First Sunday of Lent

Dominica I in Quadragesima B
18 February 2024

ACA Commitment Weekend

 The journey of Jesus into the desert always fills our hearts and minds with a vivid image to begin the Lenten season. Like our Lord, we journey with resolve to be strengthened, knowing we too will be tempted. No doubt, you have chosen something from which to fast during this season, some sacrifice, and you hope that your efforts will not only prepare you for a greater celebration of Easter, but that they will also make you a better husband or wife, a better father or mother, brother, sister, and friend. In short, you hope to be more united to Christ: to renew that Christian identity bestowed upon you at Baptism, and to be a better disciple.  We must constantly repent, renew, and be reformed.

Or, in the case of the catechumens in RCIA preparing for Baptism at the Easter Vigil, you prepare yourself to be baptized and confirmed: at once united to Christ and strengthened to be his witnesses in the world. Today, we celebrate and pray for all Catechumens and Candidates in RCIA preparing to receive these sacraments this Easter as they gather at the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine this afternoon to celebrate the Rite of Election that is, to be chosen for the Easter Sacraments by Archbishop Coakley.

Yes, we begin this season with all our fervor in participating in “the yearly observances of holy Lent,” as we prayed in the Collect at the start of Holy Mass, but a question must arise in our hearts.  That question is, “Am I being ‘driven by the Spirit?”

It’s a detail that is sometimes overlooked in the Gospel, but this year as we read the brief account given by St. Mark, there’s no opportunity for dramatic demonic dialogues to overshadow the surprising fact that Jesus does not simply choose to go to the desert. Rather, we are told, he is driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit! The Gospel said, “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days.” (Mk 1:12)

At the beginning of Lent, am I being “driven by the Spirit”, like Jesus was driven into the desert? Am I taking on Lenten observances inspired by the Holy Spirit?  Was the Holy Spirit part of how I came up with my serious Lenten observances and sacrifices?  In other words, did I even pray, “Lord, what do you want from me this Lent”?  Am I desiring what Jesus desired—to follow God’s will for my life, led by the Spirit—while I face the “wild beasts” and “temptations” that fill the desert of my life?

If we want to be driven by the Spirit, we must first desire to live in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit, referenced by St. Peter in the second reading, is life in the Risen Lord, the fulfillment of the sign of God’s eternal covenant with us, prefigured by the sign of the bow in the clouds which God gives to Noah.  The covenant with Noah is fulfilled in Jesus.  His flesh is put to death by being “drowned” we might say, immersed in the “flood” of bitter suffering and crucifixion for our salvation.  But, the wood of that Cross serves as we might also say, as the ark, the instrument through which his passage lands on “the shores” of the Resurrection. Never again, we heard in that first reading, will the Lord God permit a flood to destroy all mortal beings.  And so, passing safely through the threatening “waters” of the temptations of this life is now accomplished for believers in baptism.  As we heard in the second reading, “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.”  To live in the Spirit, then, means to keep this covenant, and to follow God’s ways.

The covenant cannot be kept alone, however. We must live in the Spirit as the Body of Christ, the Church! The Church connects us to Christ because the Church is the Body of Christ, by which we are joined to Christ our Head, we the members.  The Church gives us the support we need to keep the covenant, and allows his Spirit to move in and through us. But the Church, the Body of Christ, cannot support those seeking to live in the Spirit if we don’t support the Church, if we aren’t living members of the same. We all must do our part to build up the Body of Christ, the Church, ministering to her as the angels ministered to Christ.

As we journey through this Lenten season, may the wilderness within us become a sacred space for transformation. Let the love of God guide us, the teachings of the Lord direct us, and the baptismal waters renew us.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday
14 February 2024 

This holy season of renewal in godly life begins in distinctive fashion with the imposition of ashes.  In a few moments, as ashes are imposed, you will hear the phrase: “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”  I really love how Lent begins with that phrase because I think it is so rich, so packed, with meanings that speak to us of aspects of our faith and salvation history.

