The Baptism of Christ and Our Ministry

To date I have not read many pages of church documents written by newly elected Pope Francis, nor have I studied closely interviews with him, nor examined his actions closely. And note that I am inviting all of us to make some study of Pope Francis’ teaching this year. So far, I have read enough to realize that Pope Francis has much to teach us, and that if we take his words and actions seriously, each of us will be challenged in various ways, and probably no one of us would be left feeling complacently content with our own Catholic faith and practice. Even in my relative ignorance of our new Pope, I will suggest a few thoughts that may be in line with his approach to the gospel on the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus. I think that in the spirit of Pope Francis, on this feast each of us should ask ourselves a few questions. We can ask, “Given that I was baptized into Christ, and therefore have a share in Christ Jesus and in his ministry, what am I doing about it?  How do I live out my calling as a servant of God? How do I seek to serve God’s people? In what ways do I carry the gospel of joy into the world? Am I willing to leave my own comfortable beliefs and ways of living and venture forward, bringing Christ to the disadvantaged, and finding Christ in them, and serving Christ in them? Moreover, for years I have emphasized on this feast that Jesus accepted the baptism of John, which was repentance from dead sins. But Jesus was without sin, so why did he let John baptize him? I see in Jesus the same mentality that shows up throughout his brief ministry, and especially on the cross: Jesus willingly identifying with us sinners, and ultimately taking our place. Now, what might Pope Francis say to us in light of Jesus’ solidarity with sinners? Perhaps he would ask us a few more questions: “How do you identify with sinners, with the disadvantaged, the marginalized, with those whom our society ignores, overlooks, or would discard? How do you extend the grace of God in Christ to those who may appear graceless, or even to those who have wronged you, or do not wish you well? What do you do in your life to live out Christ’s solidarity with sinners? Do you yourself dabble in sin, rather than gently and lovingly help draw others away from it?” You see, Pope Francis says that he wants to dialogue with us, in order to further dialogue in the Church. How does one dialogue without asking questions and listening for answers? We conclude with words from Pope Francis in his recent exhortation on “The Gospel of Joy”:  “The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience.”  What do we do about this condition?

On the Feast of the Epiphany

 

Our celebration of Christmas, and especially the birth and gift of Jesus Christ to believing hearts, continues with the feasts of the Holy Family; Mary, Mother of God (1 January);and with the feast of Epiphany. In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, we are given these two weeks of Christmas celebrations in order to meditate on the mystery of the Incarnation of God in Christ; and the Church would have us not only meditate or think about this divine event, but respond with faith, love, thanksgiving, adoration. The Gift given must be lovingly received.

The opening 18 verses of the Gospel of St. John remain, to the best of my knowledge, the most profound brief meditation on the mystery of God taking our human nature to Himself:“”In the Beginning was the Word,” who is both God and with God. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have beheld His glory… The true light, who enlightens every soul, was coming into the world….The only begotten God, who is ever in the bosom of the Father,” has “interpreted God to us.” We who trust in God-in-Christ, who respond with “faith working through love,” gradually become like the One we behold in faith.

I often wonder how men and women—and children—can live with minds closed to the reality of God. “If the light is dark within you, how great is the darkness,” said Jesus. Some of us may have experienced a period in our lives when we lived without genuine faith that opens us to divine Presence. If you had such an episode, you know how utterly dark, miserable, painful it is. Without awareness of presence of the living God in a human soul, one is driven to find substitutes: over-work, over-drink, over-play, constant “relaxing” to escape the sheer boredom and mental emptiness of the human life apart from the Light of God dwelling within. All the burdens of existence, of human life in this world, bear down very heavily on the man, woman, or child who has lost contact with the living God. It is truly tragic and horrible to see the unraveling of a life in this condition.

On the Feast of Epiphany, we thank God for the ever-renewing, ever-invigorating gift of faith, of “Christ in us, the hope of glory.” To the human being living Christ, living “I-in-you and you-in-me,” all of our burdens are bearable, and darkness gradually yields to the penetrating light. 

Beginning of a Christmas Message

Dear Friend,

I have fairly often told folks in homilies that every Eucharistic celebration is essentially one, because we are sharing in the same divine mystery, from different perspectives: different gospel stories, different feasts, different saints, but each pointing to, and incarnating, the Oneness of God in a unique way.

