While the following is taken from a homily by St. Proclus of Constantinople (5th century archbishop of Constantinople) for the feast of the Epiphany, the content of that feast in the Eastern Church focuses on the Mystery of the Lord’s Baptism, and therefore is appropriate for our celebration today.

Christ appeared in the world, and, bringing beauty out of disarray, gave it luster and joy. He bore the world’s sin and crushed the world’s enemy. He sanctified the fountains of waters and enlightened the minds of men. Into the fabric of miracles he interwove ever greater miracles. For on this day land and sea share between them the grace of the Savior, and the whole world is filled with joy. Today’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord manifests even more wonders than the feast of Christmas.

On the feast of the Savior’s birth, the earth rejoiced because it bore the Lord in a manger; but on today’s feast of his baptism it is the sea that is glad and leaps for joy; the sea is glad because it receives the blessing of holiness in the river Jordan. At Christmas we saw a weak baby, giving proof of our weakness. In today’s feast, we see a perfect man, hinting at the perfect Son who proceeds from the all-perfect Father. At Christmas the King puts on the royal robe of his body; at the Baptism the very source enfolds and, as it were, clothes the river.

Come then and see new and astounding miracles: the Sun of righteousness washing in the Jordan, fire immersed in water, God sanctified by the ministry of man.

Today every creature shouts in resounding song: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is he who comes in every age, for this is not his first coming.

And who is he? Tell us more clearly, I beg you, blessed David: The Lord is God and has shone upon us. David is not alone in prophesying this; the apostle Paul adds his own witness, saying: The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all men, and instructing us. Not for some men, but for all. To Jews and Greeks alike God bestows salvation through baptism, offering baptism as a common grace for all.

Come, consider this new and wonderful deluge, greater and more important than the flood of Noah’s day. Then the water of the flood destroyed the human race, but now the water of baptism has recalled the dead to life by the power of the one who was baptized. In the days of the flood the dove with an olive branch in its beak foreshadowed the fragrance of the good odor of Christ the Lord; now the Holy Spirit, coming in the likeness of a dove, reveals the Lord of mercy.

Fr. Richard Hinkley

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way. ~Mt 2:12 

“Epiphany” is from the Greek for “manifestation” especially of the divine.  While among Eastern Christians today’s feast revolves around the “manifestation” of the Blessed Trinity at our Lord’s baptism, in the West the feast focuses on the “manifestation” of Christ not only to the Jewish nation, but to all the nations, represented by the magi.  Our encounter with Christ cannot but change us.  While the route home for the magi was altered as a consequence of the instruction to avoid the evil King Herod, we might say that the altered route home was not merely a cartographical modification, but a spiritual one.  For your consideration, the following poem is by T.S. Eliot and provides one meditation on the “alternative route” created from the epiphany of the Christ Child.

The Journey Of The Magi by T.S. Eliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. ~Lk 2:19

Unlike other solemnities of the Blessed Virgin Mary (think of the Immaculate Conception, the Annunciation, and the Assumption), today’s celebration is in one sense fairly new.  Before the liturgical changes ushered in by the Vatican II Council, the feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary was celebrated on October 11, (not coincidentally the date St. John XXIII inaugurated the Vatican II Council), but even this feast was a relatively new addition to the calendar given that Pope Pius XI had added it to the universal calendar only in 1931.  We have to go back, in fact, to at least the 8^th century to find this celebration contained in the liturgical books of Rome.  It is this celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary that St. Paul VI desired to restore for the universal calendar with today’s solemnity.

Because of the “newness” of this celebration, and the fact that it is seemingly buried amidst the festivities of Christmas and New Year’s Day, to a certain degree we don’t know what to do with the day.  In fact, however, the Motherhood of Mary forms the basis of all the other mysteries of Mary’s life and is the root cause of our veneration of her.  Echoing the dogmatic declaration of the Council of Ephesus (431 A.D.), by celebrating Mary as the Mother of God, we are in fact professing the true identity of this mother’s child.  The Son of Mary is the Son of God.  At every birth there are always two persons present: mother and child.  While in this case the Child’s birth is celebrated on the 25^th of December, one day is insufficient to do adequate justice to such a momentous event; there are too many things to be celebrated.  And so for eight days, the Christmas Octave, the Church celebrates Christmas a new – as if time were momentarily suspended to allow us to savor more deeply the sweetness of the moment.  Finally, on the eighth day, always a reminder of the day of resurrection, we celebrate the Maternity of Mary, the circumcision and naming of Jesus, and the beginning of a new year.  What an appropriate celebration, then, by which to inaugurate a new year, beseeching the Mother of God to protect us, to guide us, and to teach us the identity of her beloved Son.