First, it speaks to us of a reminder of our creation.  That takes us to the Book of Genesis.  Man was formed from the dust of the earth and God generously blew life into his lungs.  That phrase is a reminder of mortality, and therefore the need for repentance, since we also know that the phrase comes from God’s words to Adam after the Fall.  God spoke to Adam of the consequences of sin and that he would have to labor by the sweat of his brow to provide from the land for his needs.  God said to Adam that one day he would return to dust and uses this very same phrase: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”  This serves as a powerful reminder that there is a God and we are not Him.  We bear the mortality that is a consequence of Original Sin and our personal sins.  We will face judgment and so the reminder of being dust is also a call to repentance.

But there is still even more meaning packed into that inaugural phrase of Lent.  It is not only a reminder of past creation or of the darkness of sin and mortality.  We are a people of hope.  We have hope in the Blood of Jesus in the New Covenant.  And so, this reminder of creation, automatically carries with it a reminder of re-creation.  God’s plan to save us from sin means that the Son has come in our very flesh to restore us, to redeem us, to usher in a new creation.  The phrase calls to mind at one and the same moment, both creation and re-creation.

And thus, that packed phrase, is a call to us to go deeper in our life with the Lord.  We are to repent of what keeps us bound to sin and the mortality of eternal death.  We are to live in the new creation by growing in grace and holiness.  That grace of being recreated by the Lord is something that must be seen and visible in us.  That does not mean that we live grace in order to be seen.  No.  Rather, God’s Word tells us that grace must be made visible.  In St. Paul’s Letter to Titus he writes that the grace of God “has appeared”, that is, been made visible, in Christ (cf. Ti. 3:4).  If we are living in the new creation then likewise redeemed life must be seen in us too.  It must be enfleshed in us.  Holiness must be incarnate in us, following the model of the one who made us new.  And so, Lent is a time for us to put on more fully, like clothing and vesture, the grace of redeemed life.  We are to put on the life of Christ, the New Adam, who has refashioned us for a new creation.  St. Paul writes in the Letter to the Ephesians, “put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24).

When we face all the meanings of that Lenten phrase, we know that we have divided hearts.  We fall for sin and we remain attracted to it, even though the Lord has opened for us the way to salvation.  The call of Lent is to shake off the slumber that speaks to us and keeps us living in sin, apart from God.  We are to uproot those things that are sinful.  And we need to be serious about the disciplines that will help us go deeper in our life with the Lord.  I think the words of the first reading are so appropriate for this call to avoid being superficial but to seek deeper redeemed, recreated life.  The Prophet Joel wrote the words of the Lord: “[R]eturn to me with your whole heart,… Rend your hearts, not your garments.”

Our campaign of Lent has begun.  Our spiritual weapons, both the ones highlighted in Scripture and our additional personal penances and practices, help reform our lives so that we live less in the old ways of sin according to our fallen nature and live more as the new creature in Christ according to the life of grace.

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica III per Annum B
21 January 2024

 In the selection from St. John’s Gospel last Sunday we heard about two of John the Baptist’s disciples, Andrew and an unnamed disciple, and later Simon Peter, who encounter Jesus and begin following him.  You might wonder whether today’s Gospel selection is the same scene, just St. Marks’ version and, if so, you might wonder why would we hear again about the calling of some of those same disciples?  Is it the same calling or not?  And how might we understand the immediate and sudden way in which the selection today tells us those disciples dropped everything to follow the Lord?

Last week’s account and this Sunday’s account are actually two different chronological events.  We know this because last week John the Baptist himself was in the passage, pointing his own disciples to the Lord.  “Behold, the Lamb of God”, he said to his two disciples.  Today we hear of a different moment from St. Mark, for he places it in a different chronological moment.  He writes that the calling we hear about today took place “after John had been arrested.”

We know that John the Baptist himself was a rather serious and dedicated man of God, living in the desert, preaching, leading a disciplined and penitential life, and calling God’s people to repent.  If these same disciples we hear about today were first John’s own disciples, it is reasonable to conclude that they too were rather dedicated, well-formed, and righteous men of God.  While the Scriptures do not give us all the details, we might conclude that after John the Baptist’s ministry ended due to his arrest and eventual death, perhaps those disciples returned to their former homes and way of life and work.  This puts them in Galilee, where they are fishermen in the episode we hear today, and where Jesus now comes to call them himself.  So, if you get the idea from today’s passage that Jesus simply shows up unknown and says “follow me”, and they drop everything to do so… you need not think that.  It is clear these disciples had encountered the Lord before, they had spoken to him, and they had stayed with him some (as John’s selection last week told us).

