Fr. JC Maximilian

Last week I invited you to reflect on the question first posed by Fr. Ronald Knox, “What would the world be like, if Christmas hadn’t happened?” (Knox, Pastoral and Occasional Sermons, Ignatius Press, p. 422) This week I have another question for us to ponder, “Why did Jesus chose to be born into a human family, with a mother and father?” Certainly the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity could have united our human nature to His Divine Person and come to earth as a fully grown human person. Yet the Mighty God chose to humble Himself by being born as a baby, and subjecting Himself to Mary and Joseph as His parents here on earth. Why? “In part, to reveal God’s plan to make all people live as one ‘holy family’ in His Church” (St. Paul Center for Bibilical Theology, Breaking the Bread, “Our True Home,” December 2006, p. 3).

God did not create us just to be His servants, but to be His sons and daughters, or as our first reading puts it, “chosen ones, holy and beloved.” Throughout Sacred Scripture God reveals Himself as a loving Father, and that our true home is eternal union with the Trinity. “The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2205). In today’s Gospel reading Mary and Joseph are repeatedly referred to as Jesus’ parents, so that Jesus’ first words recorded in St. Luke’s Gospel, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”, could emphasize that all of earthly familial relationships must be rooted in the Fatherhood of God. We are then told in today’s Gospel reading that Jesus went home with Mary and Joseph, and was obedient to them. Jesus’ obedience to His earthly parents flows directly from His obedience to the will of His heavenly Father (Breaking the Bread, p. 3).

The Second Vatican Council referred to the family as the “domestic church,” and describes it as a community of faith, hope, and charity (Lumen Gentium, #11). The Council Fathers go on and says, “The Christian family proclaims aloud both the present power of the kingdom of God and the hope of the life to come” (Lumen Gentium, #11). The Christian family must be a living witness to Christ by being a community of love and faith in all circumstances. Like any society, the family, as the original cell of social life, must be well ordered, with each member bearing, in love, certain duties and responsibilities.

The most basic duty of children, as stated in the Fourth Commandment, is to honor and respect their parents. This honor and respect given to one’s parents reflects the honor and respect we are called to give to God, and is derived from gratitude toward those by whom one has received the most precious gift of all – Life! Christian children show respect for their parents by obedience to them. “As long as a child lives at home with his parents, the child should obey his parents in all that they ask of him when it is for his good or that of the family” (CCC #2217). As St. Paul says in today’s Second Reading, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord.” Only when a child is convinced in their well-formed conscience that it would be morally wrong to obey a particular order, can they disobey their parents. Note that I said only when they are following their WELL-FORMED conscience may they disobey. Not because they don’t want to do it, or they don’t like what they have been asked to do, or because it is difficult to do. Rather, it is when guided by the teachings of the Church, they know that they would be doing something IMMORAL that they can disobey their parents, and this is because they are then obeying their heavenly Father who has written the Divine Law on their hearts and teaches it through the Church. While obedience toward parents ceases when a child becomes emancipated, respect is ALWAYS owed to them. “This respect has its roots in the fear of God, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit” (CCC #2217).

Grown children also have responsibilities towards their parents. “As much as they can, they must give them material and moral support in old age and in times of illness, loneliness, or distress” (CCC #2218).

The duties of parents, born in love, include the obvious ones of feeding their children, providing them adequate clothing and shelter, and caring for their health and education. However the duties of Christian parenthood goes much further because our Christian Faith tells us that this world is passing away, and that our true home is Heaven. “Parents must regard their children as children of God and respect them as human persons. Showing themselves obedient to the will of the Father in heaven, they educate their children to fulfill God’s law” (CCC #2222).

Lumen Gentium says “The parents by word and example are the first heralds of the faith with regard to their children” (#11). Parents are the principle catechists for their children, and they begin this education in the faith by associating their children from their tenderest years with the life of the Church. Pope Paul VI, recalled to us by Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, summarizes Christian parents’ duties to their children in this way; “Do you teach your children the Christian prayers? Do you prepare them, in conjunction with the priests, for the sacraments that they receive when they are young: Confession, Communion and Confirmation? Do you encourage them when they are sick to think of Christ suffering, to invoke the aid of the Blessed Virgin and the saints? Do you say the family rosary together? … Do you pray with your children, with the whole domestic community, at least sometimes? Your example of honesty in thought and action, joined to some common prayer, is a lesson for life, an act of worship of singular value. In this way you bring peace to your homes…. Remember, it is thus that you build up the Church” (Pope Paul IV, General Audience Address, August 11, 1976: Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, XIV, 640).

