From Season to Season

Many will come from the east and west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven. - Matthew 8:11 In the First Reading and Gospel of today’s Mass , we hear, as if for the first time, the promise of the Lord’s Advent: “For over all, the Lord’s glory will be a shelter and protection.” The promised Messiah, the Long-Awaited One of Israel, comes to offer salvation for all God’s children. Isaiah saw the vision of a world cleansed from its fear and sin, a world where God’s glory would be manifest to all. In Jesus, this promise is fulfilled.     Opening our hearts to hear this promise in a new way this Advent, we remember the great missionary, Saint Francis Xavier . Inspired by no other motive than a desire to spread the Gospel, this holy, simple priest left the security of his Jesuit community to set out on a mission that took him to India, numerous islands in the South Pacific, Japan, and finally, to a small island off the...

Watch, therefore; you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: “Watch!” —Mark 13:35-37 If there is one thing that can be said about the season of Advent, it is this: Advent is not Christmas. The blue-purples of vestments, hangings, and candles, the emphasis on preparation and expectation in Advent Scripture readings and carols, and the pervasive themes of judgment, restoration, and re-creation have little to do with the sights and sounds that fill shopping malls, homes, too many churches, and most hearts these days. We love Christmas and our secular culture, which really only gives a polite nod to the seasons and feast of the Christian Year, has enabled us to forget that we can really only celebrate the new-born light of Christmas after we have dwelt in the darkness of Advent. Sadly, we church types aren’t all t...

I, John, saw in heaven another sign, great and awe-inspiring: seven angels with the seven last plagues, for through them God’s fury is accomplished. Then I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire. On the sea of glass were standing those who had won the victory over the beast and its image and the number that signified its name. They were holding God’s harps, and they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: “Great and wonderful are your works, Lord God almighty.” —Revelation 15:1-3b In these final days of the Church Year, the daily Readings present images of plagues, persecution, and parousia . They certainly stand in stark contrast with the festive Thanksgiving spirit that we try to claim as a nation, even as families hurry through their holiday meals to rush out for Black Friday deals… on Thanksgiving.    The mix of the end-of-times language and imagery presented by our liturgy and the abundance of Thanksgivi...

Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honor. — Romans 12:9-10     During the Entrance Procession of the opening Mass of the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family, Pope Francis stopped for a moments to pray before three reliquaries that had been placed in St. Peter’s Basilica especially for the Synod. Two of the reliquaries were quite large and decorated with detailed figures and inscriptions—these reliquaries held the remains of Saint Thèrése of the Child Jesus and her parents, Blesseds Louis and Zelie Martin . The 2008 beatification of the parents of the beloved “Little Flower” was a widely publicized event and was celebrated as a time to reflect on the holiness that is possible for married women and men. Placed alongside these ornate reliquaries, however, was a smaller, simpler one containing relics of another husband and wife who had been beatified seven year...

Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come. —Psalm 23:5-6 When Pope Pius XI instituted a special feast honoring Christ “the King” in 1925, he lamented a world that had been ravaged by the First World War and which had begun to bow down before the lords of exploitative consumerism, nationalism, secularism, and new forms of injustice. The old power structures in Europe and the Middle East were fading into memory (including the colonial system that allowed European nations to claim holdings in Africa, South East Asia, and South America) and a new and uncertain world was rising in their place.  Pope Pius XI opening the "Holy Door" for the 1925 Jubilee Year, during which he instituted the Feast of Christ the King It would seem that Pope Pius began to understand that, for the Christian, the passing empires and colonies did not define who or whose they were. Instead, he reflec...

Mary calls me back to where I most want to be: to the heart of God which, as you know, is also the heart of the world. She calls me to let the passion of Jesus become my passion and his glory to become my glory. She calls me to move beyond the dos and don’ts of the morally correct life into an intimacy with God where I can live the sadness, pain, and anguish of this world while already tasting the gladness, joy, and peace of the glorified Lord. —Henri Nouwen   Several years ago, I was attending daily Mass with a community of Benedictine monks. After making the Sign of the Cross and extending the greeting, the celebrant declared, “Today we are celebrating something that never happened.” It was November 21, the Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The name for this particular feast of Mary is based on a tradition found in the Protoevangelium of James . This is an early Christian text which was circulating at the end of the second century and which be...

Recent movies like "Amistad," "Django Unchained," and "12 Years a Slave" help keep the scar of slavery alive in the conscience of Americans. The fury that surrounds the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the events that followed, is another reminder of racial and socio-economic inequality in the United States and the pain, frustration, and anger that so many people carry within them.    It’s never permissible for Christians to support systems that prey on the weak and vulnerable or to allow unjust policies and ideologies to prevail. In our quest for peace and justice, we rely on women and men who are able to really see the world around them for what it is—the good with the bad—and who can name its wounds and the grace that is always at work in the world. These people are prophets. And, as Pope Francis has observed, the prophet is the one who says, “you are on the wrong path, return to the path of God!” Theirs is a message that “does not ...

What is the purpose of the Christian life? Or, we might ask even more simply: What’s the point? As the Church Year comes to an end, this essential question is brought into sharp focus. The answer is as simple as it might be unpopular: because we’re waiting for the fulfillment of time and of hope-filled promises of an untold future. We are awaiting the return of Christ. I would go so far as to say that if we’re not watching and waiting in hopeful expectation, then something vital is missing from our individual faith.   The Last Judgment from the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo depicts Christ the Judge surrounded by Mary and the Saints Many Christians become immediately uncomfortable with talk of Heaven and hell, death and judgment. And, while the naïve concepts of heaven's “streets paved with gold” and hell’s "fire" shape the lives of some believers, these simplistic Sunday school images (could we say "threats"?) aren’t what we are about as Christ...