Jesus’ message that the time of fulfillment and the kingdom of God is at hand resonates with these serious disciples of John the Baptist.  His claim to make them “fishers of men” resonates too.  All of this helps us understand their readiness to immediately follow the Lord.  The term “fishers of men” has a ring to it of a prophecy from Jeremiah 16.  In that text, the prophet speaks of a time when people will no longer speak of how God brought his people out of Egypt in the exodus, but rather how he brought them back from exile, sort of a new exodus, to their promised land.  Jeremiah says that God will send many fishers to gather his people and to bring them back.  This prophecy can serve to signal that some new activity of God, some new movement of His people, would be celebrated.  Something like a new exodus.  It can serve to signal some type of new exodus, a new gathering of God’s people.  When you consider that John the Baptist himself was preparing the way for something new, and pointing to Jesus, and that John was conducting his ministry most powerfully at the Jordan River, where the first exodus ended, we might then understand the immediate attraction and response of John’s own disciples when Jesus shows up, says the kingdom is at hand, and calls them to be fishers of men.  They had been expecting something new, a new exodus, and in Jesus they see it is happening.  And they want to respond immediately.

Do you ever compare yourself to today’s Gospel selection, and that seemingly immediate response of the disciples, and wonder whether you would be willing to follow the Lord so definitely, so conclusively?  I suggest we note that these disciples encountered Jesus initially, and then some time later there was progression and maturation such that they were ready to follow him and commit to him.  In other words, notice that our life as disciples, too, is not about just a one-time encounter.  Our life too is supposed to progress and mature.  The first encounter matters, but so does the next encounter, and the next… all the moments of progression and life with the Lord.  What this can tell us is that any tendency to view life as a disciple as about just one moment, is dismissing the importance of progression and may be a flawed approach.  To put this in a catholic context, if we were to think that my life with the Lord is just about my baptism or just about other isolated moments where I come to get a sacrament (as critically important as those are) and not about progression and maturation in gospel living, then we are mistaken.  If we were to think that I turn on “Jesus time” by coming to Mass once a week and that does it, we are missing all the things that should be happening daily to mark our maturation as disciples.  No, the story of our life as disciples is not the mistaken view of today’s passage that Jesus showed up unannounced and unknown, said “follow me”, and they dropped everything and did so.  Rather, there was first desire on their part to be godly.  There was initial conversion with John the Baptist.  There was relationship with other disciples by which they were pointed to Jesus and had an initial encounter with him.  There was maturation and progression in faith such that they responded so conclusively in the passage we hear today.  And, as we know, there is a whole lot more to the story because those same disciples had to learn from the Master, and there were many more mistakes and repentance that would mark the journey that leads us to now view those apostles as such revered saints.

If you evaluate yourself against the response of the disciples in today’s passage, thinking their response to be this kind of out of nowhere response and think your response may be lacking, then perhaps we can look back to last Sunday’s passage from John for a few pointers.  Do you want to respond more fully to the Lord?  Then let’s take some cues from what happened in the initial encounter with the Lord that we heard about last Sunday.  Like John’s disciples heard, at every Mass we have pointed out to us the presence of Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God.”  After hearing that, are you willing to imagine the Lord asking you (like last week’s Gospel), “What are you looking for?”  Are you willing to dwell on that and respond to the Lord?  What are you looking for in life?  What is important to you?  What are your goals?  What do your daily activities reveal are your true priorities?  And do those match up with your stated priorities?  Are your priorities the Lord and being his disciple?  Where do you feel lacking or empty or not satisfied in life?  Do the things you seek after provide lasting peace?

