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Scripture:

1 John 5:5-13
Mark 1:7-11

Reflection:

John the Baptist introduced Jesus to the world. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” I doubt that we would have put John at the top of a list of those who would introduce Jesus. John’s mission was to introduce Jesus as the promised Messiah, the hope of all the ages. But who would have ever thought that God would have chosen a man like John the Baptist for this task? To say that John was “unique” would be an understatement. He was off the charts! He was a “wilderness man,” a man who lived in the desert, wore clothing made of camel’s hair and ate locust and wild honey. His message was not polished, but blunt and rather succinct. “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Yet, this was the man who God had chosen to introduce his Son, the Messiah.

What qualified John the Baptist to be the “first evangelist”? Perhaps it was his humility. St. Thomas wrote, “The virtue of humility consists in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one’s superior.” John knew his position in the universe. He was not God. He was not the Messiah. Rather, John was merely a voice, crying in the wilderness; the Messiah was much greater. John did not even consider himself to be worthy to carry the Messiah’s sandals. John baptized with water, but the Messiah’s baptism was far greater.

Because of his humility, John was the best person to introduce Jesus. In Wednesday’s gospel reading, John encouraged two of his own disciples to follow Jesus. John was willing to let go of his own disciples because he knew the ultimate leader was Jesus, not himself.

As we continue our journey into 2017, we pray that we might be able to lead others to Jesus through the humility that let’s Jesus be the Savior. “Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

Fr. Don Webber is director of the Office of Mission Effectiveness and resides in Chicago.

Scripture:

Malachi 3:1-4, 23-24
Luke 1:57-66

Reflection:

In today’s Gospel reading, we see the remarkable circumstances around the birth of John the Baptist. The relatives do not understand why the baby should be named John, but when Zechariah affirms that John is the name, he is finally able to speak again, and begins to praise God. With all this, the people ask, “What, then, will this child be?” And Luke adds, “For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.”

Children are mentioned in our first reading, too. As Malachi prophesies about the “day of his coming,” he also predicts the coming of Elijah before that day. Elijah is to “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers. Lest I come and strike the land with doom.”

As we reflect on the birth of John the Baptist in preparation for celebrating the birth of Jesus, it may be a good time to reflect on all children. For we can say what was said about John: The hand of the Lord is with them. And because of this, we could be asking ourselves, “What, then, will these children be?” Will many of the children be allowed, so to speak, to be the persons God made them to be? What can help “turn the hearts” of us toward them?

I know this is the time of year when there are many attempts to tug at our hearts to support various charities here and throughout the world. And I’m not advocating one charity over another. But somehow we cannot let the inundation of appeals numb us to the plight of others. Can we turn our hearts towards those most vulnerable, both young and old (For Elijah was to also “turn the hearts of the children to their fathers.”)?

To make room for Jesus we need to make room for each other. We are called to work for a time and a place when the question, “What, then, will this child be?” will not be asked out of fear or worry, but out of anticipation and hope.

Fr. Phil Paxton, C.P. is on staff at St. Paul of the Cross Retreat and Conference Center, Detroit, Michigan. 

Scripture:

Song of Songs 2:8-14
Luke 1:39-45

Reflection:

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” (Muhammed Ali) articulates the secret of his success: a rapid style that belies its power.

During WWII the Japanese Zero fighter plane was master of the sky.  Initially dismissed by U.S. experts as cheap and fragile, it soon demonstrated its superior maneuverability in the skies against its US counterparts, and made believers out of their designers.

These historical vignettes highlight the unreliability of appearances in human experience: the contrast between what seems weak and vulnerable and what emerges as flexible and forceful.  They constitute the bookends of life: what is born fragile and defenseless, and what ultimately counts as strong and invincible.  The birth of the infant Jesus is aligned with His death on the cross to realign our lives on what promises to be reliable and trustworthy.

