St. John Neumann, Bishop
January 5
1 John 3:11-21  +  John 1:43-51

“Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”

As in yesterday’s Gospel Reading, we hear Jesus in today’s Gospel passage calling men to follow Him.  Today’s Gospel passage is from the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel account.  Jesus is only at the beginning of His three years of public ministry.  But in a way, you might say that what Jesus is doing in this week’s Gospel passages is a preparation for Pentecost.

Pentecost is sometimes thought of as the “birthday of the Church”.  Yet the day of Pentecost as recorded in Acts 2 could not have happened without the “first steps” that Jesus makes in this week’s Gospel passages.  Jesus knew that the simple men He chose would—almost to a man—suffer martyrdom many years later because of serving as the pillars of His Church.  Jesus knew how Philip and Nathanael would eventually die, even if they did not.  But their journey to sacrificing their very lives for Christ began with a few simple words:  “Come and see.”

There is a further point to take note of.  This point concerns the general theme of vocations.  Note that in the Gospel Reading, Philip calls Nathanael first, and then Jesus calls Him.  This sequence of events highlights an important truth of our Catholic Faith:  that God chooses—wills—to work through simple human persons like you and me.  God chooses to work through intermediaries:  “middlemen”, if you prefer.  God can choose to accomplish His will however He wishes, but often, He wishes that you and I be instruments of His will by inviting others to follow after Jesus.

 

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Religious
January 4
1 John 3:7-10  +  John 1:35-42

“Come, and you will see.”

Christmastide is about new life.  Yet we might be tempted to think of this Christmas Season only in terms of the birth of the Christ Child.  If we were to do so, we would overlook much of the richness of this holy season.

In the Ordinary Form of the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, the last day of Christmastide is the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.  This gives us a clue to one of the major themes of Christmastide, the expression of which makes up much of the season’s richness.

In a word, much of Christmastide celebrates the new life that comes from one’s “vocation”.  The event of Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan River is the “inauguration”, if you will, of Jesus’ public ministry:  His vocation to save fallen man.  In the latter days of Christmastide, including in today’s Gospel Reading, we hear of the vocations—the callings—of several of Jesus’ key disciples.  In turn, their vocation stories ought to help each of us stop and reflect upon our own vocations:  our own share in the saving mission of Jesus’ Church.

The Epiphany of the Lord
Isaiah 60:1-6  +  Ephesians 3:2-3,5-6  +  Matthew 2:1-12

“We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.”

+     +     +

references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this Sunday by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 528, 724: the Epiphany
CCC 280, 529, 748, 1165, 2466, 2715: Christ the light of the nations
CCC 60, 442, 674, 755, 767, 774-776, 781, 831: the Church, sacrament of human unity

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Secular culture takes what is three-dimensional and flattens it.  Christians, then, must be alert to secularism’s encroachment upon Christian culture.  If, for example, Christians adopt secularism’s counterfeits of Christmas and Easter, not only do Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny become the seasons’ patron saints.  The seasons themselves become distorted, so that Christmas begins on the day after Thanksgiving and ends on December 25^th.

By contrast, the Church calls Christians to order their lives in a way that recognizes December 25^th as the first full day of Christmastide, and the day of celebrating the first of several mysteries that the Church ponders throughout Christmastide.  Among all these mysteries, the Nativity and the Epiphany of the Lord are the two most important.

The Nativity focuses upon the divine Gift given by God the Father to fallen man.  The Epiphany also focuses upon the gifts that men offer to God in return.  We might say that the Epiphany is the Church’s first focus upon the stewardship of grateful disciples.

In this Sunday’s Gospel Reading, we hear three wise men arriving before the manger.  They are willing to sacrifice of themselves in order to find a newborn King.  Here we see a sign of their wisdom:  their willingness to make profoundly personal sacrifices in addition to the material objects they offer in sacrifice.

Few persons don’t want to be rich.  However, there are many people who believe they’re rich, but who have become satisfied with riches that—in the end—aren’t going to do them real good.

Humility is what we see in the three wise kings.  They were willing to leave the splendor and riches of their earthly kingdoms in order to enter a grotto where animals lived, in order to prostrate themselves before a child born of a peasant girl.

Picture this:  these three wise kings fall to the ground in adoration before the newborn Jesus in a stable, where the hay of the animals was mixed with the animals’ waste.  Would you be humble enough to kneel in that hay?

Look at these three wise kings.  Look at their sacrifices.  Consider two aspects of the sacrifices that the kings make.

The first aspect is their journey.  It is long and fraught with peril, much like the journey of discipleship.  These three leave behind the lands where they rule, where they are in control, in order to bow down before the Ruler of Heaven and Earth.  They make this perilous journey in order to follow Him wherever He asks them to go for His sake.

The second aspect of their sacrifices are the objects that the three wise kings take from their treasuries and place before the new-born King.  These splendid objects reflect their human wealth.

Yet these gifts are given as a response to a greater Gift.  These gifts are more a reflection of the One to whom they’re given than of those who give them.  So also in the practice of stewardship, while one’s giving is in proportion to one’s means, it’s also meant to be given in proportion to the goodness of the One to whom we give.