Next pointer, what was the follow up question from the disciples last week?  “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  Our encounter with the Lord is not just one time.  Are you willing to stay with the Lord to come and see?  We worship the Lord here at Mass.  This provides us some crucial moments to stay with the Lord.  We worship him present when the Holy Eucharist is elevated at the altar for those few moments.  Worthy reception of the sacrament is the fullest participation in the Holy Mass.  But what about more than that?  The disciples from last week’s passage went and stayed that day with the Lord.  What are you willing to do to extend your time with the Lord?  What are you willing to do to take time to reveal yourself and your life to the Lord?  What are you willing to do to take time to encounter him and get to know him, not just at Mass, but in your daily living, at home, and among other disciples?  Going to stay with the Lord can happen quite literally in our adoration chapel where we are in the presence of the Lamb of God, his presence in sacramental form.  What a place to pray!  What a place to ask yourself “What am I looking for?”  Going to stay with the Lord can and should happen, too, in our homes, at work and school, in the car, when we travel, in our thoughts, in our efforts at personal prayer time.  Going to stay with the Lord happens too in fellowship with other believers.  We are not islands unto ourselves.  There we come to vocalize our faith, to share it, to be inspired by the faith of others, and to have help in being accountable with other followers of the Lord.

All of this helps aid progression and maturation in the faith.  It follows the pattern we saw from last Sunday’s Gospel selection to this Sunday’s.  I suggest that the fruit of reviewing those questions from last Sunday’s passage, helps set the stage for the unfolding of this Sunday’s passage in our own lives.  Our encounter with the Lord is nourished and matures such that the stage can be set for what we see in today’s passage.  We are prepared for deeper life with the Lord such that when he calls us to follow him in various ways into the new exodus, we are prepared to conclusively commit ourselves to follow him and to leave behind the “nets”, the things that tangle us and so often get placed ahead of life with the Lord.  The Lord’s call is ever new for us too: “The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

The Epiphany of the Lord

Epiphania D.N.I.C.
7 January 2024

             Things aren’t always as they seem.

            The Israelites at the time period of the first reading could have said that.  They’ve been in exile.  Their land and their holy city are in ruins.  They have lost their power.  Yet God’s word through the Prophet Isaiah is of splendor, glory, riches, and wealth.  The words from the first reading said: “Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! … the glory of the Lord shines upon you … you shall be radiant at what you see … the riches of the sea shall be emptied out before you, the wealth of nations shall be brought to you.”  But their land was in disarray and in ruins.

            Things aren’t always as they seem.

            The Magi – pagan foreigners from the East – came to find a newborn king.  They brought costly gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh into the humble, ordinariness of the home of Joseph and Mary.  Could a mighty king, whose birth even the cosmos celebrates with the Bethlehem star, possibly be in human form, in such a normal, simple setting?

            Things aren’t always as they seem.

            Certainly, part of the lesson of the Christmas season is that through the normal, ordinary events and things of life we are called to see the extraordinary.  Said another way, the ordinary becomes the vehicle to reveal the extraordinary.  Through the natural and human we are to see the divine.  Through natural, sacramental signs – water, bread, wine, oil, words of absolution – we are to see, hear, taste, and touch the power and the presence of Christ.

            I wonder how many times we miss God and His grace because we pass by the ordinary moments of life and faith?  How much grace do we miss because we’re too busy to stop and make time for God’s presence in our midst?

            Shepherds could see the glory of God even through the stench and the sounds of a stable.  Magi could do homage to a king in a humble home and in the form of a weak, tiny baby.  Do we train our eyes to see beyond the way things seem?

            Things aren’t always as they seem.

            Ask yourself what changes you can make in this New Year to notice God’s presence in the ordinary opportunities of daily life.  Engage in that kind of self-reflection not so much to make “New Year’s resolutions”, but to do what we authentically do as Catholics, that is, to do what good catholics do: to repent and to plan for a season of change not far away on Ash Wednesday.  Whatever your age or your state in life, whether you are a child, a teenager, young or older adult, whether you are single or married, ask yourself what changes you can make to train your eyes to see God’s presence in ordinary, humble circumstances.  What change can you make to give time to daily prayer, scripture reading, and time to simply listen to God?  What in your daily schedule can change to give more time and room to God?  Could you alter your schedule some to be able to attend daily Mass at least a bit more frequently?  What in your life needs to change to give more serious attention to repentance and to coming to confession with greater frequency?  Ask yourself what you could change to be able to attend adoration in our chapel or to make your own personal visits to the church to pray before the Lord’s Real Presence in the tabernacle.  That’s perhaps the best example of all of things not being what they seem: our senses see ordinary bread, but it is the real presence of God.  What in your life could change so that you can notice Christ’s presence in those around you in need?  What can you change to offer yourself in service to others in need, to show those in need the compassion, love, and healing of Christ?