Fr. Richard Hinkley

 

They took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord… in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord. ~Lk 2:22, 24

The collection of liturgical celebrations that liter the Christmas season are a prolonged unpacking of the numerous consequences of God making his dwelling among us.  Among these consequences is that God has entered the world by means of a human family.  He does not descend from the heavens like an Olympian god or E.T., he lovingly submits himself to the normal human process of: conception, gestation, birth, and development.  In doing so, he sanctifies all of these moments and brings them into relation with the divine. 

One angle of approach to today’s feast is to focus on the fact that the Holy Family serves as the paradigm of successful family life.  The family that keeps Christ at its center will be happy and blessed indeed.  However, what should give us pause in this analysis is the fact that while the Holy Family is undeniably paradigmatic, it provides this model despite not only being an atypical family (the child is God, afterall), but even deviating from the idyllic model of family life we would normally expect to find.  Joseph was a foster father who would presumably die early in the life of our Lord.  Christ was an only child.  The Holy Family was poor and as a consequence of both the time period of history in which they lived as well as their socioeconomic status they would have lacked even the most basic of comforts that we take for granted.  The Holy Family experienced the sorrows of: flight from religious and political persecution, family misunderstandings, the disappearance of loved ones, and the ordinary struggles of daily life.  For the pious Jew, a large family with material wealth and freedom from troubles was certainly the ideal.  The Holy Family did not possess any of these characteristics.  However, this should be an encouragement for each of us as bewildered we examine the dysfunctionality of our own families at times and wonder why God has inhibited me from having the perfect family.  The response is before us today: the Holy Family is perfect, not because it would have been featured on The Hallmark Channel, but because they obediently placed God first. That is the true portrait of perfection.

Fr. Richard Hinkley

 

And the Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us. ~Jn 1:14

If the mystery of Christmas were to be summoned up in one word from scripture, perhaps one of the best contenders for that word would be Emmanuel, Hebrew for “God with us.” The verse from the Prologue of the Gospel of John, which is read at the Mass during the Day on Christmas, communicates essentially the same truth. God has made his dwelling (literally the Greek means “he has pitched his tent”) with us. However, the Gospel of John reveals to us the shocking content of Isaiah’s prophetic Emmanuel. Not only is God Trinity: Father, Son (the Word), and Holy Spirit, but that the Word of God became flesh. Though written in Greek, the use of the word flesh here should not be understood as excluding a human soul, the spiritual aspect of man, but rather in the Hebrew use of the term flesh, which expresses the totality of the reality of the human person (recall from Mark 10:8, husband and wife are no longer “two” but “one” flesh). God takes to himself all that we are: liberty, memory, understanding, will, and body. He “abbreviates” himself to make himself accessible to us. God now has a face, has hands, has a heart. God knows our joy, our grief, our hunger. And because of his in-fleshness, his in-carnation, the universe has the potential of being an instrument by which his presence with us might be manifested and celebrated. God is with us forever. Let no one be sad this day. Merry Christmas!

Fr. Richard Hinkley

May it be done to me according to your word.
~Lk 1:38

It may come as a surprise to know that the Blessed Virgin Mary is honored not only by Christians, but by Muslims as well. In fact, if we go by the number of times the name “Mary” is mentioned in their respective scriptures, we find that Mary’s name appears more times in the Quran than it does in the Bible. The Quran, granted, is not considered by the Church to be an inspired text, and whatever the nature of its origin, the content the Quran shares with the New Testament reflects the theology of non-mainstream Christian groups that Mohammed would have potentially encountered in the Arabian Peninsula.

The Quran contains a number of references to the Annunciation, most descriptively at Sura 3, 44. While the Quran’s account follows more or less the account we find in today’s Gospel (recall that the Gospel of Luke was written around the year 80 A.D. while the Quran’s earliest date would be 632 A.D.) there is one glaring difference: there is no account in the Quran of Mary’s response and acceptance to the message of Gabriel; there is no fiat (Let it be done).