Paul of the Cross has come down in history for capturing this conundrum in his own way, with his doctrine on mystical death and divine rebirth: dying and being born again.  Unlikely correlates as contraries always are, they nonetheless constitute the framework of our existence.  We pursue our lives between them: tensile strength accrues from these two fragile experiences.

Readings for today’s Eucharist suggest these antinomies, primarily along the lines of the weak and the vincible, as in the butterfly exhilaration of an Ali, or the elusive Zero of the Japanese Air Force.  It so happens that these biblical pieces appear on December 21st, the nadir of the year featuring its shortest day and longest night.  Simultaneously, one season gives way before another.  As the Song of Songs puts it: “For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth…”  It already aligns us toward the longest day and the shortest night.  The birth of Christ is mirrored in His death.  The helplessness of birth finds its duplicate in the waning moments of death.

The day’s readings are lyrical rhapsodies of women.  Men are next to invisible in them.  We hear of an excited bride awaiting her lover, and of Mary and Elizabeth awaiting their men children: Jesus and John the Baptist.  The readings express almost girlish cadences, fantasying the lover springing across the mountains and bounding over the hills, and shadowing Mary as she sets out on the fairly risky trip into hill country “with haste”, anxious to meet an elated Elizabeth, who will then feel her infant leaping in her womb, evoking her exclamation “in a loud voice”: “and how does this happen to me?”  Sheer joy spills out of these events.

If it is true that “The time of pruning has come”, it will merely be a moment of diminishment leading to the vine’s fullness and vigor.  Pervasive joy operates that way.  It permeates life experience like perfume, unmistakably present even in the hard times.  The two children in the womb were the cause of a joy not to be nullified by their agonizing deaths in the future.  Just as the lumbering reaction time of an aging Muhammed Ali fails to nullify the early excitement of his butterfly, bee-like movements, or like the Zero fighting plane that exhibited such prowess in its early mastery of the skies, but lives on in the design of aircraft in the years to follow.

There is exhilaration in the day’s readings not to be downgraded to the proverbial “flash in the pan”, like a meteor streaking momentarily across the darkened heavens, only to be lost in space and forgotten.  Rather it transmutes into a leitmotif woven into the fabric of life, functioning as a theme all the way to the end,  through the hard times.  Do we not recite the joyful mysteries of the rosary, knowing they will not be cancelled out by the sorrowful mysteries to follow?  While  winter follows fall, another spring is always on the horizon.  A life affected by the never-to-be-forgotten birth of Christ is forever tinted.  Paul of the Cross perspicaciously entitled his spiritual masterpiece: MYSTICAL DEATH AND DIVINE REBIRTH, not Divine Rebirth and Mystical Death.  He realized that life overcomes death, not vice versa.  Today’s biblical passages propose to color the Christian way of life indelibly, not to be erased by events to follow.

Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, C.P., is a member of the Passionist community in Louisville, Kentucky.   

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Scripture:

Zechariah 2:14-17
Luke 1:26-38

Reflection:

On this feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patroness of North America, we have an opportunity to reflect upon the significance of our Blessed Mother’s presence, now, in our midst. As she appeared in the midst of the people of Mexico, and in the earliest times, in the midst of the disciples gathered in one room, as Pope Francis puts it in Evangellii Gaudium, “she joined the disciples in praying for the coming of Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14) and thus made possible the missionary outburst which took place at Pentecost.” “Without her,” he goes on to say, “we could never truly understand the spirit of the new evangelization.” (#285)

The Spirit of the new evangelization and what urges me to look to Mary, is the interplay of justice and tenderness, of contemplation and concern for others.

We seek to make our hearts “homes” for others as Mary did in accepting motherhood, birthing the savior of the world.  Catholicism was very, very young in taking root among the indigenous people of Mexico. Catholicism had the greatest challenge of all, to combat genocide. The Spanish conquest and it’s insatiable, and, unstoppable appetite for gold, was leaving the indigenous no alternative but to be enslaved, or die, with disease or starvation. God would send His Mother who would say to Juan Diego, “Let your heart not be troubled…Am I not here, whom am your Mother?”

