God raises us – Matt 2:13-15

Holy Family, Year A; St. Joe parish.

Sometimes, the origins of a word have little or nothing to do with what the word means now. “Malaria,” for instance, means “bad air,” because people thought the disease was airborne, and we’ve kept the word even though we now know that’s not how it spreads. But other times, the origin of a word is really worth sitting with and wondering if it can actually illuminate the concept for us. I think that a good example of this is the word “educate.” Our English word “educate” comes from the Latin “to lead out,” ex + dūcere. And I think that that’s actually a rather beautiful image of what education is, the idea that education consists not of stuffing people’s brains full of as many facts as possible (the so-called “banking model” of education), but of leading them out of somewhere. The image, I think, is of leading people out of somewhere that is narrow and confining. An educator walks with students, equips them to walk on their own two feet, but keeps on guiding them, not abandoning them, and leads them from a place of narrowness, of being shut in, into a world that is suddenly larger, a world they can now navigate.

God feeds us – Luke 2:1-14

Christmas; St. Joseph parish, Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

The image of the baby in a manger. It’s on a huge number of Christmas cards, it’s part of our nativity set here in church that we blessed at the beginning of Mass, it’s popular among artists, it’s just part of Christmas for us. Which maybe means that we never stop to think about quite how odd it is. I think that maybe one thing that obscures that is that we use the word “manger,” which we pretty much only ever use in relation to Jesus, rather than a more prosaic, but equally accurate, term like “feeding trough.” I mean, I’m not going to claim to be the expert here on neonatal care, but I don’t know how many of you ever put your babies in your dogs’ food dish.

God is with us – Matt 1:18-24

4th Sunday of Advent, Year A; St. Joe parish.

I used to be associate pastor at Holy Cross parish, and while I was there, I taught the confirmation class for the grade school kids. The first mini-essay I’d assign each year would be to ask them to explain which virtue they most wanted to grow in over the course of their confirmation prep. Each time I assigned that essay prompt, a full half of them would choose courage. The rest, by the way, would be split roughly evenly between faith, hope, and love. I was somewhat disappointed that none of them ever chose prudence, which I think is something many twelve to fourteen-year-olds could probably do with growing in… But, courage, that was the most popular choice for virtue they most wanted to grow in. And they were able, in general, to write about big bold displays of courage, but they concentrated in their responses on little things, on resisting peer pressure, standing up for someone being picked up, or defending what they believed was right.

God makes the deserted bloom – Matt 11:2-11, Isa 35:1-6a, 10

Advent, 3rd Sunday, Year A; St. Joseph parish.

“Here is your God.”  Behold, your God.  These are some of the words we heard from the Isaiah.  He has more to say about God: that He comes with vindication, with divine recompense, he comes to save you.  It goes on, talking of all the miraculous healing that will happen, all great cause for rejoicing on this Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of rejoicing.  Advent is a lot about waiting for the future. It’s also about remembering the past, building up our trust and hope that Christ will come again by remembering that he came. But the readings we heard today shift our focus from both past and future to present. “Here Is your God.”  Not, here’s the spot where he will be, just hang on; certainly not, there’s where he will be, but he’s distant now, so don’t bother Him.  No. Behold Him.  Here is your God.  The cry might go up… “where?”

God gives us the gift of being givers –Isa 11:1-10

2nd Sunday of Advent, Year A; Holy Infant parish.

We use cute kittens for praising friends. If you were to ask anyone who prepared for the sacrament of confirmation through Holy Cross grade school, South Bend, IN in 2014 or 2015 what the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are, I’d hazard a guess that, before answering, at least a few of them would recite in their heads: “We use cute kittens for praising friends.” The reason is that in those two years, I was teaching the confirmation prep class for the kids in our parish grade school, and I knew that, as part of Bishop’s homily at their confirmation Mass, he would ask the confirmandi to provide for him each of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So, I made up that mnemonic, in which the first letter of each word in the sentence matches the first letter of the gift, to help them remember. We, wisdom; use, understanding; cute, counsel; kittens, knowledge; for, fortitude; praising, piety; friends, fear of the Lord. Only once on a quiz did I have a kid claim that the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit were wisdom, understanding, counsel, kittens, fortitude, piety, fear of the Lord. And that list of gifts is important, because it’s a long-standing way of naming what it is God strengthens in a Christian when they receive the sacrament of confirmation. The -firm- part in the middle of the word “confirmation” means “strengthens,” and it’s not primarily about the recipient of the sacrament strengthening their commitment (though, if they do that, that’s wonderful); the sacraments are all about God’s action, not ours, about God’s strengthening of God’s gifts to God’s people.

God stirs up our longing to run to Christ – Adv I collect, Isa 2:1-5, Rom 13:11-14

Advent I, Year C; Holy Infant parish.

Collect:

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,

The resolve to run forth to meet your Christ

With righteous deeds at his coming,

So that, gathered at his right hand,

They may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

One God, for ever and ever.

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Advent is for waiting – if people know one thing about Advent, it’s probably that.  We’re waiting for Christmas, which isn’t very long to wait and we’re waiting for Christ to come again, without knowing how long that will be.  Regardless, we’re waiting.  So why did our opening prayer, our collect, talk about running?  “Grant us the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ.”  That’s what we prayed at the start of Mass.  Running: it’s a fascinating and compelling characterization of what Christian waiting looks like.

God brings us into the light of day – Mal 3:19-20

33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C; Holy Infant parish.

I have a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the sun. Not the Son of God, Jesus, I mean the big fiery thing in the sky, the sun with a ‘u.’ Most pragmatically, like all life on this planet, of course, we’re totally dependent on it, both for warmth and so that plants can grow and give us things to eat and oxygen to breath. It also feels good. There’s just something about a sunny day that just feels better. This time of year, the sun gets up right up when I do, which makes getting up a lot easier. “Feeling the sun on your back” is a common expression for the pleasantness of being out, being active, on a sunny day. But, given that there is not a lot of a sun in the land of my people, my skin is pretty terribly adapted to sun. I burn really easily. I have so little pigment in my eyes that it’s actually really hard for me to see well on a very sunny day, without shades for my glasses. Actually, in one place I lived, the place I went for my eye exams was an optometry school, and the students and instructors would always get excited when they started examining me because I’m so low on eye pigment that, apparently, you can see various features of ocular anatomy on me that you can’t easily in most people, because of the greater amount of pigment, and they’d generally start calling people over to look at my eyes. Less personally, I know what increased exposure to the sun’s rays is doing to our planet, and its capacity to be hospitable to human life. Heat and light and the sun play ambiguous roles in our lives: necessary, often pleasant, sometimes onerous, potentially dangerous.