Daily Scripture

Scripture:

1 John 1:5-2:2
Matthew 2:13-18

Reflection:

Beloved:  This is the message that we have heard from Jesus Christ and proclaim to you: God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all. 

The darkness that enveloped all of the families who lost innocent children in the massacre ordered by Herod must have been overwhelming!  This passage from the gospel of Matthew paints this sad state of affairs as we read:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
Sobbing and loud lamentation;
Rachel weeping for her children,
And she would not be consoled,
Since they were no more.”

The tragic end of life for so many innocent children in Bethlehem so long ago continues to happen daily, hourly and in some instances minute by minutes in our families, communities and throughout the world!  Whether these atrocities happen in our neighborhoods, cities, towns, or as far away as Aleppo and other wartorn countries, we feel Rachel’s pain and weep for the lost.  The Herod’s of our time are just as dangerous and in some way even more so than the Herod of Rachel’s time!

Our faith in a God who is light and walks with us through the darkness that can be overwhelming is the hope we carry with us during this Christmas season!  The great gift of that innocent child born in Bethlehem so long ago is the light that will guide us through dark days and nights.  May we embrace this miracle and give thanks for the gift we all have received at Christmas.

May God’s light continue to shine on you during the coming new year!  Christmas Blessings!

Theresa Secord is a Pastoral Associate at St. Agnes Parish, Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Acts 6:8-10; 7:54-59
Matthew 10:17-22

Reflection:

With the earlier and earlier onset of Christmas, we easily grow weary of carols on the radio and decorations at home and work. By the time December 26 comes we might already see discarded Christmas trees on the curb or next to dumpsters. Time to move on.

With all the lead time we now take that brings us to Christmas Day, we can lose sight of the fact that the Christmas Season really only begins on Christmas Day. We don’t seem to be eager to celebrate the Nativity of the Lord through to Epiphany and the Feast of the Magi. We’re tired by Christmas Day and choose to focus on the New Year.

I was amused at one Christmas Midnight Mass a few years back when the celebrant wove together into a bizarre narrative the story of Santa Claus and his Reindeer and the Nativity stories of the Gospels. Santa being born in a manger. Angels appearing on a sleigh. He painted all sorts of silly images by melding the two holiday narratives into one.

His point was really well made. The two stories are not the same. The tradition of Santa Claus, now quite devoid of any ties to Saint Nicholas and his generous gifts to the poor and children, has seemingly overtaken the Nativity. The first is about gift giving. The latter is about The Gift. The first is about quickly unwrapping gifts on Christmas Eve or in the morning. The latter is about a Gift that can never really be unwrapped.

On this first day following upon Christmas, perhaps we can gaze upon the Gift and ponder what difference this Gift will make in our lives. Just be still, just be present as the shepherds were. Let’s open our hands and our hearts to receive God’s Gift of Love, the Christ Child. Let’s enjoy this Christmas Season that takes us into the New Year and far beyond.

Robert Hotz was a consultant with American City Bureau, Inc. and  was the Director of The Passion of Christ: The Love That Compels Campaign for Holy Cross Province.

Christmas Eve

Scripture:

Isaiah 62:1-5
Acts 13:16-17, 22-25
Matthew 1:1-25 or 1:18-25

Reflection:

Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.”  Matthew 1:26

The other day I was in my room gathering my thoughts for this reflection. My room in the monastery is right next to the entrance of St Agnes Church.  As I looked out my window I saw Santa Claus going in to show his respects to Jesus!  Christmas is all about the greatest gift that God could possibly ever give us, the gift of His Son.  “they shall call His name Immanuel,”   We all have a gift beyond our wildest imagination.  “The surpassing grace of God is upon you.” 2 Cor 9:14 “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!^{” 2 Cor 9:15}   Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, Eph 1:3

Job could not understand what God sees in us to be bothered with us.  “What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him,” Job 7:17    But set your heart on us You did!   When God shared with King Solomon His pleasure at the building of the first temple He promised: “My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.” 1K 9:3    In other words when people came to the Temple Mont they entered into the loving gaze and very heart of God!  What a wonderful place to pray!   How much more this is true for us in Jesus.   The eyes of God human as well as divine are fixed on us in a loving gaze.    His heart full of ever present fondness is there in the face of a Babe.