The gifts the three wise men give to Jesus reflect the divine Person to whom they are giving their gifts.  The gold and frankincense reflect Jesus’ kingship and divinity.  These gifts are foretold in the First Reading from the Prophet Isaiah.

But Isaiah does not prophesy about the gift of myrrh.  Myrrh is a resin used to prepare corpses for burial.  What an odd gift for a newborn!  Can you imagine someone today showing up at a baby shower with a gift obtained from a mortuary?  Nonetheless, the gift of myrrh reflects the wisdom of the three wise men.

It’s often said that God is never outdone in generosity.  That truth is reflected in the gift of myrrh.  God the Father had given the Gift of His Son.  In response, the three wise men give three gifts to the Holy Family.  Yet Christmastide is only the start of the Gospel story, and a preparation for the climax reached during Holy Week.  On Mt. Calvary, God the Son will offer in sacrifice the Gift of His Body and Blood, soul and divinity.  The gift of Good Friday is the source and summit of the Christian life, the gift that gives infinite depth to the journey of discipleship.

The Most Holy Name of Jesus
January 3
1 John 2:29—3:6  +  John 1:29-34

“Now I have seen and testified that He is the Son of God.”

The feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus holds, in the Church’s liturgical calendar, the humble rank of an optional memorial.  At most Masses celebrated today, even if the proper prayers—the Collect and so on—for the feast are prayed, the Scripture readings that are proper to the feast will not be.  Nevertheless, the entire season of Christmastide celebrates the mystery found in the Most Holy Name of Jesus.

The name “Jesus” literally means “God saves”.  The Most Holy Name of Jesus reveals to fallen man that God saves.  The divine person of Jesus Christ, in all that He does and says during His days on earth, reveals to fallen man that God saves.

Of course, God the Father did not have to send His Son into our world in order to save fallen man.  God the Father could, in justice, have left fallen man to its fallen state.  Having chosen, however, to save man, God the Father could have chosen any number of ways in which to save man.  He was not limited to the choice of sending His divine Son to offer His Body and Blood, soul and divinity on the Cross.  God the Father could have chosen any number of simple ways in which to forgive fallen man.  Yet the Incarnation, Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ reveals the full depth of God the Father’s love for us fallen creatures.

Sts. Basil the Great & Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops & Doctors of the Church
January 2
1 John 2:22-28  +  John 1:19-28

All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.

Just as Eastertide culminates in the feast of Pentecost, so Christmastide culminates in the feast of the Epiphany.  The purpose of a liturgical season is not to celebrate a single feast—in the case of Christmastide, the Nativity—over and over again.  The season’s purpose is gradually to shift one’s focus from one feast to another feast.  A liturgical season is a panorama of feasts.

You can hear such a shift in today’s scriptures.  For example, the refrain of today’s Responsorial is:  “All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.”  This refrain could just as fittingly be proclaimed on Pentecost Sunday as on the feast of the Epiphany.  In turn, that fact points out that the culminating feasts of Christmastide and Eastertide—that is, the Epiphany and Pentecost—have an important point in common:  “the nations”.  Everything that God seeks to accomplish throughout salvation history is for “the nations”, not merely for a single nation or people.  This is the mission of the Church that Jesus founded.  The Church’s mission is “catholic”:  which is to say, “universal”.

However, there’s an additional contrast to be noted when reflecting upon this Responsorial refrain.  Not only must “the nations” be contrasted against any single nation or people of the earth.  Within the current Western culture, it’s important to reflect upon how “the nations” stand in contrast to the individual.  God Himself wills that no individual enter into covenant—that is, relationship—with Him unless it be through His people.  His people are all “the ends of the earth”, where His Church continues the saving work of Jesus Christ.

The reflection for the day before Ash Wednesday (February 21, 2023) will be the last post that subscribers will receive.

On February 14th, this website will shift to a new format.  Starting on that day, archived reflections will be organized by menus.  The main menu will route you to the various seasons of the Church year, and each season will have further menus directing you to specific, archived reflections.  When these menus first appear in February, only Lent and Eastertide will be available.  Archived reflections for each season will eventually be available through the menus.

The Seventh Day within the Octave of Christmas
1 John 2:18-21  +  John 1:1-18

And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us ….

In terms of the Gospel Reading at weekday Mass, today is something of a hinge within the Christmas Season.  Yesterday’s Gospel Reading concluded the narratives of the Presentation, ending by referring to the Holy Family’s return to Nazareth, where Jesus grew in His sacred humanity.

Today’s Gospel Reading is the prologue of St. John’s Gospel account.  This prologue alternates between poetic descriptions of the divine Word of God who became flesh, and narrative descriptions of the ministry of St. John the Baptist.  These two forms come together, however, in the last three verses of the prologue [John 1:16-18].  The one whom John foretold manifests Himself as the source of grace for all who believe in Him.

Throughout the remainder of Christmastide, the Gospel Reading at weekday Mass presents Jesus as an adult during the three years of His public ministry.  This might seem out of place during Christmastide, although understandable from a practical perspective since the narratives of Jesus’ conception, birth, and infancy are relatively few.

