthday.”

“Going through the woods,” he continued, “the softness of my tread upon the mossy ground and among the brown leaves enhanced the Christmas sacredness by which I felt surrounded. … I came to the village, and the churchyard where the dead had been quietly buried, ‘in the sure and certain hope’ which Christmastime inspired. What children could I see at play, and not be loving of, recalling who had loved them! No garden that I passed was out of unison with the day, for I remembered that the tomb was in a garden … In time, the distant river with the ships came full in view, and with it pictures of the poor fishermen, mending their nets, who arose and followed him, - and of the teaching of the people from a ship pushed off a little way from the shore, by reason of the multitude, - of a majestic figure walking on the water, in the loneliness of night. My very shadow on the ground was eloquent of Christmas; for did not the people lay their sick where the mere shadows of the men who had heard and seen him might fall as they passed along?"

“Thus Christmas begirt me, far and near … toward the lights of London. Brightly they shone, but not so brightly as my own fire, and the brighter faces around it, when we came to celebrate the day.”

Among us too, this Christmas morning, the kingdom of God is being born, breaking into our otherwise ordinary and self-enclosed world and offering it the precious possibility of hope. So, when the last carol has been sung and we disperse from here to our happy homes and holiday meals (or, perhaps, as so many in our world, to a somewhat sad or lonely home or a modest, maybe even meager meal), may that same precious and powerful hope move us - and so transform our frustration into fulfillment, our sadness into joy, our hatred into love, our loneliness into community, our rivals and competitors into brothers and sisters, and our inevitable death into eternal life.

All this, because we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas!

Homily for the Mass of Christmas Day, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 25, 2010.