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph provides a model for us of true family life, and they strengthen us with their prayers. Jesus, “You, who by being born into a family, strengthen family bonds, let there be an increase in unity within the family.”

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“What would the world be like, if Christmas hadn’t happened?” (Knox, Pastoral and Occasional Sermons, Ignatius Press, p. 422) So asked the famous convert to Catholicism and outstanding preacher Fr. Ronald Knox in 1953. I think it is still a very excellent question for us to contemplate this Christmas. Often the Advent season is filled with so much rushing around with shopping, decorating, baking and going to parties, that it is very easy to lose sight of “the Reason for the Season.”

There are so many levels on which we could ponder this question. On a purely theological level we really have no way of answering the question. I think we can be confident that in His great mercy, God would not have left us enslaved to sin, but how God would have countered the effects of Adam’s fault, other than by sending His only-begotten Son, we cannot even begin to pretend to guess. The ways of God are just too mysterious.

A more fruitful reflection on the question, “What would the world be like if Christmas hadn’t happened?” must begin in the world of our common experience; “the sort of way we live, the sort of way we treat one another, the sort of behaviour we expect of one another” (Knox, p. 422). Of course the full impact of the Gospel still has not been completely integrated into our daily lives, the Kingdom of God is already but not yet complete. Probably the most important impact of Jesus, “God-with-us,” on society has been the recognition of basic human rights. St. Paul, in writing to the Christians in Galatia, says “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27-28). This is a radical way of looking at human nature in comparison to the pagan world in which St. Paul lived which divided the very dignity of people based on their race and national origin. For the Christian, however, we see that there is a basic dignity that all human beings share because we are all made in the image and likeness of God. Of course this truth is still not fully lived out in society – there is still discrimination against some groups of people – but over all there is a recognition that such discrimination must come to an end.

Even this reflection, however, is too abstract. What we really need to do this Christmas is to see what impact does the coming of Jesus in the flesh have on our lives. To put the question another way, “Do we really need God?” In a society that is increasingly called “post-Christian,” there seems to be a prevailing attitude at Christmas time that the thought of God and His works do not really fit into our pattern of life. “In a culture that no longer perpetuates Christian ways of living we seem to find ourselves contentedly without God and without the need of gestures of love and sacrifice. The shepherds, the angels, the birth of Jesus may all be true, and nice for children to believe in such things, but it is not really a determining event in our lives or in history. There is an unfortunate parallel in countries between their level of material well-being and the impact of Christianity on their lives and actions: the greater the prosperity, the less the belief” (O’Higgins, “Christmas,” Sacerdos: Homily Resources for Priests, December 25, 2004). Is Karl Marx correct when he said that Christianity is a mere opium for the poor? Too many people today seem to live a life more in agreement with Marx instead of one in Christ Jesus the Lord.

If we silence the noise of the material world, we will find a deeper longing, a deeper desire. All of us experience a constant need for something more. Too often we think that material things will satisfy this deep longing for something more, but the satisfaction from material things quickly fades. If we continue to look for satisfaction in material things, even other human beings, we will only become more dissatisfied, intolerant and alone. We long for the infinite, so finite material things cannot satisfy. This deep longing is what Msgr. Luigi Giussani calls the “Religious Sense.” It is our longing for God, who alone is infinite love, infinite truth, infinite beauty, and infinite justice. To satisfy our deepest yearning we must live in God.

One way for us to live in God is to become more aware of God’s actions in our lives. St. Francis DeSales urged his spiritual directees to first become aware of how good the Good God is in their lives. Do we do this? Do we literally count our blesses? Or are we too busy keeping up with the Jones? To busy thinking about the things we do not have?