Let us take time to day to identify, with gratitude how Mary continues to “birth Jesus into the world” through us, as other disciples.

Fr. Alex Steinmiller, C.P. is president of Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School, Birmingham, Alabama.

The Immaculate Conception
of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Scripture:

Genesis 3:9-15,20
Ephesians 1:3-6,11-12
Luke 1: 26-38

Reflection:

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception when we remember that Mary was free from original sin from her very conception We set aside this day to commemorate this tenet of our Faith and to honor Mary in her complete holiness.

Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word.”
Then the angel departed from her.

This verse from today’s Gospel reading tells us of Mary’s encounter with the Angel Gabriel.   In the last few years, we have heard this referred to as Mary’s “yes”.  But we should remember that before Mary said yes she expressed if not a hesitation, at least astonishment.  She wondered, how can this be?  It is important to note that she asked this because it means that she was aware of what the angel was telling her and what she was being asked to do.

As she asked this, she must have been thinking of what it would mean to her to be pregnant.  What could happen to her and to her family if Joseph rejected her?  Being an unmarried mother in those days would have been unbelievably difficult.  She could have been stoned to death, and her family would have suffered greatly.  People were not seen as individuals as they are now, but members of their extended family, and what an individual did reflected on the whole group. Mary’s family would have found it very hard to believe that there was no human father; and her pregnancy could bring dishonor to all of them.

And this is why her acceptance of God’s Will takes on such importance.  She knew that she was being asked to walk a journey she had never anticipated; to change all her plans; to become someone new.

Yet she said “yes” .    And throughout the life of Jesus, she continued to say yes.  When Simeon predicted her sorrows, when Jesus was lost, when she saw her Son crucified and when she held his body.   For Mary, it was always the yes of acceptance.

God honored Mary by filling her with holiness, free of original sin.  Mary honored God by saying yes throughout her life, continually repeating “May it be done to me according to your word.”

What of us?  Do we accept the will of God in our lives?  Can we accept our lives as Christians no matter what it may mean?  Can we say, may it be done according to your will?  Can we live our lives according to God’s Word, according to the message of the Gospel?

Mary Lou Butler is a long-time friend and partner in ministry to the Passionists in California.

Scripture:

Isaiah 40:1-11
Matthew 18:12-14

Reflection:

“A voice cries out…”. We don’t know who is obeying the order to “speak to the heart of Jerusalem,” but centuries later we associate that voice with John the Baptist, who announces the coming of the Savior.

The voice says what we long to hear, “Comfort, give comfort to my people.”

Will we hear that voice that offers love, reconciliation, peace and justice? The way to hear the voice is to quiet down. Will Rogers said, “Never pass up the opportunity to shut up!” Listening takes “shutting up” time. Friendships survive not only because there are words that need to be said, but also because the two companions can dwell in the silence that connects them.  Good friends can talk, but silence can be a deeper experience and expression of their trust, ease, and commitment.

Advent is a special season that calls us into silence. Ironically, there is so much going on the weeks before Christmas: shopping, cards to mail, gifts to select and wrap, meals to plan, special events to attend, a house to clean and a tree to decorate. It seems there is no room, no time to quiet down. We need to struggle to find ten or fifteen minutes to be in silence.

Larry Gillick, S.J., in his reflection on the readings of Sunday, said, “We are invited by the season of Advent to almost hold our breaths as God does a fantastic athletic act of leaping from eternity into time, from heaven to earth, from Spirit to Flesh, and from mystery to history. We are invited to stand still as the Divine Artist begins painting and sculpturing our image within His.”

We can fully appreciate this truth only in the silence of our heart. If we remain too busy, we’ll miss those words of comfort being announced from the high mountain that God is in love with creation and the words of Jesus that the Father desires no one to be lost.

