Memorial of Saint Lucy, virgin and martyr
In this penultimate week of the liturgical season of Advent, we find ourselves with first readings taken from a selection of Old Testament books. These passages will highlight the Christological reading of the Old Testament; in other words, we find the coming of Jesus foretold in the books of the Hebrew Scriptures which became known as our “Old Testament” and which were written centuries before the birth of the infant Jesus.
Third Sunday of Advent
My focus today is on Isaiah’s proclamation in today’s first reading, “Here is Your God!” It is as if he was holding God in his hands and showing God to the Hebrew people. It was as if Isaiah was trying to bring close to the people a God who was thought of as being far away. Isaiah says, “Here is your God!” In this homily, I would like to reconcile the ‘otherness’ of God with God’s imminence. There is nothing more relevant as we prepare ourselves for Christmas.
Saturday of the Second Week of Advent
In the tradition of Jewish hope for the Messiah, the one who would come and restore God’s reign, there was an expectation that the great prophet Elijah would come back as a forerunner to the Messiah, an indication that the one who came after was indeed God’s servant who will save His people from oppression. In the first reading, we see a recitation of this expectation of Elijah’s return, “You were destined, it is written, in time to come to put an end to wrath before the day of the Lord,To turn back the hearts of fathers toward their sons, and to re-establish the tribes of Jacob.” And in the gospel, Jesus alludes to Elijah’s suffering such that it was clear to the disciples that he was identifying John the Baptist with Elijah. The Baptist is indeed the forerunner to Jesus, the Messiah. It is not as clear as was expected.
Friday of the Second Week of Advent
The second candle in the Advent wreath stands for peace. Peace, in the ways we tend to use the word in our culture, refers to the fact that we agree with each other, or at least, we "agree to disagree" (aka "Let's just never ever bring up this subject again..."). We use it to refer to having harmonious relationships with family members, friends, and politically, with other nations or between political parties.
Thursday of the Second Week of Advent
“The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and of great kindness” (Ps. 145:8). This is our response for today’s psalm, and it encapsulates one of the themes of Advent, namely God’s merciful gift in his Son Jesus, who will come to us as an infant at Christmas and who will come again at the end to claim all who belong to his kingdom.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In the Baltimore Catechism there are many questions and answers. While I did not grow up in the era of having to memorize it, I have learned a few questions and their answers. The question, “Why did God make you?” jumped into my head in reflecting on today’s readings. The answer makes clear what otherwise seems a difficult existential question. God made me to know, love and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next. It means that we need to live as faithful disciples.
Memorial of Saint Ambrose, bishop and doctor of the Church
During Advent I’ve found that I’m usually so busy that it’s often difficult to find time for significant reflection on the deeper spiritual significance of the season. One thing that helps this is to keep in mind scripture that is relevant to the season. Thankfully, the readings for today present us with the illuminating and vivid image of the good shepherd.
In the first reading, Isaiah announces the coming of the Lord God. For centuries, one way that Christians have interpreted these pronouncements by Isaiah has been an announcement of the coming of Jesus. Consequently, reading Isaiah during Advent helps us to prepare to celebrate Christmas, for at Christmas we celebrate the mystery of the second person of the Trinity having assumed human nature and lived among us as a fellow human being. Furthermore, the passage also looks ahead to Jesus’ second coming as well.
Monday of the Second Week of Advent
In this second week of Advent, we continue hearing the beautiful words of the prophet Isaiah, as he describes the coming of the Lord. These words are particularly appropriate for Advent because they indicate a longing, a desire for something which is lacking, something which has not yet come. Isaiah not only imagines a better world, but he implies the sorrows and sufferings of the world before the coming of the Lord: feeble hands, weak knees, frightened hearts, blind eyes, deaf ears, and so on. Our world, as we have inherited it, is far from perfect.Advent is a wonderful season where we long for the coming of Christ both at the end of time and in the stable at Bethlehem. And yet, while we are longing for the coming of Christ, we know to that he has already come; Isaiah’s words have been fulfilled in the person of Jesus. In this sense, Advent is as much about the right now as it is about the not yet. Right now our God comes to save us. Right now we receive God in the Eucharist. Right now we have already been saved. Right now our salvation is at hand. Even in our imperfect world, God has come for us and is here for us just as he will be at the end of time.
Second Sunday of Advent
As we can understand, during the four Sunday’s of advent, the scripture readings are chosen very carefully. There are particular things that the Church wants us to know as we prepare for the birthday of Jesus. I am going to give you a little bible study here. First, the messiah must come from the tribe or the house of Judah. Jesse, who we hear about in the first reading, was King David’s father and he was of the house of Judah. God had made a promise to David, that his kingdom and his lineage would be secure forever. Jesus, through his foster father Joseph, came from the lineage of David. In this way, Jesus is the “shoot of Jesse” that Isaiah talks about in today’s first reading (Is 11:1).
Saturday of the First Week of Advent
We usually think of Christmas, not Advent, as the time of giving—but, really, all times are times of giving. Although we may not always realize it, we receive everything that we have as a gift from God. As the Creed insists, we believe in the God who is “creator of heaven and earth, of all that is- seen and unseen.” If we allow ourselves to seriously contemplate our own Faith, we find that we believe that everything stems from God’s giving. If this is true, then all of our experiences find their origin in God, who continuously sustains all things. Everything that we are and everything that we have- all of our lives have their source in the LORD God Almighty, who is the beginning and the end of everything that was, and is, and will be. Our conscious recognition of this tenet of our faith, that all of creation is already the gift of God, serves as an important background for today’s readings. While they might at first appear to speak merely of “future” giving from God (in the first reading) or “past” gifts from God (in the Gospel reading), we must never allow ourselves to forget that God’s gifts are continuous. What the readings are highlighting, then, is not the fact that sometimes God gives—because the very fact that we live and breathe is itself already a testimony to God’s ceaseless giving—but is rather proclamation of how God gives. According to the reading from Isaiah, God wants to comfort us in our weeping and end our cries of pain and abandonment. God seeks to give us the nourishment we need, He wishes to teach us about Himself (which He did to perfection in Jesus), and He intends for us to cooperate with Him in the cultivation of this earth. And, in the darkest days of our lives, when we feel like we may have lost all hope, God promises to bind our wounds, heal our bruises, and gather us to Himself.
