Reflecting on Mt. 1: 18-24

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

When my friend Emily was a freshman in high school, she was reading Matthew’s gospel in Theology class.  When she came across the section where the angel told Joseph to name the child “Jesus” she was stumped.  Huh?  Why does the angel tell Joseph to name the Baby “Jesus” when, just one sentence later, we read that all this is to fulfill what the prophet Isaiah said, which was that the Child would be called  “Emmanuel”?

I nodded wisely and assured her that once she was older she would understand the many hidden complexities of Matthew’s gospel. Then I went home and scrambled to find a decent answer to give her.  It’s only taken me twelve years, Emily, but here’s my attempt.

The author of Matthew’s gospel (which we are now reading for an entire year) desperately wants us to know that Christ will never leave us.  The historical Jesus, the actual person who was born in Bethlehem, smuggled out into Egypt by his wise father, baptized by John in the Jordan, began his public ministry in the Galilee at thirty, was crucified by Pontius Pilate, suffered, died, and was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea―that historical person, our Savior, was named Jesus (or “Yeshua”—God saves).

After his resurrection, on the day he ascended to heaven, he said these very last words to his disciples, and to us: Behold, I am WITH YOU always, even to the end of time. So, Matthew’s 28 chapters begin and end with that promise.  He is with us.  Emmanuel. In sickness and health and sorrow and joy, and yes, for all eternity.

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

In what ways do you sense that Christ is “with you”?

Reflecting on Mt. 11: 2-11

© Jesus Film Media

Waiting.  It’s excruciating.  I’m not thinking about the usual waitings: in line, in traffic, at the doctor’s office.  Those are character-building, and give us daily opportunities to pray for all the people who got to the post office ahead of us, who were daydreaming when the light changed, who were getting serious news from the doctor while we were reading magazines in the waiting room.

I’m thinking about the kind of waiting that’s truly painful.  Like waiting for the nausea medication to work when you have the stomach flu.  Or waiting for the sound of the garage door opener when your teenagers are two hours past curfew.  Or waiting for the biopsy results on that asymmetrical mole with the irregular borders.

It seems that all creation quivers in a constant state of waiting.  Chipmunks are good waiters. They store seeds and nuts under their nests in late summer, then rouse themselves from sleep during the winter to eat what they have wisely stored. Bears are expert waiters.  They store fat before winter, and then hibernate in a sleep so deep that they don’t wake until spring.  And then, get out of their way.  They are ravenous from their months of waiting.

And don’t even mention the word “waiting” to butterflies.  They are creation’s superstars of waiting.

John the Baptist, shut up in Herod’s prison, knew he was coming to the end of his earthly waiting.  He sent his disciples to see and hear the One of whom the prophets foretold.

Go and tell John what you see.  The blind see, the lame walk, the poor have the Good News preached to them.

Dark night is done.  Bright morning dawns at last.

What are you waiting for?

Reflecting on Isaiah 11: 1-10

Imagine that Someone was offering you the gifts of the Holy Spirit that Isaiah mentions in today’s reading.  Here are your choices:

Wisdom:   Those who possess wisdom will save the world.  Let this gift work in you, helping you to order your life around the things that endure.  Let the words of your mouth, and the meditations of your heart, be touched by wisdom this year.

Understanding:    What a comfort it is to have a friend who truly understands you.  We make quick judgments of people these days.  Those with the gift of understanding are never quick to judge, always quick to listen.

Counsel:    This supernatural gift works with your intuition to help you discern God’s work in your life.  God is healing and saving every day.  Use your voice and your life to be God’s co-agent.

Strength:    Strength is standing with a friend when she is losing the positive regard of your other friends.  Strength is the day-to-day showing up, at work, at home, at prayer.  As the poster of the tree, battered but standing, in my oncologist’s office says, Do not pray for an easy life.  Pray to be a strong person.

Knowledge:    There’s nothing as peaceful as knowing your own truth.  But don’t confuse this with what the culture wants you to know.  There is a Spirit-voice that will lead you in deeper peace and knowledge of how you want to be in the world.

Fear of the Lord:    When was the last time you stopped the car in mid-errand and just looked at Creation all around you?  Breathe in the crisp winter air.  Revel in the profound changes that this season brings.  Don’t go a single day without the awareness of the AWESOMENESS of God.

Which gift do you need the most right now?

Reflecting on Matthew 24: 37-44

Here’s a thought.  What if the Second Coming of Christ isn’t being held off by God, but held off by us?  What if, as St. Charles Borromeo suggests, “Christ, who came once in the flesh, is prepared to come again”, and we’re the ones who are delaying his coming?