I turned to God in prayer this morning, wanting both to sit in silence, and yet needing a message for Christmas. I cannot say well what happened. It just happened. It is all one. The oneness, wisdom, love, power, and sheer humility of God are one. Creation-Incarnation-Resurrection, is all one.
 
I cannot put it into words. But just think of the sheer humility of our God visible in Jesus, born of the Virgin. It is all one, so simple, and beautiful beyond words.

The End of Advent and Christmas

The Church’s liturgical observation of Advent ends with the celebration of Christmas Masses, the feast of the birth of Christ.  

What we may overlook is that Advent has no end in time, and in its essence, does not end with Christmas. The act of dropping our illusions, of letting God be God, of waiting in hope for God to act as God wills, ought not to be let go, and surely not for the cultural celebration of Christmas. Openness to God as God must ever be foundational in our spiritual life, although few of us, perhaps, wish to risk all for this basic attitude. A Christian Christmas, a genuine Christmas, continues Advent; cultural Christmas is a substitute, another chance to hide from divine reality, before which we either dread or hope. Cultural Christmas adverts our gaze from God’s Advent.

As we have explained, all of our Catholic celebrations are one in that God is one, but each uniquely highlights some aspect of God-in-Christ, the mystery of God in humankind. Advent is the season that, if understood properly, is true to God in this sense: to keep Advent, one must keep surrendering all that is not God, and long for the truth of God beyond our beliefs and expectations. The limitations of even the prophets and apostles show up when their imaginations outstrip naked faith. Isaiah, John the Baptist, the Apostle Paul are best in pointing towards the God who is, and who ever comes; but when they imagine what form God presence among us will take, or what that Coming looks like, they fall short. In her sheer humility, Mary achieved what no prophet did: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” not as anyone expected or predicted, but as God willed. Divine wisdom ever surpasses our human understanding. Genuine Christmas provokes wonder, and ever humbles us.  

For a human being living open to the truth of God, all of our life is in tension between divine Presence experienced through faith and love, and the divine ever beyond human experience. Living in the tension of truth keeps us wondering at the action of the God who “is, who was, who is to come.” Even as we gratefully receive the gift given—Christ—we acknowledge our limited receptivity, our misunderstandings, sometimes our neglect or abuse of the Gift. But “even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts.”

Advent and the Coming of God

Just as Christmas has various meanings, some of which we openly celebrate in our Catholic liturgies, so the Season of Advent has a number of meanings. Some of these meanings come from the Liturgy, some come from the Scriptures, some from long practice and beliefs, some from the culture in which we are all more or less immersed. In our week-end and week-day Masses during December, we shall briefly examine, and celebrate, the meanings of Advent emphasized by the prayers and scripture readings. They include talk about “the Second Coming,” or “end of this age,” or “coming of the Kingdom of God,” and towards Christmas, “the coming of Christ” in his birth.   In light of our Catholic faith, Church teachings, prayers at Mass, and the appointed Readings for the Season—and surely informed by years of trying to live within the Body of Christ—it seems to me that there is an essential, underlying meaning to Advent that can all-too-easily be neglected or downplayed. What clouds our attention is not only the commercialism of this “shopping season,” nor our habit of partying. Even some of the biblical readings and prayers at Mass at times may cause more confusion or less thoughtful insight than one would wish. Talk of the “Second Coming,” for example—a phrase never used in the New Testament, incidentally—surely directs attention in a misleading direction, or even into a cul-de-sac of understanding. Also highly confusing to Christians is biblical prophecy about “the coming of the Kingdom of God.” This Hebrew expression is rarely understood, and actually was often a term used loosely or without sufficient clarifying. In other words, some of the symbolic language used during Advent confuses, rather than guides and illuminates, our faith in the living God. Some of these details will be presented in week-day homilies, and perhaps in our week-end Masses as well. What, most briefly stated, is the underlying meaning of Advent?  It is a season for awareness of our ignorance of God, and a faith-inspired awareness that what we call God far surpasses our human understanding. Advent highlights “watching and waiting,” not for what we expect or believe, but for the divine mystery to unfold as God wills, not according to our plans or thoughts or feelings. Advent should be a season of stripping away false expectations and illusions before the truth of the unseen God. All-too-often, Advent is hidden beneath such illusions, or perhaps just plain ignored because of shopping, parties, entertainment, sporting events, and too much booze.