Fr. Don Webber, C.P., is the director of the Holy Cross Province Office of Mission Effectiveness and resides in Chicago.

Scripture:

Revelation 3:1-6, 14-22
Luke 19:1-10

Reflection:

“Now there was a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, who was seeking to see who Jesus was…” 

Jesus, could we talk?  I find your meeting with Zacchaeus intriguing.   Luke says that you were passing through Jericho.  A man is sitting up in a sycamore tree to get a better view of you.  This certainly had to catch your attention.   Needless to say, this short fellow was looking for something, for someone.   You took him on.  You had to ask , first of all, what his name was.  “Zacchaeus, the tax collector.”  I am sure that he was surprised when you called him by name.  Even more surprisingly you asked to be invited over to his house.  Zacchaeus shimmied down the tree with great delight!  He came down quickly and received you with joy.

But almost immediately the picture grows dark.  The crowd standing around began to crumble at you.   How dare you, Jesus, go to the house of a sinner.  Oh, my!  Zacchaeus worked for the Romans, that group of pagans.  He was collecting monies for the Romans who had been attacked by your fellow Jews a long time ago.  The Romans won and then demanded some restitution of you Jews by way of taxes.  This has to be an ever irritating sore that this rascal  Zacchaeus  takes your money and receives a salary for doing so.

The crowd is not silent: “He eats with sinners.”   Well, Jesus, that’s what you get for not checking out your friends!  I love Zacchaeus’ reaction to the crowd.  He realizes what is bothering them.  He tells them, Jesus, that money isn’t everything.  “Half of all I own I give to the poor.” No strings attached.  And he adds that if he has defrauded anybody, he will give them back four times as much.  That promise was not an idle one.

Where does this leave the crowd, your disciples, me and those who are reading this?  You went right to the heart of the situation.  “Salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, like the rest of you is a descendant of Abraham.”    And what is more, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”  Salvation has played out in all of our lives.  Thank you for seeking and saving what was lost.  That applies to me, too.

Jesus, I know you.  You also know me.  I realize that our friendship has grown and will continue through the years that remain for me.  There have been personal up’s and down’s (not the Zacchaeus tree variety!) from time to time.  I’ve known both light and darkness, joy and sorrow, success and failure.  You’ve seen my tears of laughter as well as those of sorrow.  I’ve known what it is to walk by faith.  I’d like to borrow a line from St. Paul: “The life I now live I live in the faith of the Son of God who loves me and gave himself up for me.”   And I love you, too.

 

Fr. Peter Berendt, C.P., is a member of St. Paul of the Cross Passionist Community in Detroit, Michigan.

Scripture:

3 John 5-8
Luke 18:1-8

Reflection:

There are many forms of prayer: praise, thanksgiving, and petition. Jesus begins this teaching by speaking about prayer in general. He says it should have two qualities. First we should “pray always”. For St. Paul of the Cross this means we must cultivate a deep interiority. Paul was a man of action. He founded thirteen monasteries, preached over two hundred missions, directed eighty retreats, and wrote about 10,000 letters of spiritual direction. But the foundation of all this work was his union with God. He valued solitude, quiet, silence, and spent hours each day in prayer. We could say that he walked in the presence of God.  We need to cultivate a like interiority in our own lives. Achieving it is a challenge. Jesus recognizes this by making a second point. He notes that we should pray “without becoming weary”. What does he mean?  Maybe the Revised Standard Version catches the meaning more clearly when it translates the Greek as “pray and not lose heart”.  At times it seems that our prayer is not getting us anywhere. The same old stuff comes up when we prepare for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. What’s the use? The temptation to give up prayer or let it slip is subtle, almost not a conscious decision. Paul of the Cross had to face this often in the people he directed. Again and again he encourages them to be faithful to prayer. If they can do nothing else they should just gaze at the crucifix, the sign of God’s overwhelming love.

 

Fr. Michael Hoolahan, C.P. is on the staff of Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.