View from the Ambo

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Christmas letter

Christmastime is Here. But I always get That Christmas Feeling reminding me that Christmas is so much more than a Sleigh Ride Over the River and Through the Woods. It involves more than Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and Jolly Old Saint Nicholas. We Deck the Halls with The Holly and the Ivy, Mistletoe and Holly, Pine Cones and Holly Berries, but we prepare our hearts for more. Do You Hear What I Hear? Ding Dong! Merrily On High, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, but they were more than Silver Bells, Silver and Gold Jingle Bells. No, the Carol of the Bells declares much more. As we celebrate Christmas, we are taken back to The First Noel, when, It Came Upon A Midnight Clear on that Silent Night. Away in a Manger, in a Little Town of Bethlehem, In royal David’s City, the world first celebrated the Birthday of a King. Oh Holy Night, When A Child Is Born, willingly saying “From Heaven Above to Earth I Come.” A Savior is Born! Mary’s Boy Child! Sweet Little Jesus Boy! But What Child is This, that While Shepherds Watched, Angels, From the Realms of Glory come to earth to witness this event. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, declaring In excelsis Gloria. Still, Still, Still. It was A Baby Like You and me, only the Son of God, Eternal Savior. Christ is Born in Bethlehem, who is the Greatest Gift of All. The Shepherds Went Their Hasty Way, they declared to Mary, Dear Mother of Jesus, “Angels We Have Heard on High.” The Friendly Beasts, the Little Drummer Boy, and, eventually following the Star of the East, Three Kings of Orient Are all that are present to see this sight. One has to ask of the rest of the world, Do they Know It’s Christmas? Oh Come, All Ye Faithful, O Come Little Children, let us like Good King Wenceslas come Rejoice, The Lord is King. Rejoice, Rejoice All Believers, not just Angels and Shepherds! Joy to the World, Christ is born. Rejoice and be Glad, Rejoice and be Merry. Christmas day is The Most Wonderful Day Of The Year, but it is so much more than a day – it is The Holiday Season that lasts the full The 12 Days of Christmas and all year through. So, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, and ask you to remember that when we sing The Christmas Song, we Sing of God, the Greatest Good. Sing We Noel this Christmas. So Go, Tell It on the Mountain, Up On the Rooftop and everywhere else. Sing the Carol, Raise Your Voices! Come On, Ring Those Bells, ring them until the Jingle Bell Rock. Ring Merrily! Bells will be ringing, and yes, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, too, With Bells On. So God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and women. Sleep Well, Little Children. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Rocking Around the Christmas Tree. And Let There Be Peace On Earth, peace made possible by Jesus. This is What Christmas Means To Me. (Hidden among these rambling thoughts are the titles of at least 80 Christmas carols and tunes. Have a Merry Christmas.)

Friday, December 23, 2016

Christmas is a season

Merry Christmas! I hope that this season is one of peace and joy for all. Christmas is a season - it only begins on December 25. The Twelve days of Christmas, of carol fame, begins - not ends - on Christmas day. Indeed, the twelve days ends on the feast of the Epiphany, we we remember three events in which Christ is revealed to the world (the arrival of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, and the first miracle at the wedding at Cana). Different cultures have different endings of the season culturally, for example marks is through February 2 (the feast of the Presentation), while others end with the official end of the liturgical season on the Baptism of the Lord, this year January 9. There is something profoundly human (and humane) about this. We prepare for Christmas with another season, Advent, to prepare our hearts to celebrate His birth, but also for His glorious return in the Second Coming. In the Church, we need that time to prepare. While not as intense as Lent, it is a season in the Catholic and Orthodox churches marked by prayer and penance (and even fasting by some). But after such preparations, we also need to to celebrate, and do so for more than one day! Why all this preparation and celebration? Because Christmas is so much more than celebrate a birthday, thought true it is that in part. The Church recalls that Christ was born, but also that He will come again, and when better than when we celebrate His first birth. For a deeper understanding of the meaning of His birth, we need look no further that to some of the carols that we sing during this season. Hark the Herald Angels Sing tells us "God and sinners reconciled”. Silent Night proclaims “the dawn of redeeming grace.” The First Noel reminds us that with His [Christ’s] blood mankind hath bought.” Indeed every Christmas hymn (the religious ones, anyway) tell us the story of the Birth and the reason behind it. Clearly, this is no mere child, but is a Divine Being with a heavenly purpose. Being the Second Person of the Holy Trinity (the persons of the the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit in the one Being of God), Jesus took flesh (the Incarnation) in the womb of Mary, and He was born in a humble stable. While some might quibble about the date, the fact is that He was born, and we celebrate that fact. God became Man, became one of us, so that He would lead us to Himself. He was born that He might offer His life to the Father to redeem us. This is the core of the Christian faith, which begins with Christ’s Incarnation and Birth. He came to die on the Cross to bring the Father’s grace and loving presence to us. With that noble purpose, we need much more than one day. So sing long and well those glorious songs of Christmas and share the joy of our salvation with all.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day