Here are a few of the ways I’ve experienced the “drawing near” of Christ in my life:

1. When, outside of “sacred surroundings”, people share about the ways in which Christ is working in their lives.  Or, just because they want to, people sing psalms and hymns together.  Or they talk about the homily in the car on the way home.  Or they pray together, just because they saw each other in church and know that Jesus is their connection.
2. When people who were estranged join hands in friendship.  There is nothing more powerful than forgiveness, no quicker way to enter the kingdom of God than to watch enemies begin to speak to one another.  Especially if we are the ones estranged, and we are the ones to make the first move toward reconciliation.    Test this out this holiday season, and let the Prince of Peace overwhelm you with his immediate presence.
3. When we are forced out of our comfort zones and find ourselves making friends with people of every race, language, and way of life.  People, after all, are the crowning glory of God’s creation.  Find ways to enjoy the company of people different from you, and guess what?  There is Jesus, right in your midst.

The advent of the kingdom is only this: Draw near to him, and he will draw near to you (James 4:8).

In what ways will you help the kingdom draw near this year?

Reflecting on Luke 23: 35-43

Jesus, remember us when you come into your kingdom. Remember us, Jesus, in the Philippines.  You thirsted on the cross that terrible day.  We thirst.  We have no clean water, and no one can reach us in our isolated village.  We suffer with you, Jesus.

They looted your belongings and cast lots for your garment that terrible day. Here, every source of water and food and shelter has been looted.  We are not criminals.  We are trying to save our children.  We are naked, and wet, and cold, and hot.  We suffer with you, Jesus.

Remember those, Jesus, here at home, who await court trials. Their family members are terrified for them.  Console all prisoners around the world who are wrongly imprisoned through the false testimony of others.  You suffered that betrayal too.   And as you forgave the Good Thief from the cross, let all prisoners who have sinned against you deeply know the deep consolation of your saving mercy.

Your friends fled from you that terrible day.  What a comfort it would have been to have them there at the cross, praying with you.   Instead, your tormentors mocked you.  Our elderly understand that, Jesus.  They are alone in their nursing homes, forgotten by friends, abandoned by their children.  Their memories fail them, and they are the source of snickering behind their backs.  They suffer with you, Jesus.

Remember the young people around the world, Jesus, who cannot find work.  Many cannot find meaning.  Many cannot find you.  O Jesus, remember them most of all.

In what areas of your life do you ask Jesus to “remember” you?

Reflecting on Luke 21: 5-19

If you go to New York City sometime, try to get to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.  The inhabitants of Little Italy, Chinatown, the Jewish communities, and thousands of others lived in the tenements high above the bustling saloons, clothing and jewelry stores on Orchard Street― a block that historians say was the most densely populated street in the world in the 1870s.

Listen to the babies crying.  Hear the music of the world’s languages as neighbors barter for the freshest tomatoes, or the best price for winter coats.  Get ready to sweat as you help Gerta Schneider cook schnitzel in her tiny kitchen in July.  Watch Mama Rogarshevsky light the Sabbath candles, and bow your head as Papa prays the Sabbath blessing.

They left large farms to live literally on top of one another in a crowded city.  Many escaped earthquakes, famines and plagues, or ominous pogroms that bode of the holocaust to come.  They came for a better life, and later generations found it.

Today, neighborhood carnicerias thrive next to Middle East grocery stores and Somali markets. These groups fled their homes also, where unstable nations rise against nations, and kingdoms against kingdoms.

We, too, live in a time of powerful earthquakes, famines and plagues. Hurricane Sandy came close to destroying in a day the very tenement neighborhood that housed millions of immigrants for three hundred years.

We Coloradans have our own flood narratives, too.  And Nebraskans have tornados.  And don’t even mention fires to Californians.  Is the world finally coming to an end?

Do not be terrified, says Jesus.  If we all work to heal our planet the God of all nations will secure our lives.

In what ways do you live by faith, not fear?

Reflecting on Luke 20: 27-38

What awaits us after death?  Will heaven be so radically different from earth that even the greatest joys of our existence here will fade to nothing once we are in the presence of the Beatific Vision?  That image of heaven makes me uneasy.

We cling to this life because it’s all we know.  Of course we hold close to the loves and friendships that make our lives so rich and full.  Why on earth would we willingly leave them for an eternity of the unknown?  The ancient author of the book of Ecclesiastes reflects on this in my favorite passage in all of scripture:  God has made everything beautiful in its time, and yet has set eternity in our hearts (3:11).

Yes.  We embrace and love this life, and yet we carry a deep intuition that this is not the end, that we are made for eternity, where every tear shall be undone, and death will be no more (Revelation 21:4).