Mary’s fiat is a mystery and a marvel to behold. Through her simple, free response (which Cardinal Cantalamessa proposes would  have been literally amen in Mary’s native Aramaic) the divorce between Creation and its Creator was now open to being healed. Only the one who was “full of grace” a grace received in light of Christ’s future salvific work, possessed the freedom of heart necessary to make such a full, unrestrained, and unconditional response to the plan of God. This is key. God will not save us without our cooperation. He will not compel us to be holy if we don’t want to be. It will be our loss… eternally if we refuse, and still we are not forced. To the one who claims that Catholicism doesn’t do much for him, our response should be: “Well, how much have you really tried to know and to live the faith? How much of a response have you actually made?”

True freedom is to be found here. The poor, obedient, virgin has nothing and no one on whom to rely except the Lord. With Him, however, she possesses all.

Fr. Richard Hinkley

Rejoice always. ~1 Thes 5:16

“Rejoice always.” Bold words. On this Gaudete Sunday, the theme of joy is clearly highlighted throughout the liturgy: from the Entrance Antiphon, to the Collect, to the Second Reading from Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. The sober hue of violet yields briefly to the brighter shade of rose. The Solemnity of the Lord’s Nativity is nigh! If Advent is such a brief liturgical season, and Christmas is so close, why then the need for this preemptive celebration or relaxation of Advent sobriety? What’s the point of Gaudete Sunday?

“Rejoice always.” It seems easy and intuitive enough to rejoice when things are good, calm, and predictable. When everything is going according to our plans, when the main event is occurring, joy flows naturally. In other words, rejoicing at the arrival of Christmas seems easy enough that it doesn’t require much prompting. But how good am I at rejoicing when things are not at optimal performance? I propose that this is one of the lessons to be gleaned from the occasion of Gaudete Sunday. Joy is the emotional consequence of being united to that which I love. If one loves chocolate, then eating chocolate brings one a certain degree of joy. The greater the thing that is loved, the more joy that is experienced when union with it is achieved. But for us, the disciples of the Lord, He is always united to us. He is Emmanuel, God-with-us. Even when times are abysmal, our supreme Love is always here in our midst. Consequently, whether we are partying like is 1999 or it’s a 2020 kind of year, our supreme joy is never inaccessible. But we forget that. Hence, the line that follows immediately after the command to rejoice always: “Pray without ceasing.” If you want to have joy everyday of your life; pray without ceasing.

Fr. Richard Hinkley

He is patient with you. ~2 Pt 3:9

“If God wants me to be a saint, why doesn’t he give me the grace to become one now?” This question seems to come up inevitably for those of us who have experienced at least an initial conversion in our lives. Having cooperated with God’s grace, which has sought us and found us, we respond to this gift and discover a new world of friendship with God. But then life continues. The initial progress we seemed to have been making seems to run up against a wall. We find ourselves confessing the same sins over and over again. The same situations and attitudes of others provoke the same frustration and anger within us. Nothing seems to change. Everything seems static. We want to be saints today; why doesn’t the Lord just “make it happen”?

Saint Peter in this passage from the Second Letter of his begins by allaying the concerns of the faithful as to why our Lord appears delayed in his Second Coming. The prevailing opinion at the time was that the Lord Jesus would return within the lifetime of those then alive, and when contemporaries began dying, either from persecution or natural causes, this caused concern. Why this delay? Peter offers an explanation why: “The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,” but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” The Lord knows that the journey of the heart is the longest journey we make in our lives. Full conversion and sanctification are a process. While this process does contain certain moments that are critical “turning points,” much of the work of undoing the knots of sin in our lives requires years, maybe even a lifetime. This is certainly frustrating for us who want it all to be resolved in an instant, but it does clarify and important truth: the work of conversion is ultimately about the work God does on me and for me. It is accomplished in God’s time, not my own. My task, then, is to be patient and use this time to grow in my appreciation and gratitude for the patience God has with me. For when we come to a deeper sense of the boundless patience of God for us, we cannot help but transmit that patience toward ourselves and especially towards those around us.

Fr. Richard Hinkley

Postponement and Repentance

As a child, I thought that Advent was an artificial thing. It seemed a forced time of year, a concoction to get us excited about the coming of Christmas. It felt fake.

After all, the birth of Christ had happened a long time ago. What was the point of pretending that it hadn’t? It was like going through the motions of contrived expectancy when we knew the outcome in advance.