            Whether you are young or old and whatever your state in life, what can you change to train your eyes to see God’s presence in ordinary, normal, and humble circumstances of life?  Shepherds could see the glory of God in a stable.  The Magi could see a little baby and give Him homage, prostrating themselves before God-made-man.  What do your eyes need to see beyond the ordinary things of life?  After all, things aren’t always as they seem!

Nativity of the Lord

Nativitas D.N.I.C.
25 December 2023

  At Christmas and throughout the season, we celebrate the feast of the drawing near of God, of God’s coming closer to us.  Even though the most natural and immediate form of human communication is being with another, in his or her presence, sharing time with, and speaking with another, many decades of technological advancements have made the more remote, less personal, type of communication possible.  And not only is that less personal communication possible but, in some cases, dare we admit, more desirable?  Sort of revealing, the lesser angels of our nature.  That we are happy to keep people at a distance.  In addition, to these developments in communication, things have been turned upside down in recent years.  Fear of a global illness caused social distancing and greater space between us, impacting the natural draw and exchange in human relationships.                

But we celebrate the feast of the drawing near of God, of God’s coming closer to us.  In my mind, the meaning of that coming closer is an invitation to put a focus on that most natural way human beings communicate: being personally with another, in the presence of another, sharing time with and speaking directly with another, or just being with another in uncomplicated silence.  Perhaps we moderns, for all of our advantages, can actually suffer a disadvantage precisely due to our advantages.  We can communicate in so many ways and even when such great distances keep us physically apart.  We don’t have to pretend that such possibility isn’t a blessing.  But it can also mislead us.  Because we can communicate so freely and readily, even across great distances, we might be inclined to diminish the meaning of personal communication.  That, in turn, might cause us to miss some of what is at stake in this feast of the great drawing near of God in the flesh.

Though we have many ways to stay connected, there is something different and more natural and fluid about that most immediate communication when personally present with another.  I can recall my excitement years ago as a boy, awaiting the birth of my brother.  For several months I could see that he was near but I couldn’t see him.  I could see the signs in mom’s tummy that someone was there, but there was just enough distance that I couldn’t see him.  There was not much of a barrier between us, just a few inches of flesh, right, but it was enough to prevent that type of more normal personal interaction.  His birth changed all of that.  He had come nearer and that permitted interaction and communication that was entirely new.

Christmas is all about that coming near of God to us in the flesh.  As I think about how physical and personal nearness changes everything, and as I place that in the context of the spiritual life of faith, I see a connection for us to the practice of prayer.  The birth of God in our midst permits an interaction and a communication that is entirely new.  And here is where we moderns perhaps can fall prey to a risk, given all of our impressive means of communication across vast distances.  We miss the natural and immediate value and the necessity of personal time spent with another, such that we might tend to downplay it, preferring the spectacle of communicating across distances.  You can easily see this just about everywhere when you see folks together, in each other’s presence, but everyone’s face is bent down to a phone.  At a restaurant, I sometimes wonder about how we have lost an art of human living, when you see a couple together and each face is lit up by a screen for long periods, such that they rarely interact directly.