Memorial of Saint Francis Xavier, priest
The candle on the Advent wreath this week is symbolic of hope, the hope we have that something good will happen even if we have not quite obtained it yet. I think of hope kind of like being on a road trip: when I travel to Iowa to visit my grandmother for the holidays, I count down the miles and towns, and I pore over the maps. I can see, visually, that we are making progress, even if we aren't quite at the destination yet. The continual progress, in turn, gives me more hope and more hope, so that hope reinforces itself.
Thursday of the First Week of Advent
In this first week of Advent, we continue the book of the prophet Isaiah and also continue with readings involving the Kingdom of Heaven, which was a prominent theme in the last few weeks of our liturgical year. Today’s selection from Isaiah speaks of triumph for those who have trusted in the Lord. Those nations who have lived God’s will find welcome in the strong and protected city. These people have lived the truth of God as their rock and hence find security in this rock. Meanwhile, other lofty cities are humbled as they fall to the ground to be trampled by the needy and the poor. We can understand these lofty cities as concerned more with their own success than in fidelity to God and hence charity to the lowest of their society.
Wednesday of the First Week of Advent
Have you ever climbed a mountain? How does the experience of being on a mountain differ from being on flat ground? Mountain climbing certainly can be a physically exhausting process. Yet part of the reason for going up a mountain often goes well beyond the physical. For those who have done it, getting to the top of a mountain is gratifying in an almost surreal way. Being at the top can be a spiritual experience. From the mountain top we see a perspective of the big picture that is often invisible from the valley. In my own experience, the beauty of the mountain top is enlivened by snow, clouds or even a fast approaching storm whose electricity demands our flight.
Feast of Saint Andrew, Apostle
The story of the calling of the apostles in the gospel reading today is remarkable for at least two reasons. First, it is the story of Jesus calling fishermen to be disciples. It is surprising that Jesus initially chose humble, relatively uneducated people to be his disciples, rather than those who were highly educated in religion. Yet, these disciples, including Peter and his brother Andrew, went on to do great things in spreading the good news and building up the church. This is in fact an inspiring point.
Monday of the First Week of Advent
Yesterday we began our Advent journey in joyful anticipation of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our first readings will be from the book of the prophet Isaiah for these first two weeks of Advent. The book of the prophet Isaiah, of course, belongs to the Old Testament. It was written many, many years before the Incarnation of Jesus and his birth into the humble town of Bethlehem. And yet much of Isaiah is a prophesy precisely about Jesus, the sign of God-with-us, the embodiment of God’s love for his people.
First Sunday of Advent
As we begin the season of Advent, the scripture readings use numerous analogies to prepare us for Christmas. Let me begin with the first reading from Isaiah. The very last sentence is the very crux of today’s message: “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” (Is 2:5) Light is best juxtaposed against darkness. As Paul would say in today’s second reading, “Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” (Rom 13:12).
Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Appropriately, on this final day of the liturgical year, we have reflections about the apocalypse, or the second coming of Jesus. “Apocalypse” in Greek literally means “revelation” or “pulling back the veil” (Hence the title of the last book of the Bible). We generally talk about “revelation” as the way that God makes Himself known to us—in Scripture, through the Church, and preeminently in Jesus Himself.
Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
I know that the popular take on scriptures like the ones for today's reading is the movie "Apocalypse," earthquakes, tsunamis and terrifying end-of-the-world events. Thinking about the end of time can be scary, partly because it makes us reflect on how much we don't know about our future. But when I meditated on it for this week, all I could think was, "This is just so true - this is the way life is." Life changes quickly - perhaps even moreso in these days of lots of technology. The world changes so fast - healthy people get sick suddenly; economic fortunes come and go; jobs and policies and procedures change. In our day-to-day life, unexpected things happen and we realize, over and over, just how little control we have over our lives and how little we really know about our future.
Thursday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
(The reflection is based on readings for the day and not on the readings for Thanksgiving Day Mass)
In these last days of the liturgical year, the tone of our readings continues to rise to one of urgency. Both the first reading today from Revelation and the gospel passage from Luke convey this atmosphere of fear, judgment, and destruction. And yet both also convey redemption and salvation through Jesus the Lamb. This is the hopeful message in the midst of what might otherwise be simply utterly frightening passages in regard to the end times.
Memorial of Saint Andrew Dũng-Lac, priest and martyr, and his companions, martyrs
As the liturgical year comes to a close our readings continue the theme of the end times. There are many ways people react to these end times, especially when it refers to them personally. In my family, we recently buried my mother-in-law. From January 17th until her death on October 25th, she lived in a semi -paralyzed state due to a stroke. At the end of September, her body lost the ability to absorb food and her doctor recommended the cessation of food. These extreme circumstances were a sign that the end was near. To Rosemary’s credit she stayed focused on the things that brought her joy right up until the end. Her joy came from her love of God and family. Despite dire circumstances, her life testified to the Lord and to the life that was beyond death.