Now I am beginning to see Advent differently. The cycle of the seasons that we as a worshiping people live through each year is not an exercise in “let’s pretend” at all. It is an ongoing journey into deeper reality. It is a recognition that the entry of God into our lives, while ontologically accomplished, is still psychologically unfinished.

As long as we breathe, there is more of our lives to open, to unbar, to unlock. There is always more of us to which we might allow God to enter. There is no end to the ways that the Word of God can more fully take on our flesh.

This is especially true of our need to acknowledge how utterly we rely on God’s healing power for our salvation. We so much want to be whole and finished that our greatest temptation is to think and hope the task is done. Oh, if this conversion could only be our last. If this long journey of faith could be neat, final, and complete.

Embarrassed as we all are at the wounds we bear and the scars hidden at the bottom of our being, we only reluctantly admit our vulnerability. We would rather not be reminded, once again, of our need for redemption. Far more tempting is escape. Far more appealing is the prospect that we can sleep-walk through life and not address the pain.

The words of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark may be read not only as a warning about the end times, but as a challenge for us to live in the present, to engage life now, to be attentive to the moment at hand. It is the call of Advent itself. Be awake. Do not put off the opening of your life to God.

Denial and postponement are especially true in the matter of our sins, those wounds that we somehow inflict upon ourselves and others. Repression of the truth is common. Admission and reform are rare. We project, we accuse, we complain, we evade, we distract ourselves. We are not as adept at confession.

In our own place and time, we have made a science of escape and sleep. Rather than live at that sharp edge of life, awake and alert, we pretend that we have no sin. There is nothing wrong with me, no change required of us. Others need the help. My coworkers, my friends and community, my family are to blame. “Evil empires,” “warlords” and “endless enemies” are the source of our problems. Bishops or feminists, conservatives or leftists, liberation theologians or curial despots are the favorite demons of choice.

We in the church are not especially noted for our willingness to confess our own sins and welcome repentance. At best, one part of the church will attack the other. But how uncommon it is to hear theologians acknowledge the sinfulness of the theologian—unless it is a theologian of the opposite persuasion. How scarce is the hierarchy’s confession of guilt. How unusual it is to hear the right wing warn us of conservatives’ sins. How rare is the liberal who admits the possible disorders of liberalism.

Every Eucharist, like every Advent, begins with a call for repentance and a plea for mercy. But how real is it for us? How awake, how open are we to the truth of our inadequacy and the entrance of God into our lives? How willing are we to make the words of Isaiah our own? “Why do you let us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so that we fear you not? We are sinful, unclean people, our good deeds like polluted rags. We have been delivered up to guilt.”

What a hierarchy, what a priesthood, what a people of God we would be if we allowed such sentiments to be our own. But we recoil from the implications. They would have us change. They would make a difference in the way we look at the world. They would unmask too many of the pretenses and postures we have assumed.

The theme of Advent is not “let’s pretend.” It is let’s “get real.” Here. Now. Make real the need for God. Make real God’s entry. Make real the Word -not just as a text or a story, but as a disclosure of truth. Not only is God revealed to us. You and I, here and now, are revealed to ourselves.

Thus, every Advent is an opportunity. Together, we might once again experience the Word of God taking flesh in us. And having allowed God such profound entry, we may find ourselves giving birth anew to the Word in our world.

Father Kavanaugh was a professor of Philosophy at St. Louis University in St. Louis. He reached many people during his lifetime. Modification to text.

Adult Formation

King of majesty tremendous, Who does free salvation send us, Fount of pity, then befriend us!
~Dies Irae (Sequence and Hymn)

While it is no longer an essential component of Funeral Masses, the medieval sequence the Dies Irae still remains the most recognizable and most influential sequence of the Church’s liturgical patrimony.  The sequence is a type of hymn that originated from adding words to the melismas (many notes on the same syllable) that frequently ended the Alleluia before the Gospel.  During the Middle Ages, the sequence was quite popular and many hundreds were composed for the different feasts on the liturgical calendar.  Following the Council of Trent, the number of sequences was reduced in an effort to eliminate “recent” additions to the liturgy.  This left the Roman Rite with the following sequences: Victimae Paschali Laudes (Easter), Veni, Sancte Spiritu (Pentecost), Lauda Sion (Corpus Christi), and Dies Irae (Masses for the Dead).  In the 18^th century the Stabat Mater was brought back for the Seven Sorrows of Mary (Our Lady of Sorrows) and following the Vatican II Council, the Dies Irae was removed from the funeral liturgy. 

