Holy Family

Readings: Genesis 15:1-6; 21:1-3; Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19; Luke 2:22-40

VIDEO

My son and his wife are awaiting the birth 
of their first child, any day now.
More importantly, 
my wife and I are awaiting the birth 
of our first grandchild, any day now.

Awaiting the birth of a child—
or a grandchild—
is a funny thing.
You know that this will be
a life-defining relationship:
this person you are waiting to meet
will be someone who, God willing,
you will know for the rest of your life;
this person will play a role in your life
unlike any other.
Your anticipation is so intense,
you feel as if you already know them.

In fact, however, you know very little
about this person you are awaiting.
What will they look like?
Will they be tall or short?
Slight or stout?
What will their personality be like?
Will they be quiet and bookish
or an extroverted thrill-seeker,
or—what is most likely—
will they possess a unique combination 
of interests and talents and quirks and traits
that combine to make them 
completely and utterly themselves?

You have some ideas, 
some guesses you can make
based on family traits and interests,
the lineage from which the child comes
and the environment in which they will grow.
But, to utter what may be 
the biggest understatement ever, 
children have a way of surprising you.
Their lives take paths unexpected 
as they become the person they will be,
paths that are not set for them
by their parent’s hopes and dreams.
And so you await a stranger
whom you must come to know,
someone who remains a mystery 
that must unfold itself in time.
This is why parenting
is one of life’s great adventures.

In today’s Gospel, 
Simeon and Anna also await a child.
The child they await is not their child,
nor even their grandchild,
but it is still a child of their family:
for they are Jews,
descendants of Abraham,
and the child to be born 
is to be the fulfillment 
of the promise made by God to Abraham
that through him and his offspring
all the families of the earth 
would be blessed;
the child they await will be 
the consolation and glory 
of the people of Israel.
Simeon and Anna 
have awaited this child
not for weeks or months
but for the whole of their lives;
the Jewish people
have awaited this child for centuries.
This child so long awaited 
is for the people of Israel 
a life-defining relationship,
he will play a role in their life 
like no other.
Their anticipation is so intense,
that they feel as if they already know him.
For this child is born of Abraham’s lineage;
he will grow and develop
within the stories and rituals and laws 
of the covenant God made with Abraham;
he will bring that covenant to fulfillment.

But Simeon and Anna also know 
that they await a stranger,
one whose unique existence
can in no way be anticipated,
can in no way be contained 
within their hopes and dreams.
Will he come as judge or a savior?
Will he defeat Israel’s enemies
or gather them into God’s covenant?
Will he restore David’s earthly kingdom
or transform the very fabric of the universe?
This child, like any child 
newly born into the world,
remains a mystery
that must unfold itself in time.
But even more so than other children, 
this child will burst the boundaries
set by any human expectation,
for the mystery his life will unfold in time,
is the mystery of the eternal God himself.

Simeon, filled by the Spirit 
with holy anticipation,
is able to truly welcome this child
because he embraces him as a mystery,
as one “destined for the fall and rise 
of many in Israel,”
as one who is “a sign 
that will be contradicted,”
as one through whom, 
“the thoughts of many hearts 
may be revealed.” 
Simeon embraces the child 
not as one who fits neatly 
into his hopes and dreams, 
but as the divine mystery 
who overturns his hopes,
so as to give to him a better hope,
a deeper grasp of the strangeness 
of a salvation that flows 
from God made present in the flesh,
and dwelling among us as a child.
Holding the very mystery of God in his arms,
Simeon prays, “Now, Master, 
you may let your servant go in peace,”
for he knows that, 
whoever this child turns out to be,
in him Simeon’s hopes and dreams 
have found their place of rest.

Though Jesus was born many centuries ago,
we too await his arrival in our lives.
Already born in us through baptism,
he also remains to us the stranger
whom we must come to know.
Though he is present to us
in his word, in his Church, in his poor,
in his sacramental signs,
we, like Simeon, embrace him as a mystery,
the one who will overturn our hopes
to give to us a better hope.
The life of each of us reborn in him
becomes part of the unfolding 
of God’s eternal mystery in time,
an unfolding whose outcome we await.
This is why the life of faith
is the ultimate adventure,
for it is a journey into 
the eternal mystery 
of God himself,
a journey in which we come to know
the one who has loved us into existence.
As we continue on that journey
let us pray that God who is merciful
will have mercy on us all.