  Friends, God has come near to us.  He is Emmanuel, a name which means “God-with-us”.  He has drawn near and by His power as God that personal interaction, and relationship, and communication is possible if we practice it.  And, furthermore, that personal interaction, and relationship, and communication is necessary so that we come close to God in the gift of freedom He has given us.  If we celebrate Christmas, then we should not lose the lesson of developing that intimate, daily, regular encounter with the God who has drawn near to us.  I dare say, a Catholic could do all the group, corporate things we do as a Church, those things we have an obligation to do, but without a personal prayer life, such a person wouldn’t be getting very far in life with God.  In fulfillment of the Lord’s command at the Last Supper, “Do this in memory of me”, and in fulfillment of the divine law in the Ten Commandments to honor God on his day, we have the opportunity and the obligation to be at Mass every Sunday and every holy day.  Yet, I suggest that the catholic could fulfill those obligations yet not reap the full reward of grace if we are not seeking to advance in a daily life of prayer for which we take personal responsibility.  No, we can’t do without the group gathering at Holy Mass; but, even attending Mass, would remain shallow without the personal effort at prayer.  Many a catholic could show up at those times when a new sacrament is offered, only to disappear until the next one is offered.  While God is not cheap in His gift of grace in those sacramental moments, how stilted and undeveloped would those moments be if not for the personal effort to pray and to live that faith beyond just the moments when one “gets” something at Church?

Why would I say this?  Because the meaning of what we celebrate at Christmas is that God, in taking on our flesh and being born in time, has come near to us.  And He has come near so that we can remain near to Him.  There is simply nothing that really adequately replaces the value of being physically and personally with another and to share life.  By His power as God, although the Lord Jesus has fulfilled his physical mission on earth, he can and does remain personally present to us when we work at following the life of regular personal prayer.  Such personal prayer is like preparing the soil of our lives so that all the things we do as a group, all those normal obligations we fulfill corporately as Catholics, has a good place to be planted and to come to bear much fruit.  Prayer prepares the soil.  The Gospel passage (from St. Luke [for the Midnight Mass]) of the events surrounding the birth of Christ places it in a real historical time and place: naming figures like Caesar Augustus and Quirinius the Governor of Syria.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any relationship with them.  They are too far away across the bounds of history.  The closest I can get is to read about them on Wikipedia.  But God coming near in Jesus Christ is different!  Jesus is the good news of great joy proclaimed by the angel.  He is for all the people.  He is the Savior born for us.  He is the sign of a God who has come close so as to be wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in the manger.  Our coming to adore Him is not just what we do here together, as critically important and irreplaceable as that is.  Our adoring of Him involves our equally drawing near to Him in our personal daily prayer wherever we are, in our coming to encounter Him in our adoration chapel, in our striving to be like Him in the moral life, and in our faithful practice of the sacramental life by which He deposits the grace of His life within us.  We must work at personal prayer.  We must be on guard such that modern communication methods don’t result in training us to keep a distance from God, our faces buried in screens and busy with so many things.  May our prayer place us in that posture of physical and personal encounter with God such that we proclaim His glory in the highest, and such that his favor may come to rest on us!

Second Sunday of Advent

Dominica II Adventus B
10 December 2023

 If you can recall how Advent started with last Sunday’s Gospel passage, you might be experiencing some “evangelical whiplash”.  A new liturgical year, a new season, began last Sunday with Advent.  Yet, that weekend’s Gospel was a selection more toward the end of St. Mark’s Gospel and maintained the theme of the coming judgement with the awaited return of the Lord in glory.  This Sunday’s Gospel selection sort of violently throws us back to the opposite pole of Advent.  The selection comes from the first verses of St. Mark’s Gospel and it seems more “advent-y” since we hear of the great Advent figure of St. John the Baptist, and the call to prepare the way of the Lord.  We are back to the beginnings with the Gospel selection this weekend and that can serve as a theme for us and the spiritual renewal we need in Advent to prepare anew the way of the Lord in our own daily lives, in our hearts, our minds, and our souls.