This removal from the funeral liturgy did not mean, however, that it was removed entirely from the Church’s liturgy.  It is now an option as a hymn for the Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, and Evening Prayer for the 34^th Week of Ordinary Time, that is, this week following the Solemnity of the Christ the King of the Universe.  The reason for its removal is related to where it ended up being moved.  The text of the Dies Irae is a meditation on the Second Coming of Christ, the General Resurrection, The Last Judgment, and the eternal reward or punishment of all peoples.  Because of the emphasis which the hymn lays on judgment and the possibility of eternal loss, it was deemed as perhaps too distracting or discouraging for funerals, where hope in Christ’s conquest of Death and the pledge of Eternal Life are the central focus.  Nonetheless, these “Last Things” are an especially appropriate object of consideration here at the end of the liturgical year, as well as the beginning of Advent 2021.  I would encourage anyone to take the time and read through at least once this liturgical poem, as well as listen to the various ways certain composers have set the text to music.  Perhaps the most famous Requiem setting of the Dies Irae, is of course, the one by Mozart.  For a celebration like today’s, the movement Rex tremendae is particularly on point.  The chorus repeats the word rex (king) before moving along a score that seeks to musically paint a scene that is both awe-some as it is comforting: the king of tremendous majesty coming to save his people.  He is coming, Christ the King.  Long live the King!

Fr. Richard Hinkley

Let us not sleep like the rest do. ~1 Thes 5:6

In Book IX of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus recounts how his crew arrived in the land of the lotus-eaters. The lotus-eaters were the region’s inhabitants who would feed upon a certain flower that grew there that not only was delicious but also had the effect of causing one to forget about one’s home, family, and general plan of life. Today, we would identify the mythical lotus-plant as a type of narcotic that had euphoric and soporific effects. When Odysseus discovered that some of his men had eaten of the lotus-plant, he was forced to have them dragged back to the ship while they protested, desiring to remain in the land of the lotus-eaters rather than continue their journey home.

Distraction from our primary goals in life is certainly obvious enough to be identified by not only St. Paul but others like Homer as well. The more difficult problem arises when even our primary or secondary goals in life are misidentified. I may readily admit that my primary goal in life is to reach eternal life in heaven, but when I begin inspecting my daily and monthly goals and objectives, I find that my priorities are indistinguishable from that of my neighbor who doesn’t practice any religion. I am mostly concerned about the political, social, medical, or financial situation. These are the issues that stimulate joy. These are the issues that provoke my anger. The reality is that by feeding on these lotus-plants, we become lulled into a distracted (either by apathy or anxiety) posture with regard to our chief priority: getting back home.

Marx famously quipped that religion was “the opiate of the masses.” The true opiate is rather that which distracts us from progressing toward our native land.

Fr. Richard Hinkley

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters. 1 Thes 4:13

We recall from two weeks ago that we began reading from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians as the new and final sequence of Second Readings for Sunday Masses for this liturgical year. With the intervention of All Saints last Sunday, there was an interruption to this sequence, but this weekend we pick it back up again. Given the early nature of this letter among the many letters Paul composed, we find among the themes of the letter the theme of the priority of anticipating Christ’s second coming.

The Second Coming of Christ, his parousia (Greek for both “arrival” as well as “presence”), is a subject that is highlighted in the opening weeks of Advent, but which we find emphasized in the early preaching and writings of the Church in general. There was an intense expectation by the apostles and the early Church that Christ would return in glory within their own lifetimes. Christ was coming, and coming soon, perhaps today or tomorrow. Hence, the intensity with which Paul and others preached and strove to spread the Gospel message to as many as possible before it was too late.

When we believe that “the end” is near, we understandably tend to stop procrastinating, to sober up, and to focus on the things that really matter. This passage from First Thessalonians was invariably used as the first reading at funeral Masses before the 1970s liturgical changes brought about the possibility of selecting other readings. However, this reading still remains one of the several options of New Testament texts than can be used for funerals and for a good reason. As Paul himself indicates at the end of the passage: “Therefore, console one another with these words.” This November of 2020, a year that will surely live in infamy, as we pray daily for the dead, it is a prime opportunity while hearing Paul’s words to sober up and to reexamine our priorities. Christ is still coming, we know not when, and it would be a tragedy (the only true tragedy) not to be ready.