God granted me an insight this week as I was praying. Since Christmas was coming, I was thinking about the “C & E Catholics” — you know whom I mean; those Catholics who come to Mass only for Christmas and Easter. I have no doubt that there are many such people praying with us right now. But not only them, for there are many who “don’t come to Mass” regularly. It truly saddens me, and as I was lifting this to God, the Holy Spirit whispered this in my ear. The Mass is also called the Eucharist, and the word “Eucharist” comes from the Greek word meaning “thanksgiving.” I fear that those who do not attend Mass regularly are not aware of just how much love God is showing them in their lives. Quite literally every beat of our heart, every breath we take is a gift from God. How can we not give Him thanks and praise?

So as we make our list of all the people we need to send thank yous to because they gave us a Christmas present, be sure to put God first on that list. Take some time to contemplate the Babe of Bethlehem, humbly lying in a manger. Let our hearts swell with tears of gratitude as we meditate of the great love of Jesus who has redeemed us, and has called us to be sons and daughters of God. The angels proclamation to the shepherds should continue to fill us with great joy: “I proclaim to you good news of great joy: today a Savior is born for us, Christ the Lord!”

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“Shout for joy, O daughter Zion! Sing joyfully, O Israel!” (Zeph. 3:14) “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4). There is a lot of references to rejoicing in this weekend’s Scripture readings. The Prophet Zephaniah, who lived toward the end of the seventh century B.C., urged the people of Israel to join him in singing joyfully in the Lord, for the Assyrians, who had long oppressed the Israelites were themselves being conquered by the Babylonians. Zephaniah told the people of Israel not to fear the fall of the Assyrian Empire for God is in their midst and would protect them.

St. Paul likewise tells the Christians in the Church at Philippi to “Rejoice in the Lord always,” and why? Because “the Lord is near.” It is because of this theme in this weekend’s readings that the Third Sunday of Advent is called “Gaudete Sunday.” Gaudete is the Latin word that means “rejoice,” but with the ending that makes it a command. So we are really being commanded to rejoice.

So why should we rejoice? Advent is a time for rejoicings because it is a season that revives our expectation of the most joyful event in history: the birth of Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Most High God, but the Virgin Mary. As both the Prophet Zephaniah and St. Paul proclaim, the Lord is in our midst, He is near to us.

This most amazing outpouring of God’s love, generosity and blessing should lead us not only to shout joyfully to the Lord in thanksgiving, but it should also cause us to ask, as the people asked St. John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading, “what should we do” to receive this gift worthily. St. John the Baptist gives them a most simple, direct answer to this question: “Repent.” John the Baptist’s message is that the Messiah’s coming requires everyone to choose — “to repent,” or not to.

“Repentance” is the English translation of the Greek word, metanoia, which literally means “change of mind.” This is a two-fold turning or change – first it is a turning away from sin, and then a turning toward God. This is not a mere attitude adjustment. No, the repentance that we as Christians are called to make requires a radical life-change. First we have to humbly and honestly reject the idols in our lives. Our idols are most likely no longer called Baal, Zeus or Athena. Rather they are most likely the love of money, material possessions, prestige, or even the “freedom to do what I want.” Instead of giving to the One True God what He deserves, too often sports, cheerleading, shopping, or even just sleeping in, takes priority in our lives. Our idols are still the work of human hands. There is too often a lack of urgency in our spiritual life, a complacency that deep down stems from a lack of faith.

St. John the Baptist is held up during the Advent Season as a model of and witness to this radical metanoia. His heart is in God. He places all of his trust in God’s promises, and he is ready to do whatever is necessary to cooperate in God’s plan for the fulfillment of those promises. St. John the Baptist’s center of gravity is neither in himself nor in the world. Rather it is in God alone.

The raw material for our conversion is usually found right before our noses. “True holiness of life is about bringing our love for Christ into the very practical and very real details and opportunities given us by God each day” (Sacerdos: Resources for Priests, “Third Sunday of Advent,” December 17, 2006). We need to open our eyes to the obvious needs before us: clothe the naked, feed the hungry. As disciples of Christ Jesus we are challenged to carry out our ordinary tasks and obligations honestly, and with as much perfection as we can bring to bear.