It is clear from the Gospel selection that something about St. John the Baptist’s location, his proclamation, and his appearance hit a nerve such that great numbers of people were coming out to him.  The Gospel tells us that St. John appeared “in the desert” and that he was baptizing people “in the Jordan River.”  The details of St. John’s location can serve as signals that pointed Jews of his time back to the Exodus.  When God began to execute that foundational saving event of the Exodus by bringing His people out of Egypt, where did the Hebrew people go?  They went out into the desert.  They journeyed there 40 years as God sought to train them to break their connection to Egypt, to be trained in His law, and to move away from slavery and toward the Promised Land.  And where did the Exodus end?  It ended at the Jordan River as the twelve tribes crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land.  We can say that the action of St. John is equivalent to calling Jews back to the beginnings of their foundational experience of salvation in the Exodus.  St. John’s preaching and administering of a baptism of repentance at the Jordan River can serve to call God’s people back to this pivotal place in their history and, at the same time, to announce that a new exodus is arriving.  This gospel scene is an opportunity for God’s people to be renewed in their covenant so that they are ready for how God will still fulfill His promises and more perfectly bring about redemption by the arrival of the “one mightier” than St. John, who is to come.  And no surprise, then, that if you read further into the Gospels after Jesus has engaged in his preaching and is nearing his arrival in Jerusalem for crucifixion, that event is marked by the imagery of Passover and exodus.  In fact, St. Luke in the Transfiguration account even indicates that Moses and Elijah appear alongside Jesus speaking to him about his exodus (Lk. 9:30-31).

The ministry of St. John called multitudes back to their beginnings to be renewed in repentance and the forgiveness of sins, so that they would be prepared for the new thing God desired to do by His sacrifice on the Cross and his passage, as through the Red Sea or the veil torn open in the Temple, ushering the way into the everlasting promised land of heaven.  The Gospel selection likewise serves as a call to us to return to our beginnings when we were brought out of slavery to sin, passing through the waters of baptism, and given the hope of crossing that final Jordan into heaven.  We exist in the time of the new exodus accomplished by Jesus.  We have been brought into that most perfect covenant of salvation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We have been redeemed.  Yet, like God’s people returning time and again to the poison of Egypt, we are inclined to sin and struggle to remain alive and faithful to the New Covenant.  We also need to go back to our beginnings. We also need to hear the call to repentance.  We also need the forgiveness of our sins.  We also need to respond in great multitudes to this urgent Advent call to be prepared.  The Lord’s first arrival accomplished the salvation of the Cross and ushered in the power of the sacraments.  We need to remain in that covenant gift and we need to renew ourselves in that fountain of sacramental grace flowing from the Lord’s open side on the Cross so that we are prepared for the Lord’s return in glory and our final passage to the heavenly promised land.

With good reason the Church teaches us that one of the values of confession and sacramental absolution is that we are restored to baptismal grace (cf. CCC 1446).  We are called back to our beginnings in confession.  We are called back to that first gift of the forgiveness of sins.  After baptism we struggle with sin and we are inclined to sin.  After baptism, we commit sins for which we bear personal responsibility.  Such sins also need to be forgiven.  Like St. John’s ministry in today’s passage, we are called back to our beginnings in this holy season.  God is not done with us.  And we must prepare for His return in glory as Judge.  We pray so frequently, even daily, in the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses”.  How foolish it would be to make such a request but then to never return, or to rarely return, to our beginnings where Jesus has indicated his gift of forgiveness and mercy exists, where it is found, is heard with our ears, and where it is granted in the sacrament of confession.

The preaching of St. Peter in the second reading likewise proclaims this call to repentance and the coming day of judgment.  The Lord “is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out…. Therefore, beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace.”

First Sunday of Advent

Dominica I Adventus B
3 December 2023

 The season of Advent calls us to prepare for the Lord.  It calls us to prepare to observe the Lord’s first arrival at Christmas.  Advent also insists that we do not take our focus off of the arrival we still await: the Lord’s return in glory.  This season calls us to prepare space in our lives and to prepare time each day to be with the Lord.  Advent gives us the opportunity in alert, quiet prayer and in repentance from sin to be prepared to meet the Lord.   The type of preparation that disciples do is not narrowly focused only on arriving at some important event, like Christmas Day or Judgement Day.  Rather, the preparation of disciples has a broader focus.  It is a focus on living the faith now consistently; it is a focus on being prepared so as to be ready for some future event; and it is a focus on living beyond that event.  This broader focus may explain in part why at this time of year Catholics celebrate our Christmas joy only after Advent preparations, and why we continue to celebrate our Christmas joy well beyond Christmas Day; whereas, the world has mostly focused on the date of December 25th and has in large part already thrown out the Christmas Tree on December 26th.