Christmas: Mass at Dawn

Readings: Isaiah 62:11-12; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:15-20

At least for some of us,
Christmas disappoints. 
We hope to receive a gift that we will love
but did not know we even wanted.
We hope ourselves to give gifts 
that will delight the ones we love the most.
We hope to sing songs that will lift our hearts
above the sorrows that shadow every life
not just for a moment, but forever.
We hope to prepare a meal that will fill
not just our bellies with food
but our hearts with joy.
But as the morning passes
and turns into day and then into evening,
we might find our shining hopes turn bitter, 
like the aftertaste of too many sweets. 
Sylvia Plath, in The Bell Jar,
her memoir-disguised-as-a-novel,
wrote, “I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, 
the way I always do the day after Christmas, 
as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles 
and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents 
and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey 
and the carols at the piano promised 
never came to pass.”
Christmas disappoints 
as hopes grown great in anticipation
are gradually deflated with the passing of the day.

Were the shepherds disappointed in Christmas?
After the angelic array and the celestial songs
and the proclamation of good tidings of great joy
and the promise of peace to God’s people,
were they disappointed when they found
a quite ordinary looking infant
and his ordinary and no doubt exhausted parents
who probably were not at that moment
terribly excited to receive guests,
especially not a bunch of scruffy shepherds.
Did they look at the humble surroundings
in which their supposed savior was found
and wonder how this could possibly be
the fulfillment of their hopes—
hopes that had grown in anticipation
not just for hours or days or weeks
but through centuries in which 
their people had longed 
for a kingdom of God?
Did the shepherds leave there deflated,
their hopes disappointed 
by the ordinariness of it all,
regretting that they had ever 
hoped in the first place?

But Luke tells us that 
“the shepherds returned,
glorifying and praising God 
for all they had heard and seen.” 
Perhaps the shepherds were graced 
with sight to see beyond the ordinary.
Perhaps they could see already here,
in this tiny infant in the manger,
the light that had come into the world,
the light that enlightens all people,
the light that the darkness could not overcome.
The seventeenth-century poet Richard Crashaw,
imagined the shepherds speaking to the child:

We saw thee in thy balmy nest,

       Young dawn of our eternal day!

We saw thine eyes break from their east

       And chase the trembling shades away.

We saw thee, and we bless’d the sight,

We saw thee by thine own sweet light.

Christmas is not simply 
our feeble human endeavor
to find a bit of hope 
amid the dark days of winter’s gloom;
it is not simply our desperate attempt 
at convincing ourselves
that people are not so bad after all,
that we are not so bad after all.
It is not simply pine boughs and candles 
and presents and birch-log fires 
and the Christmas turkey and carols.
If that were all it was,
then, yes, we should be disappointed.
But if we can see the newborn Jesus 
by his own sweet light,
the light that he sheds abroad in our hearts
to chase the trembling shades away,
then Christmas will not disappoint.

Sylvia Plath, after recounting 
her disappointment in Christmas,
adds wistfully, 
“At Christmas I almost wished
I was a Catholic.”
It is as if she recognizes
that the only way 
that Christmas will not disappoint
is if we find in it the mystery of faith 
that we proclaim each week:
that God from God and light from light
has come down from heaven
and taken flesh
for us and for our salvation.
Christmas will not disappoint
only if we can see in it
what the shepherds saw:
the young dawn of our eternal day.
Christmas will not disappoint
only if Christ gives to us, here and now,
the unanticipated gift of eternal life;
if he fills our hearts with angelic song
that is endlessly delightful,
if he spreads for us the feast of his love
that is our foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

Christmas does not disappoint 
because it is the great act of God in Christ,
making himself what we are
so that we might be what he is—
beloved children of God,
and heirs in hope of eternal life,
“not because of any 
righteous deeds we had done
but because of his mercy.”
So let us pray 
on this Christmas morning
that God, who is merciful,
might show us Christ 
in his own sweet light,
chasing all shades 
of disappointment
from our hearts,
and revealing 
his mercy in us all.