Jesus talked of His Body being the new temple.  “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.” Mt 12:6   With His Incarnation a startling intimacy with God is offered to us!  No wonder Mathew’s Gospel begins and ends with the beautiful word Immanuel!   When Jesus comes to us in our humanity He comes to us in an incredible friendly and gentle way.  Now God has a human face, a Thou, someone who palpably is “God with us”.  Christ takes on a closeness and intimacy that the world of the First Testament could not imagine much less grasp!

Fr. Bob Weiss, C.P. preaches Parish Missions and is a member of the Passionist Community in Louisville, Kentucky.

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:

1 Samuel 1:24-28
Luke 1:46-56

Reflection:

Remember back to when we were children and excitedly played “Mother May I”?  Each person was told he / she could take a number of baby or giant steps but could only move if we asked “Mother May I” and Mother replied, “yes, you may”.   Just maybe this was a child’s game which portrayed the power of mothers in our lives.  In each of our families, we all certainly came to know the power and wisdom, care and love of mothers.  They played an essential role in our becoming who we are and how we care for others in our lives.  For those of us whose mothers have been called home by God, Christmas is a particularly important time for remembering them.

Our scriptures for today invite us to be respectful spectators as we witness three mothers responding to God in their lives.  Hannah found herself to be barren but believed with all of her heart that God could accomplish whatever God wished.  She prayed for a child and was blessed with Samuel in her elder years.  She sought God out in her time of anxiety.  She openly and with faith expressed her need for God in her life.  She listened attentively to God speaking to her in the circumstances of her life.  She responded with loving affirmation to God’s action on her behalf.  In gratitude, she dedicated her only son to God and God’s work in this world.  In observing Hannah, we witness a mother of abiding faith who lived in the hope that God’s providence for her life would bear the fruit God intended.  Her son would become a pivotal person in the history of Israel, leading them through a groundbreaking transition from a tribal society to a nation with a monarchy.  In a very real way, this mother’s prayer, her faith and her strength would bring about a watershed moment in human and faith history.

In Luke’s gospel, we are privy to an intimate moment when two mothers express their overwhelming awareness of God’s goodness and love for them.  We reverently stand beside Mary and Elizabeth, listening to Mary’s response to Elizabeth’s greeting.  Elizabeth had all but given up hope of becoming a mother when God intervened and made possible what everyone else considered impossible.   She would bear a son, naming him John.  Like Hannah, Elizabeth would know in the depths of her heart that there was something special about her son.  In faith and with great strength of character, she would dedicate him to the Lord and the Lord’s design for him.  Her son would be a decisive force in human and faith history as well.  He would be “Elijah”, returning to announce the advent of the Messianic Age.  Prepare the way of the Lord.  The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world is here.  God has fulfilled the divine pledge to save us.  This mother’s son would spell the end of one era and the beginning of the final era.

The final mother in our watching and listening is Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus.  We remember with some awe her deep faith, her living in hope even in the midst of unanswered questions, her attentive listening to God’s voice in her life, her profound humility before the glory of the Lord, and her overwhelming gratitude for God’s presence in her life, for God’s activity on her behalf, and for God’s ongoing Providence for her and her Son.  She is so thoroughly open to the Word of God in her life that the Word literally becomes flesh in her womb.  We are privy to this intimate moment as Mary stands before Elizabeth to offer the most profound prayer of praise and thanksgiving to God.  When her Son became flesh, human and faith history took a decisive, once and for all time turn.  The transition from darkness to light, from chains of sin to the freedom of God’s children, from brokenness to wholeness, from death to life is accomplished for all time.  God has fulfilled the divine promise to come and save us.