This broader focus of Catholic preparation should be familiar to us.  We observe this broader focus all the time, so that we live beyond the event we are preparing for.  We have a time of preparation before baptism so that baptism is understood not merely as a cultural marker or as a static moment, but as a dynamic change of life that requires one to live baptismal commitments long after the wet hair has dried.  When children are preparing for their First Confession and First Holy Communion, it should be clear they are preparing to live those sacraments well beyond the first reception.  A catholic comes again and again to confession so that a catholic can more worthily receive again and again the great gift of the Holy Eucharist in Holy Communion.  Confirmation is not a graduation from living the faith.  It comes as the culmination of first living the faith.  And it is a gift of grace to be strong in being a witness to the Lord as a disciple more united to the mission of the Church.  The final example I’ll offer to demonstrate that a disciple is called to a broad view of preparation is the example of marriage.  I hope I can state with 100 percent agreement that no one would approach marriage with that more narrow view of preparation that focuses only on the wedding day.  Couples engage in marriage preparation for an extended period of time ahead of marriage such that they are strengthened to make their commitments, such that they arrive at the joyful event of the wedding day maximally prepared, and so that they live beyond the event, beyond just the day.  Disciples prepare in such a way to be focused to live a life of commitment in holy matrimony until death do they part.

In fact, as of now I can’t think of any important preparation we do as disciples that is really only about a narrow focus on a moment or an event, or a date on the calendar.  It is all about preparing in advance for an event that we are called to live beyond one solitary moment.  My examples of the type of broad preparation that a disciple must undertake have all been on the sacraments.  I chose that because I think it is familiar and easily understood.  But the point of this is to accept this template of broad preparation and to refer it back to the Gospel and the warnings we hear from the Lord about preparing for his arrival.  Our preparation to be ready to meet the Lord when he comes again must begin now.  Preparing now means we grow in our commitments as a disciple in the present.  In so doing, we gradually and increasingly become the type of disciple who is prepared for that unknown day and hour of the Lord’s return.  By taking up this broader view of preparation as regards the coming judgment, we are then living in a way that has us alert, watchful, and ready for the Lord.  And if that is the case, then we have hope to live beyond the event of his return, for our focus must also be the life to come after judgment.

The gift of Advent comes perhaps when we most need it.  It comes at a time of year that tends to be very hectic.  The advent call to a robust and broad preparation for the Lord comes when stores have us focusing on Christmas since September, with the risk that a focus on the return of the Lord in glory is almost totally eclipsed, so inundated are we about December 25th.  The gift of Advent comes to us in a culture marked heavily by Protestantism, some popular forms of which like to calculate the end times in a narrow focus given mostly to the event of the Lord’s return.  But our focus needs to be broadly on living now and living well our life in the Lord so that we are alert when the event happens, and ready to live beyond it as the Lord ushers in his kingdom.  I always find it curious when a well-meaning Christian spends a good amount of time figuring out the signs of the times and seeming to calculate them.  That is curious because it is directly contrary to God’s Word.  In fact, the very verse before today’s Gospel passage has Jesus indicate that “of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”.  Not even the Son knows!  It is the Father’s secret.  In view of preparing for that arrival of the Lord we still await, the Lord does not want calculation but… “vigilation” – you know, to be vigilant!  In the brief Gospel passage we heard it several times: Be watchful!  Be alert!  Don’t be found sleeping.  Watch!  Only a broadly viewed preparation that begins now adequately addresses that call of the Lord.  The call of the Gospel can serve as an examination of conscience for us.  Are there areas where I am not accepting the teaching of Christ and his Church?  Areas where I am holding onto some opinion or popular thought that is not consistent with authentic Catholicism?  If so, then I am asleep.  Are there areas where my moral choices are not consistent with living well my life in the Lord here and now?  If so, then I am asleep.  Are there areas where I do not practice the sacramental life as I should, leaving myself void of the grace that is the Lord’s gift for my preparation?  If so, then I am asleep.  Is there always time for so many things except a meaningful and vibrant daily prayer life?  If so, then I am asleep.  “May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.  What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch’!”