 

Advent 4

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

King David has big plans.
He has conquered the Canaanite city of Jebus,
renaming it Jerusalem—“vision of peace”—
and making it the royal capital.
He has brought the Ark of the Covenant,
containing the tablets on which
God had inscribed the ten commandments, 
to Jerusalem and placed it in a tent,
making his capitol city the religious,
as well as political, center of his kingdom.
And now he dreams of raising a noble Temple
that would house the Ark—
indeed, would be the House of God.
David, of course, couches his big plans
in pious terms of doing something for God:
“Here I am living in a house of cedar,
while the ark of God dwells in a tent!”
And maybe David even believes 
his own pious rhetoric;
perhaps he sincerely wants 
to do something great for God.

But God knows David’s heart
better than David himself.
God knows how often our big plans
of doing something great for God
are tied up with our desire 
for greatness for ourselves:
for renown in our own day
and a legacy that will last into the future.
And God knows the lengths 
to which we will go 
in order to secure 
that renown and that legacy.
In the version of this story found
in the First Book of Chronicles,
God says to David:
“You may not build a house for my name, 
for you are a man who waged wars 
and shed blood” (28:3).
God reminds David that it is not he
who has done great things for God,
but it is God who has done
great things for him:
taking him from his humble status 
and making him a king of great renown
ruling over God’s people.
Moreover, God promises him
that God will secure his legacy,
that God will ensure that his line 
of descendants shall not die out,
that God will raise up from his lineage
a kingdom whose throne will endure forever.

Mary has no big plans.
She is just a young woman
betrothed to a carpenter,
probably planning a simple wedding
and hoping for a happy marriage.
Whatever dreams she has
are dreams not for herself
but for her people—
seemingly impossible dreams—
dreams that God’s promises 
will come to pass,
that God will raise up from David’s line
one who will restore God’s kingdom,
will free God’s people from Roman occupation,
will make a world where people like her,
people who rule nothing and no one,
can serve their God
and live their lives in peace.

Mary has no big plans,
but God does.
Indeed, it is precisely because 
she has no big plans for herself,
no dream except the dream of God’s kingdom,
no hope except the hope of serving her God,
that God can draw her 
into his plan,
into his dream,
into “the mystery kept secret for long ages,”
but now about to be made manifest in her.
“Hail, full of grace!... 
you have found favor with God…
you will conceive in your womb and bear a son…
and the Lord God will give him 
the throne of David his father…
and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
These words will upend Mary’s life
and any plans she may have had,
for who could plan for such a thing?

Yet while Mary has not planned for this,
she is prepared for it,
because God’s grace has cultivated in her
openness to whatever God will do,
acceptance of however God might act in her life.
What God had promised to David—
a kingdom that would endure forever—
will come to pass within Mary,
because her plans are God’s plans,
her hopes are God’s hopes,
her dreams are God’s dreams. 
Indeed, something greater
than what was promised to David
will come to pass in her.
For she herself will become 
the Ark of the Covenant, 
the tabernacle enclosing God in the flesh,
the womb of God’s eternal kingdom.

And what about our big plans?
Probably most of us 
aren’t much like David;
we don’t think in terms of building 
an empire and an everlasting legacy.
But how much are we like Mary?
How much do we set aside 
our plans for securing our own, 
small-scale renown and legacy
within our own little empires—
our jockeying for promotions,
our amassing of nest-eggs,
our seeking of recognition,
our bending others to our wills?
How willing are we 
to hope God’s hopes
and dream God’s dreams,
to suspend our planning
so as to prepare our hearts 
to receive the living God,
to let him dwell in us
and upend our lives?

The Advent season is almost gone;
only a few hours are left.
But in God’s grace there is still time.
There is still time to prepare 
by setting our plans aside,
so that we might let grace open us up
to the eruption of mystery into our lives,
God’s dream kept secret for long ages,
but now revealed to us in Christ.
There is still time 
to dream God’s dream
because God is merciful.
So may the God of mercy
have mercy on us all, 
and to the only wise God, 
through Jesus Christ
be glory forever and ever. 
Amen.