Something else struck me in this weekend’s readings. The Prophet Zephaniah says, “the King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst, you have no further misfortune to fear.” Too often people seem to leave the last two words off that passage. They seem to think that if they say their prayers to God that they will have no more misfortunes. God never promises that. In fact Jesus tells us that if we are going to be His disciples then we MUST take up the Cross. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, in his book Life of Christ, makes the excellent point that the Cross was present all throughout the life of Jesus, even as He laid there in the manager.

What God promises is that we do not need to fear the misfortunes that we experience in our lives because He is our loving Father, and His Divine plan is truly for our own good. St. Paul in today’s second reading tells the Philippians and us to “have no anxiety at all,” because “the Lord is near.”

“What should we do” on this Third Sunday of Advent? Repent! Not from a fear of God’s wrath, but from a joyful sense of the nearness of our saving God. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: Rejoice! For the Lord is near.”

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Fr. Benedict Groeschel once said that for anyone who has lived in New York City, whether they are Christian, Jew, Muslim or atheist, they have no doubt about the reality of Original Sin. Original Sin is one of the most easily verified truths of faith. We have all experienced first hand the rupture or disharmony within our nature and in visible creation. As St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want” (Rom. 7:19). Original Sin causes a disordering of our desires, a dimming of the intellect, and a weakening of the will which causes a disharmony within ourselves, between us and other people, and in the rest of creation. Most tragically it ruptures our relationship with God. This is not what God intended when He created us.

In today’s seconding reading, from the letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul reminds us, that “He (God) chose us in Him (Christ), before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before Him. In love He destined us for adoption to Himself through Jesus Christ,…” (Eph. 1:4-5). Sadly, as we hear in today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis, there occurred an unnatural rupture. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes Original Sin in this way, “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. That is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (CCC #397). “There is a curious similarity between the promise of the tempter in Genesis (“you will be like gods” in 3:5) and God’s promise, cited in St. Paul, to be adopted sons of God (v. 5). One way respects God’s wisdom; the way of the tempter rebels against it” (Fr. E. O’Higgins, “Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” Sacerdos, December 8, 2004; http://www.sacerdos.org/english/index.phtml).

Now, you may be wondering what all this has to do with the Solemnity which we celebrate today; the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Even as Genesis describes the Fall, and the consequences of Original Sin, there is a promise of a future victory over temptation through a descendant of Eve. In Genesis 15 God says “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” Most of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church have called this verse from Genesis the Protoevangelium, which means “the Gospel before the Gospel,” and they have seen the woman referred to in this verse as being the Blessed Virgin Mary, the new Eve, who gave birth to Jesus our Redeemer, the new Adam.

Because the Gospel reading for this Mass is that of the Annunciation, often people think that the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is about Jesus being conceived without the stain of Original Sin. However, what we celebrate today is the fact that due to the merits of Christ’s victory over sin, God preserved Mary from all stain of Original Sin, and that by a special grace of God she committed no sin of any kind during her entire earthly life. The Church has interpreted the archangel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you,” as the declaration of this wonderful truth about Mary.

What does all this mean? Well for one thing, we must be very clear, Mary is not a freak of nature. In her female nature, she is a daughter of Eve, like all other women in the world. However, unlike every other woman in the world, all the perfections of her womanly nature are found in Mary. In fact, the reality of womanhood is most perfectly manifested in the Blessed Virgin Mary because in her there is none of the disillusionment that sin causes. In Mary, God’s spirit shines undimmed and undistorted.

One of the difficulties that we have in thinking about the Immaculate Conception is that “we normally think of the sinless state of Mary in merely negative terms, not having sin” ( Fr. E. O’Higgins, ibid). However holiness, or sanctity, has two elements. Not only must there be the negative element of having no obstacle to God’s grace, namely sin and improper attachments, but there must also be the positive element of “docility to the lights and movements of the Holy Spirit so that the will only lets itself be moved in all and through all by the will of God” (Fr. C. Ermatinger, “Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” Sacerdos, December 8, 2005; http://www.sacerdos.org/english/index.phtml). Through her fiat, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38), Mary shows that she “knew how to cooperate with God’s every movement of grace, perfectly and fully” (Fr. C. Ermatinger, ibid).