I somehow sense that heaven will be more and more of all the things we built on earth.  As C.S. Lewis suggests in The Great Divorce, if we demand to cling to our resentments and pettiness and selfishness, heaven can’t give us more than what we consistently chose throughout our lives. We will flee from heaven because it’s too solid, too real, and too wonderful for us.

But, as the great John Kavanaugh, S.J. wrote:  Those who cast themselves into the arms of the living God, no matter what their shame or sorrow, will find what their hearts desired.

I choose to cast myself into those arms, and to trust in the God of the living.

What do you think heaven will be like?

Reflecting on Luke 19: 1-10

I think that we are all doing the best we can.  It’s tough out there.  We have to be great parents, attentive and available grandparents, debt-free, environmentally conscious, active parishioners, and avidly working on our fat-to-muscle ratio.

Outsiders might look at our rowdy kids and say, “Why doesn’t someone teach those parents how to discipline their kids?”  Others might say, in the car after the party, “I can’t believe they used paper plates when they could have just brought out their regular dishes and washed them later.  I thought they were supposed to be such environmentalists.”  Or, the worst, “She says she’s watching her cholesterol, but did you see that piece of cake she ate?”

Looking at us from the outside, it appears that we are hypocritical and lazy.  But the Incarnate Jesus, the one who dwells with us, isn’t looking from the outside.  He dwells within us, and breathes every breath with us.  He is with us during the endless sleepless nights we endure with our kids.  He is with us when we recycle the annoying cardboard boxes.  He is with us when we spend those lonely late-night hours working to get out of debt, or to face and recover from our addictions.

That’s what Zaccheus experienced when Jesus, who had talked so often about the dignity and worth of the poor, called this rich man down from the sycamore tree and invited himself over for dinner.  The Incarnate One knew he was doing the best he could, and Zaccheus, overjoyed at being held in the embrace of Love, did even better than his best for the rest of his life.

Whose belief in you has inspired you to be the best you can be?

Reflecting on Luke 18: 9-14

There is something very sacred about this story that Jesus tells today about the Pharisee and the tax collector.  But we must hold it close, and let its grace touch us.  To be able to consider that we might be the Pharisees, the ones who think (secretly, of course) that they are more deserving of God’s mercy than anyone else, is a grace just in itself.  We don’t think in terms of “sin” and “sinner” anymore, so to actually let that concept into our hearts can be healing already.

The surest and quickest passage to God’ mercy is to be profoundly aware of our need of it.  Try to remember a time when you were humbled by sin.  Maybe you were caught in a lie, or stopped while gossiping about someone.  Maybe one of the deadly sins has you in its vise, and the fruit of a lifetime of wrath, for example, finds you banging on the hood of somebody’s stalled car in front of you at rush hour.  Or maybe, like me, you routinely use about a thousand percent of your share of the world’s resources, and a traveling companion asks if that was really you taking that twenty-minute shower.

It is such a precious gift to be humbled, to admit our sin, to bow before God and say, “Lord, I thank you that I’ve finally been found out.  I thank you that the world now knows what you’ve known all along.  Oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

It doesn’t feel good, but it changes us.  It nudges us a bit closer to heaven, where sinners are welcomed home every day.

How has the awareness of sin in your life changed you?

Reflecting on Luke 18: 1-18

Rembrandt, St. Jacob Praying, 1661

Somewhere, at this moment, someone in the world is praying for you.  I know.  I just saw it with my own eyes.

Recently my husband Ben and I found ourselves on the highest hill in Paris, cozily ensconced in the Sacre Coeur monastery for two days.  There we had the great joy of stepping out of our rooms and into the basilica, the breathtaking church built by the French in atonement for their part in the Franco-Prussian War.

Imagine the roar and rush of Paris.  Then imagine stepping into the basilica, where the Benedictine nuns and priests sing the psalms (in French, of course) by candlelight, at various time of the night and day, world without end.  Heaven.

Five days later we entered another piece of heaven when he got off the train in Lisieux, the home of St. Thérése.  Roses!  Millions of roses greet the pilgrims who have come to pray with the Carmelite community at the hermitage where St. Thérèse lived, and where she wrote Story of a Soul, the best-selling religious book of the twentieth century.

Here we prayed with the Carmelite sisters and postulants at all hours of the day and night.  And oh, the music of those French psalms wafting through the grille where St. Thérése and her cloistered community once prayed.  Heaven.

This is what I love about being Catholic: the sure and certain hope that we are never alone.  At this moment, a friend, a stranger, or a member of some religious community somewhere is praying for us.  Thank God that they never stop praying, for our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Can we pray for you?  Go to the website and let us know.