Reflecting on Luke 1: 26-38

I have a very nerdy obsession. I love figuring out how the Gospel and the First Reading are related. I came to this fairly late, I think. The new lectionary, a direct child of Vatican II, debuted on the First Sunday of Advent, 1969. I’ll bet it was a full year later when, after listening to the Gospel, I turned to my dad and said, “Wait a minute. Did anybody ever notice that the First Reading and the Gospel are kind of connected?”

Probably because I discovered this all on my own (and it only took me a year!) I’ve always liked looking at the two readings and coming to my own conclusions about how they are connected. It’s like that time we were in the movie theater watching “Music Man” and my mom started giggling. Marian the Librarian was singing, slowly and thoughtfully, “Goodnight, My Someone,” while Harold Hill was singing, fast and fortissimo, “Seventy-Six Trombones.”

“What’s funny?” I asked. “Listen,” she said. “They’re the same song.” Did you ever notice that? I loved discovering that. One was fast, one slow, one soft, one loud, but the same song. The connection between those two readings—with the responsorial psalm as the light illuminating the theme of both readings—is similar. They aren’t the same, obviously, but they match. Or, as Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

So don’t miss the great, profound rhyme in the readings today. King David wants to build a house for the Ark that traveled with the Hebrews those forty desert years. And the Holy Spirit wants to make Mary the Ark for the One who travels with us. Get it? It’s the same song.

Has Mary ever served as the conduit – or Ark – of encounter with Jesus for you?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on John 1: 6-8, 19-28

Are you a voice crying in the desert? It’s frustrating to have a message you’d love the world to hear, and you try to shout that message into the world. But all you hear in reply are crude jokes and snide remarks.

Are we just too sophisticated for the gospel, even here in 2020, when the gospel has never been more desperately needed? Or is it just that people don’t read more than the headlines, and they decide from there what their position is? It must be so heartbreaking to be a great journalist, to labor for a year on a piece that sees the light of day for one news cycle, and to hear the deafening silence of your audience, clicking past your work for the next cat video.

I think about John the Baptist. I wonder if his diet of locusts and wild honey, and his scratchy garment of camel’s hair, was really just to draw people’s attention from whatever diversions they were enjoying and to draw them out to the desert.

I know for sure that the desert, with its stunning landscapes and fascinating insect life, wouldn’t hold my attention if I could somehow get WIFI and cellphone reception. I’m sure I’d find some flashy desert video to watch instead of actually tasting and breathing the real thing.

John had a message, a truth that he had found, and he was willing to make himself look ridiculous in order to get the attention of those who needed to hear it so badly. He went to Herod’s dungeon because of that Truth. He died for that Truth.

And if you listen very carefully, you can hear him preaching still.

What would you love to shout out to the world?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11

It turns out everything I’ve ever taught about chapter forty of the prophet Isaiah was wrong. It’s written for an exiled people living 25 centuries ago! Wrong. It’s meant to give hope to the disconsolate Jews living in Babylon! Wrong. It’s shoring them up to be brave as they decide whether to trust God and go back to Israel, or to stay put! Wrong.

No, no, no. If ever we can appropriate an ancient sacred text and know that it was written for our time, it’s Isaiah’s words of consolation. I’ll bet they jumped right off the page when you heard (or read) them this weekend.

Comfort, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Proclaim that her service is at an end. Imagine being an exhausted and sick health care worker, hearing for the first time in a year (please God, let this be done in a year!) that the pandemic is over. You can now go home and sleep for a week.

In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! We know about deserts now. We know about grandparents, desperate to squeeze their far-away grandbabies, desperate to not miss a minute more of their precious babyhood. We know about children, longing for friends and teachers, and parents, longing for them even more! That’s a desert too.

But fear not, dear friends. God is near. Like a shepherd God feeds us (through the strength and goodness of all who run food pantries, or work in grocery stores, or drive delivery trucks). God carries us, yea, even though we walk through the dark valley of death.

Take comfort, people. It turns out, Isaiah’s words were written for us.

How do these words touch you differently this Advent?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Isaiah 63: 16b-17, 64: 1, 3b-8

So much of our lives—the vast majority, really—is lived interiorly. The dreams that speak to us at night, and the thoughts that play in our heads during the day, are all stored inside of us. We don’t talk about them, usually. In many ways, except for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our every breath, we live our lives alone.

For me, my interior conversation is with my sweet mom, now too long deceased. I wonder what she thinks of me these days. Is she proud of me? Is she noticing how much better I am with writing thank-you notes? Is she amazed that I actually know how to plant flowers?