Sin is a closing off to reality, others, and to God, by our accepting self-deceptions and illusions. We choose ourselves over God. We settle for less. This acceptance of sin in our lives perpetuates division not only within ourselves, but between us and other, and ultimately in closes us off from God’s love.

However we must not become discouraged. God never stops loving us, and He never stops offering us the grace of redemption won for us by the Passion, Death and Resurrection of His son, Jesus. Plus we have the Blessed Virgin Mary, ever pure, ever full of grace, who is always ready to intercede for us with her son. We have all seen shirts and bracelets with “WWJD – What Would Jesus Do?” but maybe a more appropriate acronym, which I have also seen, is “FROG – Fully Rely on God.” We must trust in His love and obey Him, and Mary is always ready to help us do just that. With great devotion let us say, “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”

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OK, how many of you have already started to put out your Christmas decorations? Do any of you already have your Christmas trees up? I am sure that many of you, including myself, have already started your Christmas shopping.

Now is a time of preparation. Plans are being made for family get-togethers, or maybe vacations. There is baking to do, lawns and houses to decorate, and trees to dress. And we cannot forget about the shopping. My one sister called my mother on the Friday after Thanksgiving, so-called “black Friday,” to say that she had gotten up early and had all her Christmas shopping done. There is so much preparation to get done.

Now is certainly a time of preparation, but as Christians we need to make sure that we do not lose sight of the REAL preparation we are called to do as we enter into the Advent season. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus gives us a very prudent warning, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life….” For us, as Christians, the important preparations we are called to make during this time of year is spiritual, a preparation for the coming of Jesus.

The Church has traditionally spoken of three comings of Christ, which correspond to the the three dimensions of time: the past, the present, and the future. Of course during this time of year we recall the great mystery of the Incarnation, of how God expressed His great love for us by sending His only begotten Son to us. We recall how the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, who is infinite, humbled Himself and took on our lowly human nature. That God lived among us.

We also recall that after His death and resurrection, Jesus did not abandon us. Rather He remains incarnate in the present through His Mystical Body, the Church. That this presence of Jesus in the world today is not just some abstract sentimentality. His presence among us today is very real, very tangible – most especially in the the Eucharist which is His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. Jesus comes to each of us in the now; in our joys and our sorrows, to guide us to our eternal home.

Finally we recall that Jesus will come again, “in a cloud with power and great glory.” In His future coming Jesus will fulfill the promise we hear in today’s first reading from the Prophet Jeremiah by being called, “The Lord our justice.”

To worthily prepare for the celebration of Christmas we must purify ourselves and grow in the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. These virtues find their origin in the mystery of Christ, especially in His Incarnation and birth. Faith, hope and love provides the framework of our Christian life.

We see these three theological virtues relating to the three dimensions of time, the three comings of Christ, that we are called to reflect upon during the Season of Advent. In Christ’s coming in the past, particularly in His Paschal Mystery, we find the very content of our faith. In Christ’s coming in the present, made real through the life of grace, we find the very source of love in us. In Christ’s coming in the future, at the hour of our death and ultimately at the final judgment, we see the object of our hope – the desire to spend all of eternity is perfect union with God.

During Advent we are called to fall even deeper in love with Christ. To achieve this we must develop the ability to reflect deeply on the life of Jesus. We also must develop an authentic interior life of prayer to keep us in communication with our Lord. Advent is a time for us to become aware of the things that keep us from Christ Jesus. It is a penitential season, not unlike Lent. This penitential aspect of the Advent season is almost completely lost in today’s “post-Christian,” consumer-driven society. Rather, the thought of Advent is often more dominated with a whirlwind of Christmas parties, decorations and getting ready for “Santa.” In the midst of all this we often forget the real reason for the season, and all these externals: Christ the Lord is coming! Again listen to the prudent warning of Jesus in today’s Gospel, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life….” If we do not prepare ourselves spiritually for Christ’s arrival, we could make the same mistake as the people in Bethlehem who not only missed his coming, but actually rejected Him (from the Homily Help for the First Sunday of Advent on the Sacerdos webpage).

Rather let us joyfully cry out: COME, O LORD, AND DO NOT DELAY!

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