God makes good on his promises to us – Heb 11:8-19, Lk 2:22-40

Holy Family (Yr B); Holy Cross - St. Stanislaus.

I’ve heard it said that we only ever receive something as a gift once we’ve been offered it twice.  When we received what we’re owed, our wages say, we simply pocket the envelope and then go ahead and make use of it, hopefully responsibly.  I doubt if many of us write thank you notes to our employers after each payday.  In fact, it would be odd if we did.  But gifts are different.  For something truly to be received as a gift there must at least a tacit unspoken resignation upon the first offering: “no, thank you, but this is too much.  I don’t deserve this.”  I use the word ‘resignation’ deliberately: it’s a re-sign-ation, changing the sign on the object, clarifying, this isn’t anything I’m due or have earned, this is gift.  Then, under the new sign, the gift can be given and received as gift: “no, please, I want you to have it.” 

God makes us His candles in the world – Luke 2:1-14, Isa 9:1-6

Christmas Mass "during the Night"; Holy Cross Parish.

The glory of the Lord shone.  Take a moment to take that in.  We normally think of light or a source of light as shining, as flashing, as illuminating.  But, here, we read that the glory of God shone.  To understand what it means for glory to shine, let’s back up and think about quite why we want light.

God makes his home with us little people – 2 Sam 7:1-16, Luke 1:26-38

4th Sunday of Advent (Year B); Holy Cross parish.

God gave David rest.  God had provided a palatial home for David the shepherd, had given him rule, but maybe most poignantly for us, our first reading tells us: God gave David rest.  Maybe in these days of December busy-ness, that’s what grabs us as the most extravagant gift: God gave David rest.  And David responds well.  He doesn’t respond wrongly, even if his response doesn’t display the full insight it might.  David is so grateful for this gracious gift that he wants to return the favor: he wants to build a magnificent house for God.  And God will eventually consent, even though it’s David’s son Solomon who will actually build the 20 story tall temple, because God delights in our attempts to do him honor.  But first God has a greater gift for David: a loving rebuke; an “O you of little faith”; a re-orientation.

God clothes us with joy – Isa 61:1-2a, 10-11, 1 Th 5:16-24

3rd Sunday of Advent (Yr B); Holy Cross Parish.

“Rejoice always.  Pray without ceasing.  In all circumstances give thanks.”  Surely there are some typos, or at least some scribal expansions, in this series of terse imperatives.  Surely Paul must have meant “rejoice sometimes; pray when you get a chance; when something good comes, give thanks.”  That would be good, humane, reasonable advice.  But, Paul dares to dream something more extravagant for the church he loves in Thessalonica.  And we proclaim that in our church as the Word of the Lord, as an extravagant dream for us.  It’s not reasonable, it’s radical: “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in all circumstances give thanks.”

God makes his way to us – Isa 40:1-5,9-11, Mark 1:1-8

Second Sunday of Advent (B); Holy Cross Parish.

To exiles, comfort is spoken, comfort is tenderly spoken.  The Israelites had been exiled for well over a generation now.  So many had grown up with talk of their Land, their own king, their own Temple being foreign to them, being something almost unimaginable, something they had never known, something that they know engenders a sparkle in the grandparents’ eyes, but not something they had ever touched or seen for themselves.  They were Israelites who had not known Israel, but only Babylonian captivity.  They had only known lush gardens they were shut out of.  They had only known themselves as foreign, as alien, as unwanted except as cheap labor.  They tried to sing their people’s songs in a strange land, but the melodies had never been wrapped around their tongues in their homeland.

God shows us his face in our neighbors – Isa 63:16-17, 19b; 64:2-7; Adv 1 Collect

First Sunday of Advent (B); Holy Cross Parish.

Frederick has been very important in my life, but I never met him.  You see, he was born in France in 1813, in the aftermath of the French Revolution.  He had a happy enough childhood it seems, in a very devout Catholic household.  But, as he entered adolescence, he came to encounter the world as much more complex and shady place than his childhood had prepared him for.  He struggled to find his place in a world of disagreement, conflict, question and doubt.  He was an exile from the child’s garden.  Everything that had seemed so secure seemed ruinously fragile.  What could he trust in to show him God?  He would later write of the “horror of doubts that eat into the heart and leave the pillow drenched with tears.”  One night he got up from that tear-drenched pillow and ran.  He ran into St. Bonaventure’s church, vaulted the altar rail and crashed to his knees in front of the tabernacle.  The pitiful child cried: “Why do you hide your face, God?”

Christ hungers and thirsts for us – Matt 25:31-46, Ezek 34:11-17

Christ the King; Holy Cross Parish.

What is it to be glorious?  I ask, because I don’t think we use that word a lot.  Words we use to say that something’s very good tend to suffer deflation over their history and new words need to be coined.  Something can be awesome without actually causing anyone much awe anymore, or brilliant without really make much of anything shine, or amazing without anyone being all that amazed.  But, glorious, that word seems to have kept a mystique, a value all of its own.  Our gospel tells us that at the end of time, the Son of Man will come in his glory, that he will be glorious, but we kind of have to hunt through the text to find what glory really means.