Would that she might meet me doing right. That’s been my prayer since her death 35 years ago. The hundreds of things we do in a day—the returned phone call, the made bed, the faithfulness in prayer—all speak to the discipline we cultivate in silence through the years. If my mom walked into my home right now, would she meet me doing right?

Fortunately, my mother has always been my stand-in for Jesus. She’s “God with skin on.” It’s Jesus, of course, whom I am really serving when I am conscientious, faithful, a contributing member of society, and unwavering in my defense of the voiceless.

It’s finally Advent. It took forever to get here, especially since it’s felt like Advent these nine months, prayerfully waiting for the end of the pandemic. We’ve got a few months to go. My Advent promise is that I will strive every day to ready my heart for Jesus. I intend for him to meet me doing right.

How will you use these last months of restrictions to do good?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 25: 31-46

Christ my King, these are the things I’ve seen lately that brought your parable of the Last Judgment to my mind:

I saw a neighborhood observe The Howl every night at 8pm for seven months. THANK YOU, healthcare workers and First Responders.

On Halloween I saw the grown-ups in that same neighborhood dancing in the street to The Monster Mash as the ghosts and goblins from our zip code, traumatized by a pandemic that’s kept them away from friends and teachers, delightedly raced up every sidewalk, picking up candy and treats, waving and saying THANK YOU.

At Starbucks the other day I saw a postal worker walk by, and those of us sitting outside standing and cheering for him. THANK YOU.

At the grocery store I saw one of the clerks step out from behind his register and call, “Somebody please help that man. He looks like he’s in pain.” And immediately an elderly man walking on crutches, trying to navigate a cart into the checkout lane, was surrounded by staff and customers, all reaching out to make life easier for him. THANK YOU.

Christ, my King, they didn’t know it, but they did each of these things for you. But this week I also saw the effects of greed and power and selfishness and “me first-ness” wreak heartbreak and devastation all over the globe. We did that to you, oh Jesus. You should have said something. You should have said, “Hey! That’s me you’re humiliating, me whose work you are denigrating, me whose life you are threatening.” You should have said something, Jesus. We just didn’t see you.

Where have you seen Christ in his “most distressing disguise” recently?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 25: 14-30

One of the interesting things about not having children of your own is that it frees you up to admire the parenting practices of all your friends. And here’s the most touching part. Watching the lucky children of my friends now parenting their own kids is like watching a home movie on fast forward. The next generation is getting all the love and warmth and ingenious parenting that they themselves received. They are giving back the five coins they received, and the yield is stunning.

My friend Zeenat grew up in the housing projects in Denver. She had a troubled home life, but the Catholic school system invested in her and gave her everything she needed to succeed. She took those two coins and is now a spokeswoman for several charities who serve at-risk children.

We’ve heard the inspiring stories of teenagers who sleep on the bus because they have no home. They show up at school, homework done and ready to participate in theater and sports after school. And yes, a few of them have actually landed at Harvard. That’s the one coin that got invested and made a fortune.

Think back on your own life. What investment was made in you? Did you have attentive parents? Conscientious teachers? A school system that supported your talents?

By far the greatest number of coins given us is our baptism. Having been welcomed into the communion of saints, living and dead, we are never alone a day of our lives. And, by building faith friendships—like this one, come to think of it—we participate in the building of the Kingdom of God. The perfect investment indeed.

What investment made in you as a child has borne abundant fruit?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 25: 1-13

Does it ever work to just avoid knowing stuff? A friend of mine, a history professor, wonders if future generations will look at the abortion procedures of this country in our lifetimes and say to us, “And you KNEW?” Certainly the generation has already been born that looks at the devastations of climate change and says, “And you KNEW? You had all those decades of warning, and THIS is what you’re leaving us?”

We can see it in our own aging relatives, or maybe ourselves. I’m thinking of the ones who would never deny themselves that cigarette, that alcohol, that all-you-can-eat buffet. We knew. Of course we knew. We’ve known since the early 1960s the devastations on the body that come from a lifetime of immediate gratification. Yet, like those foolish virgins, we couldn’t let ourselves imagine the day when we would need to have been extra vigilant in the past in order to greet the Bridegroom tonight.

We thought we had more time. We thought our lungs and our livers and our waistlines would somehow heal themselves. We thought that “all those smart kids” would come up with ways to heal our rivers and glaciers and wildlife. Maybe one of those smart kids never saw the light of day.

Certainly the most urgent warning is this: get to know Jesus Christ. Pick up the last few chapters of Matthew’s gospel, before Advent comes and we don’t come back to it for three years.