The narratives of Jesus’ public ministry that we hear during the rest of Christmastide in fact have an important purpose.  They point our attention forward to the purpose of the Incarnation:  that is, the purpose of Christmastide.  That purpose is to manifest the divine presence in the world in the Person of Jesus.  This is why Christmastide culminates in feasts of the Lord Jesus’ epiphany.  The word “epiphany” means “revelation”, and the epiphanies of the Lord call for a response from each person who witnesses them.

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary & Joseph [A]
Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14  +  Colossians 3:12-21 [or Colossians 3:12-17]  +  Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

He rose, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.

Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Family.  Throughout all of Christmastide, God calls Christians to reflect upon the Gift of the Child Jesus.  Yet today’s feast has a specific focus.  This focus helps us by considering how Mary and Joseph responded to the child Jesus.

When we reflect upon God the Father’s Gift of His only-begotten Son, we realize that it is not an “unrestricted gift”, as a charitable organization might put it.  When God the Father gave the Gift of His Son to mankind, He did so with a special intention.  If we don’t honor God the Father’s intention when we accept the Gift of Jesus, we are rejecting the Gift as given, and being dishonest with God the Father.

Mary and Joseph had certainly not accepted God the Father’s Gift dishonestly.  Nonetheless, it did take time for God the Father’s intention to dawn fully upon them.  From the beginning, they understood that this child was a gift conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.  This child was to be called “Son of the Most High”.  But why had God the Father sent Him to earth?

Every parent wonders and worries about the future of each of their children.  But every child, as a gift from God, comes with an intention that God has for each child.  God has an intention in mind, not just from the moment a child is conceived, but from all eternity.  God’s ultimate intention is for each child to reach Heaven.  Yet that’s much less likely to happen without the cooperation of parents.

Yet parents face a daunting challenge:  in all things to align their human wills with the providential will of God the Father.  In this Sunday’s Gospel Reading, God the Father calls Mary and Joseph to great self-sacrifice.  They leave behind family and homeland, not knowing how long they might dwell in a foreign land.  Only after a second dream may they return to their homeland of Israel, settling in Nazareth.

In this regard, St. Matthew the Evangelist quotes one of the Old Testament prophets.  He quotes only the second half of Hosea 11:1 in order to give context to the Holy Family’s return from Egypt.  But the entire verse offers even more context:  “When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son.”

This verse is a clear allusion to Israel’s Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land.  Yet two persons in the Gospel Reading play roles connected to this allusion.  The first is the foster-father of Jesus, whose actions in the Gospel Reading mirror the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, whose journey to Egypt under compulsion led many years later to the Exodus.

The second is Jesus Himself.  In the light of Hosea 11:1, Jesus is a mirror of the Old Testament patriarch Israel, and so also of the people who bore Israel’s name.  It was for Israel that the land that was the goal of the Exodus was named.  But Jesus’ earthly vocation was to involve an Exodus that transcends earth.

Jesus’ words when His mother and foster-father found Him in the Temple echoed in the hearts of Mary and Joseph.  “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s House?”  They echoed because their meaning wasn’t limited to that one occasion when Jesus was twelve years old.  Those words of Jesus echoed in Mary’s heart, mind and soul throughout His public ministry, and especially as she followed her Son up the hill of Calvary.

When Jesus was twelve years old, the words “my Father’s House” specifically meant the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, where Mary and Joseph found Him.  But Mary and Joseph began to see that those words also had a second, deeper meaning.  “My Father’s House” is the Promised Land of Heaven.  That’s why Jesus was born, and that’s what this Christmas Season is about.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem in order to die on Calvary, so to open the gates of Heaven.  The gifts of the human family and the Holy Family help us make our way there.

The Fifth Day within the Octave of Christmas
1 John 2:3-11  +  Luke 2:22-35

“Behold, this child is destined … to be a sign that will be contradicted ….”

If Saint Joseph were ever to relinquish his title as the patron saint of happy deaths, Saint Simeon might well take it up.  In the Gospel Reading’s account of the Presentation, Simeon twice speaks.  His words on the first occasion have been canonized by the Church as a hymn that’s proclaimed every night in the Divine Office.  This final hour of the day’s Office, called Compline, helps the Christian to close each day by meditating upon what the Church calls “the Last Things”.  St. Simeon helps us make this meditation fruitfully.

Simeon’s words are the words of one who knows that his earthly life is at its end.  He proclaims words that every human person might wish to utter upon his or her deathbed:  “Lord, now let your servant go in peace.”  Yet Simeon continues by speaking to the source of that peace.  As Simeon holds the Christ Child in his arms, he proclaims to the Lord:  “my own eyes have seen the salvation which you prepared in the sight of every people”.

It’s in his second discourse that Simeon elaborates upon the mission of this child, and the salvation that that mission will accomplish.  Simeon explains that the “child is destined to be a sign that will be contradicted”.  What is this sign?  Simeon may not have understood that this child would fulfill His earthly mission by dying upon a cross.  Nonetheless, the sign of the Cross is the key to understanding everything Simeon foretold at the Presentation, and indeed everything that is said and done throughout the Gospel.