Christ offers himself for our embrace – Luke 2:22-40

Feast of the Presentation; Holy Infant parish.

A recent Taylor Swift song opens with the defiant statement: “We could leave the Christmas lights up ‘til January // This is our place; we make the rules.” Only, I’m not really sure quite what she thinks she’s defying. Of course you can, Taylor, it’s still Christmas in early January. While Christmas Day being on December 25^th has been pretty consistent throughout Christian history, quite when the Christmas season ends has varied a little. Currently, in the Roman Catholic Calendar, as reformed in 1970, the Christmas Season ends with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which is normally the early side of mid-January. We celebrated that on the twelfth this year. For a long time before that, about four hundred years prior to 1970, the Christmas season ended on Epiphany which was always twelve days after Christmas. I went to a great twelfth night party just under a month ago, where we had a King Cake and a rosca de reyes, which are really variants of each other, but both great ways to celebrate Epiphany. Anyway, before the reforms that followed the council of Trent that standardized Epiphany as the last day of the Christmas season, in some places, including parts of England, the last day of the Christmas Season was today, or rather, tomorrow, February 2^nd, the Feast of the Presentation, or Candlemas as it’s also known. So, if somebody could let Taylor know… if she becomes a super-old-fashioned pre-Tridentine Catholic, she can leave the Christmas lights up ‘til February!

God shines the light of the Word – Matt 4:12-17, Isa 8:23-9:3

3rd Sunday of OT, Year A, Sunday of the Word of God; Holy Infant parish.

Pope Francis has designated this the first annual celebration of Sunday of the Word of God. Each year, on this the third Sunday of Ordinary Time, is now marked as a time to marvel at the reality that God has given us the gift of scripture. Of course, we read scripture every week at Mass. We have three readings, many of our prayers contain bits of scripture. But, sometimes, we’re so concerned about the particular passages of scripture that the Church lifts up for us each week, that we don’t take a step back just to ponder and to marvel at the fact that God gives us scripture. God gives us the gift of words, words which reveal God in a special way, words which are worth holding high and processing around the church with, words which in a very real way are relics of Christ.

Jesus baptizes us – John 1:29-34

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

When do we celebrate the baptism of Jesus? Well, that depends what “of” means. If we mean the baptism of Jesus in the sense of the event of Jesus being baptized, Jesus’ baptism in that sense, we celebrated it last week. This week, our gospel gives us another possibility for ‘of,’ though. This week, we celebrate the baptism of Jesus in this sense: the event of Jesus baptizing. In our gospel we hear John the Baptist report that he heard a message from God that this Jesus, whom he baptized, would one day baptize with the Holy Spirit. And he has.  The promise has been fulfilled.  Brothers and sisters, Christ has baptized us.  That’s what makes us sisters and brothers! There’s something amazing because each of us were baptized by someone else. Someone else poured the water and said the words, but it’s still true that Christ baptized us.

God grasps us by the hand – Isa 42:1-7; Matt 3:13-17

Baptism of Christ, Year A; Holy Infant parish.

As an undergrad, I was involved in student politics, and I once received some advice from someone who was much more successful than me in that area, and a generous mentor in a lot of ways, and she told, “Never run for anything, unless you truly believe that the job is important, and that you’re the best person to do it.” As grateful as I am for her generosity, I’ve come to conclude that this is terrible advice. The first part is OK as far as it goes, we should do things we think are important, though we also need to do things sometimes just because they’re fun, or relaxing, or sometimes we just need to trust that something might be important because others assure us it is, even if we can’t see that yet. But I want to concentrate more on the second half – the idea that you shouldn’t put yourself forward to do something unless you’re already convinced you’d be the best at it.

God reveals joy to us – Matt 2:1-12

Epiphany; St. Joe parish.

I don’t know if any of the rest of you had this experience this morning, but as I was driving along a tree-lined street, I looked at the bare tree branches each with their little white overline of snow, and stopped and thought, “Wow; isn’t this beautiful.” I remember one time in seminary, one Spring, walking round the lakes at Notre Dame and stopping by one of the trees outside Moreau seminary that was in full pink bloom. One of our priests was also stopped by it, looking at it, and commented (to God, but possibly conscious of my overhearing), “You didn’t have to give us this too.”

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.