If we don’t exercise today we won’t have the flexibility to heal from the inevitable ravages of aging. If we don’t work on intimacy with Jesus today, how will we recognize him when he comes for us tomorrow?

What (or Who) are you avoiding knowing?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Growing up in Saint Vincent de Paul parish in the fifties and sixties, I recall exactly one lesson about him, and that was a shaky black and white movie that appeared to have been made in the same century he lived (16^th).

But many years later, well after the end of Second Vatican Council, I dropped by the school and was immediately drawn to the beautiful painting in the entranceway. “That’s stunning,” I said. “Who is it?” The receptionist laughed. “Kathy, that’s St. Vincent de Paul!”

We’ve come a long way since the Council’s call to learn more about the saints whose names grace our schools, our streets, our cities. These days we can read about the Saint of the Day in multiple devotionals, online and in print. Have you learned about your patron saint, or your Confirmation saint? They travel with us throughout our lives, weaving blessings for us in ways we won’t see until heaven. It’s good to get to know them.

Just yesterday my friend Camille wrote to wish me a Happy Feast of St. Luke. St. Paul describes him as a physician (Colossians 4:14), so he is the patron of all who need healing. She also noted that the following day, October 19^th, is the Feast of the North American Martyrs, another recent obsession of mine. In fact, as I was writing this another friend called to remind me of their Feast today.

We have friends in high places; wonderful, curmudgeonly, gracious, eccentric, passionate friends whose lives in some way intersected with the sacred heart of Jesus. Sick? Sad? Anxious? Grateful? Converted of heart? The Church has a Saint for that.

In what ways do you feel a strong connection with your favorite saint?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 22:34-40

My husband Ben directs the music in a low-income parish. Recently, one of the terrific tenors in the choir has been sitting out because his macular degeneration makes it difficult to see the lyrics.

Ben overheard another of the tenors say to him after Mass last week, “What do you mean you can’t see the words? You KNOW the words. The words of God are very near to you, on your lips and in your heart. You have only to sing them out.”

Tears came immediately to my eyes. Here is a guy who grew up in the neighborhood, went to the Catholic high school, and lives today in an apartment subsidized by Archdiocesan Housing, Inc. He sat in the back of church, dressed to the nines, every Sunday for decades before he mentioned that he “sings a little.”

He came up and sang one Sunday, and, well, the earth moved, and it moves every time he steps up to the microphone.

But, singing aside, he has paid attention to the readings. In a lifetime of sitting in the back of church, reading his missal before Mass, he has absorbed and placed the word of God in his mind and in his heart, so that Deuteronomy 30:14 popped up right when he needed it.

Ben just returned from a long-distance car trip. How did he pass the time? “Oh, I sang all the hymns I’ve memorized, and worked on memorizing more.”

That’s one of a thousand ways to love God with one’s “whole heart, and soul, and mind.” Try memorizing a few favorite hymns. Once embedded in your heart, they’ll take over your soul and mind as well

What spiritual discipline do you practice in order to love God with everything you are?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Isaiah 45:1, 4-6

We need to talk about Cyrus. Right now, two weeks before the election. That he is mentioned in the first reading this weekend is one of the many things I love about the lectionary. When we really need to hear something, the Holy Spirit has already placed it in the readings for the day.

Here’s a guy who could teach us something about wise leadership. He ruled the Persian Empire for thirty years (559-530 BC), and expanded it into the largest empire ever to rule up to that time.

After conquering Babylon and observing the Jewish community there he said, “Here’s all the treasure King Nebuchadnezzar stole from you when he burned your Temple sixty years ago. Go home, rebuild your Temple, and pray for the Royal Family and me.”

Ah. Doesn’t that language just soothe your battered soul? Here is what I am confident we all want to hear from whomever wins this election: Let’s begin again. Let’s find again the values we all cherish: civility, kindness, understanding. If we can’t search our hearts and see that we have, in the name of love of our country, lashed out and deeply hurt others, we can’t heal. And let’s discipline ourselves to not say, “Yeah, but what about THEM?” Let’s just use this moment to examine ourselves.

By using understanding and compassion, King Cyrus was able to see the pain that others had experienced. That’s why he is the only Gentile in the Hebrew scriptures to be called God’s “anointed.” At our baptisms, each of us was anointed “priest, prophet, and King.” May we activate that anointing immediately, in imitation of King Cyrus the Great.

How will I be an instrument of peace after the election?

Kathy McGovern ©2020