On Comings and Goings

We welcome Bishop Michael Warfel to our parish faith communities this week-end. With respect and keen interest, we shall listen to what he says, and enjoy his warm friendliness. As St. Benedict writes in his Rule, “Let every guest be received as Christ.”  Recently I came across a thought in an English poet, to the effect that every human being bears the image of God our Creator, but it is especially in the poor that one meets Christ, who made himself poor for our sakes. To carry the burdens of office is a sharing in the poverty of Christ. Now we are entering the darkest ten weeks of the year, marked and celebrated by the winter solstice, and with the great Feast of Christmas bringing light and joy into the darkness of nature and wintry hearts. Approaching Christmas, we will hear stories about the end of the world, destruction, and warnings to “prepare to meet our God.” And in the midst of reflecting on things to come, we will keep the feast of Christ the eternal and rightful ruler over all. Mass readings and prayers will also remind us to remember those who have died, and those who are near death now, and to be mindful of our own passing from this world into the unseen God. Like Christ himself, we are all ever coming and going. Bodily we have been born once, spiritually we must be born again and again by the divinizing power of faith working through love. And we are ever leaving this passing world, as St. Augustine wrote, “through the affections of our hearts,” through our growing union with God beyond death. We await and receive the God who comes to the poor in spirit, to the humble, to those who mourn and are heavy-burdened, to those who suffer out of love. Recently, God has come and taken to himself a number of our beloved brothers and sisters in our faith communities. To some extent, our love for them carries us with them, across the threshold of eternity, into the silence and peace of God. And as we remember them and thank God for their lives, they come to us in thoughts and remembered experiences, bringing us hints of divine joy. Without destroying our uniqueness, but perfecting each creature, Love draws us into Itself, into the unfathomable depths. The tide goes out, and we feel it drawing us, slowly, steadily, away from what we have known, into the divine mystery. With Job we experience loss, change, strangely new comings, and we pray: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I return. The LORD has given, the LORD has taken away: Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

November: The Month of Remembering Those Who Have Died

To remember: to bring back into consciousness what has been known, and has been fully or partially lost from consciousness, or “forgotten.” To remember: to allow something or someone to live in one’s mind again, consciously, willingly, deliberately. When we forget, we no longer attend to a part of reality of which we had been more or less conscious.   Grace builds on nature. The Catholic faith is rooted in nature, for “grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it,” in the famous formula of St. Thomas Aquinas. In the northern hemisphere, for centuries the only home of the Catholic faith, we know what to expect in November: a seeming dying of nature, a shutting down of earth’s visible life, a withering away of what was so evidently full of life. As nature appears to die in this month, we are asked to remember our dear ones who have died in their bodies, and are now at home in God alone. During November, following ancient pagan and Catholic traditions, we are encouraged actively to remember our beloved deceased, entrusting them to the LORD. Our loved ones, and many generations of human beings, have died; they are not “dead and gone,” but they live in God. And they live in our minds and hearts if we lovingly remember them. Our dear ones who have died have given us many life-enriching experiences, many blessed and precious memories. Now we bring these experiences back into consciousness, not letting them just slip away into the land of oblivion, and we thank God for these memories, and especially for our beloved friends and family members who gave us these experiences, before slipping behind the mask of death. Within a span of 5-6 days, three of our parishioners died this week: Randy Mundt, Ora Kleffner, Mary Lou Streifel. We ask our parishioners to remember these good and precious human beings, and entrust them lovingly to our merciful, life-giving God. We also keep in mind and heart their family members who just experienced the shock of death and painful loss. Families of Ora, Mary Lou, and Randy need and deserve our kindness, thoughtfulness, prayers. We offer them our quiet support and friendship. Above all, in prayer and especially at the Eucharist we offer Randy, Ora, and Mary Lou lovingly to God, to whom they have returned. During November, we choose to remember and to thank God, entrusting those whom we love to the LORD, in whom alone “we live, and move, and have our being.”