Our Advent scriptures today invite us to pay close attention to the power of mothers in our lives.  Certainly, our own mothers have a special place in our memories and hearts.  Today we are reminded of three scriptural mothers whose faith, hope, trust, strength and perseverance helped form who their sons would become.  In so doing, they continue to inspire us in our faith journeys on the way to our celebration of the Lord’s birth.

Fr. Richard Burke, CP, is a member of St. Paul of the Cross Province.  He lives at St. Ann’s Monastery in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

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.   

Scripture:

Isaiah 7: 10-14
Luke 1: 26-38

Reflection:

Would you be willing to tempt the Lord?  In our reading from Isaiah today it is clear that Ahaz, the king of Israel, is not willing to do so.  After Isaiah tells him, “Ask for a sign from the Lord, your God; let it be deep as the nether world, or high as the sky!”  Ahaz responds, “I will not ask!  I will not tempt the Lord!”  Perhaps Ahaz responded this way because he felt unworthy to test God’s love for Israel.  But, it seems that Isaiah interpreted his unwillingness to ask for a sign of his lack of faith in God’s faithfulness to Israel.  So, Isaiah tells Ahaz that the Lord himself will give a sign, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall name him Emmanuel.”

In the Gospel from Luke today, we hear of the fulfillment of that promise.  The angel comes to Mary and asks her to be the Mother of the Messiah.  Clearly, Mary is puzzled by this request and asks the angel, “How can this be?”  But, unlike Ahaz, Mary doesn’t let her lack of total understanding of what this might mean, keep her from responding to the request with her, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  In other words, “Yes, I will do as you ask!”  It seems that Mary is able to say “yes” to the angel, precisely because she trusted in God’s faithfulness to her.

So, in today’s reading we are presented with this wonderful contrast between Ahaz, not trusting and so not able to respond positively, and Mary, trusting in God and so able to give her whole hearted “yes” to God’s plan for our salvation.  Where are we in this spectrum?  Are we able to trust in the Lord’s faithfulness to us, or do we find ourselves reluctant to risk trusting in God?  Wherever we are, the good news is that God remains faithful to us always, even when we are not so sure!

Fr. Michael Higgins, C.P., is the director of Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

Genesis 49:2, 8-10
Matthew 1:1-17

Reflection:

In eight days Christians will again celebrate the miracle that forever changed the world. When God became one of us in Jesus, being born into our world in Bethlehem, we received a promise of hope we never thought possible and a future joy we never believed our hearts could know. This is why Christians profess that in Jesus we meet our king and our redeemer, our savior and our messiah.

But as today’s readings testify, Jesus will be a king dramatically unlike other kings and a savior it is easy to overlook. The reading from Genesis foretells the royal life of Israel. Jacob announces to his son Judah that he, like other kings, will conquer his enemies, receive homage from the people, and be like a lion, “the king of beasts,” that everyone fears to approach. By contrast, the psalm response foretells the reign of God that comes in Jesus. Jesus will rule with the wisdom, mercy, and goodness of God. Under his kingship the world will overflow in justice and peace. The poor will not be trampled, crushed, and forgotten, but defended and vindicated. The suffering will not be overlooked or ignored, but comforted and healed.

The gospel passage from Matthew recounts the genealogy of Jesus, tracing his lineage from Abraham, the founder of the Israelites, through Jacob and Judah, Jesse, David, and Solomon, all the way up to Joseph, Jesus’ father. What can seem like a bewildering chronicle of names nearly impossible to pronounce reveals something wonderful: God works through human beings—including some who are dramatically flawed—to bring about something extraordinarily blessed. But it is easy to miss the blessing, easy not to see it at all, because God who is savior and king enters our world not in wealth and majesty, but as a helpless child in a family of refugees looking for shelter.

Today’s scriptures remind us that to prepare for the coming of Christ we must look for Jesus where perhaps we least expect to find him. Jesus is right before us, once more beseeching our help, in the stranger, in immigrants and refugees, in the poor and homeless, in all those who, like Joseph and Mary and Jesus, are in need of hospitality. Are our hearts open to receive them? Are our hands ready to help?

Paul Wadell is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, and a member of the extended Passionist family.