Advent 2

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

We hear today from the Second Letter of Peter,
“The earth and everything done on it 
will be found out.”
St. Augustine, picking up on the idea
of everything being revealed, 
wrote that in the new heavens 
and new earth that we await,
“The thoughts of our minds will lie open 
to mutual observation…; 
for [the Lord] will light up 
what is hidden in darkness 
and will reveal 
the thoughts of the heart.” (Civ. Dei 22.29).

Now that’s a terrifying prospect.

Think of how you would feel about someone
looking at your internet search history.
Even if it contains nothing 
outright illegal or immoral,
it likely contains some things 
that are acutely embarrassing,
like when we searched for recent pictures 
of a high school girlfriend or boyfriend,
or when we Googled some stupid question
like “who is the governor of Maryland?” 
or “who would win a fight 
between Batman and Superman?”
or when we searched for 
some scrap of celebrity gossip, 
or even Googled ourselves to find out
if the world is taking notice of us 
(this apparently is known as “ego-surfing”).
And some of our searches 
are not just embarrassing;
some of our searches are heartbreaking,
revealing sorrows we hold deep within:
“How do I know if my spouse is cheating?”
“What are the signs of child abuse?”
“What is the survival prognosis 
for pancreatic cancer?”
“What happens after we die?”

Contrast your internet search history
with what you see on social media.
Whenever I look at Facebook or Instagram.
it seems like everyone I know
is living their best life.
They are eating in restaurants that serve
exquisitely prepared dishes;
they are visiting places 
of cultural importance
or great natural beauty;
they are celebrating significant milestones
and impressive career achievements;
and their kids and grandkids
are saying the cutest things imaginable.

The world of social media allows us 
to curate the self that we show to the world,
to hide our thoughts and actions 
so that no one knows our pettiness,
our vanity, our foolishness, our triviality
or the deep sorrow on which we put a brave face.
But, Peter tells us, everything done on earth—

every action taken, every thought thought—
will be found out on the day of the Lord,
which comes like a thief,
dissolving the elements in fire,
dissolving the pretenses behind which we hide,
dissolving the curated self-image 
that we show to the world,
and revealing the search histories of our lives 
for what they are:
searches for meaning and love and fulfillment
that have often been futile and misdirected
and tragic and sorrowful.

On the day of the Lord 
everyone will know
that I’m just faking it.
I’m not living my best life;
in fact, my life is a mess,
my dinner is burnt,
my vacation was stressful,
my career feels like a dead end,
and my kids drive me crazy.
And on the day of the Lord I will know
that everyone else is also faking it,
that they’re not okay;
that their lives are no less messy than mine.
The day of the Lord promises to be
profoundly uncomfortable for everyone.

But in the midst of our messy lives,
in the midst of our fears 
about them being unveiled, 
the word of God says to us today, 
“Comfort, give comfort to my people…
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.”
God is coming:
racing through the desert of our pretense,
crashing into the wasteland 
of the carefully curated lives 
we present to the world;
filling in the valleys and leveling the mountains
that we use to hide our messy realities
in all their vanity and foolishness, 
their triviality and sorrow.
God comes not to condemn
but to comfort;
not to scold or shame us 

for the messiness of our lives,
but to join us in the mess,
to show to us the love for which 
we have been searching, 
to bear the sorrow of our sin 
so that we might be saved,
to know the brokenness of our hearts 
so that they might be mended.

Everything done on the earth shall be known
because until it is known it cannot be healed.
Shame and secrecy are evil’s greatest weapons,
because they allow evil to hide from the light
that would destroy it.
It is no accident 
that the sacrament of Reconciliation
involves bringing into the light
everything that we would like to keep hidden,
laying openly before God, 
present through the ministry of the priest,
the search history of our lives,
the misdirected desires and foolish choices,
the secret sorrows and unspoken regrets.
Dorothy Day said of confession,
“You do not want to make too much 
of your constant imperfections and venial sins,
but you want to drag them out to the light of day
as the first step in getting rid of them” (The Long Loneliness).

In Advent we celebrate 
the coming of light into the world,
the light that reveals everything done on earth:
the search for love and meaning, 
the search that has so often gone astray
into vanity and foolishness, 
triviality and sorrow.
We celebrate the light
that comes to guide us to the truth,
the truth about ourselves,
and the truth about the God
who turns shame into glory 
through the power of his mercy.
So let us pray in this Advent
that God who is merciful
would have mercy on us all.