This week, we have a Holy Day of Obligation - All Saints Day. We attend Mass to glorify God for what He did through the Saints, and we gather to honor those who have responded as disciples of the Lord. The saint we honor are both the canonized and uncanonized. In reality, we cannot celebrate and honor all the saints with an individual day, so we set this one date for all of them. There is something good in this, after all, we, too are invited to be saints, and remembering all the saints remind us that there is only one common factor in the lives of the saints - their love of God and desire to serve Him. This is done by the poor and rich, young and old, powerful or lowly, male or female. Sanctity transcends cultures, political leanings, and languages. Leon Bloy once wrote, "The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint." How true, because God has made us for Himself, as St. Augustine writes, and anything less than union with Him is to fail to be ourselves!
On Wednesday, we commemorate All Souls' Day, remembering all who have died. It would be most appropriate to visit a cemetery if possible, to offer a prayer for our dearly departed, and to pray for them. We do not have certainty of their current state - heaven united with God, condemnation because of their rejection of Him, or in the state of purification (Purgatory) where they are purged from the attachments to sin, having been forgive of them already. Because of this, this day offers us the reminder to pray for them.
But these days are also a gentle reminder to us to remember and prepare for our own death. As an epitaph on a grave stone puts it, "Remember me as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I, As I am now, so you must be, Prepare for death and follow me." Put more succinctly: Remember death - Momento mori.

All s

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Catholic Watchmen

Monday evening was our first Catholic Watchmen night. It was filled with great conversation and faith-sharing, food and prayer! There were about 40 men in attendance, and there is plenty room for more. This first night, Tony Grack presented a little about the Catholic Man Crisis. Too often, the media portrays men in a negative light (think Al Bundy or Homer Simpson). Too often, men are displayed as idiots or dolts, or over domineering. A few more ‘positive’ portrayals include James Bond who has no really family bonds (as Bishop Olmsted in his document Into the Breach points out). We can point to more misbehaviors than strong models of masculinity. Much of society’s ills can be traced to the lack of true men - from the BLM movement to single mothers to abortion. But there is another way, one that is not portrayed well in the media - the family man, sure, strong, consistent, and humble. These are the men that fill our parishes, and these are the men we hope to reach, encourage, and develop. There are men willing to give of themselves, to sacrifice for wife and family. There are men who are modeling their lives after Jesus Christ and being disciples and invite others to follow Christ. With this in mind, hopefully we can all see that the Catholic Watchmen is not in competition to the KCs, mens groups, etc, that are already in place but a means to help them. The Midnight Watch and the events themselves, while they take the men away from their families for those times, actually allow them to return stronger and better!

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Evangelization

Many Christians, and in particular many Catholics, have a reputation of avoiding “evangelization” – the process of sharing the faith with others. Perhaps it has several reasons. It might be related to fear: we are afraid of rejection, being thought a fool, or failing. We might feel unprepared: what if the person asks a question we do not know how to answer, or perhaps worse, where do we go from the initial positive response. Perhaps the largest is a certain amount of spiritual apathy. We are too accustomed to relativism – that truth is adaptable and subjective to the person, that the person decides what is true “for them” – think of the term “self-identify”, for example. This view of the truth rejects that there is any “always and everywhere” truth, one that is objective and not dependent on a person’s ability to grasp it. If all things are relative or subjective, which ironically is presented as an objectively-held truth, then the other persons’ beliefs or un-beliefs are as valid as our own.

But there is something profoundly different about Christianity. We believe that God loved humanity so much that the Father sent His Son to redeem us, and this Son, Jesus Christ, tells us Himself that He is the only way to the Father. Even in the Parables of the Lost that we heard proclaimed last weekend, it is God who ‘finds’ us – not us finding God or creating our own way to Him. In the end, what we have in Christianity is not a set of principals and procedures, rules and regulations – it is about being ‘found’ by the Lord, and being in relationship with Him.

If that is all true, then we know that we cannot be apathetic about evangelization. We come to understand that in Christ alone are we saved from sin and given the promise of eternity with God. We are asked by Jesus Christ to go to all nations, sharing the Good News of what He has done for us. We are not selling information but providing a relationship by introducing them to a Person. We invite them to deepen that relationship through the Sacraments and Church. We do so because we love the Lord (and perfect love drives out fear). We must ask ourselves, what kind of friend, either of the Lord or the other person, would we ultimately be if we did not wish to help them find each other?