St. John Neumann, Bishop
1 John 3:11-21  +  John 1:43-51
January 5, 2018

Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

Everyone knows that Christmastide is about the beginning of Jesus’ human life.  But this holy season is about other beginnings, as well.  In today’s Gospel passage, from the first chapter of John’s Gospel account, John narrates “preliminaries” in the unfolding of Jesus’ public ministry.

Jesus calls first.  Calling is the beginning of His ministry.  This truth reminds us of God’s respect for human free will.  The Christian Faith does not profess a belief in absolute predestination.  That is to say, it would make no sense for God to call someone to follow Him if that someone had no freedom to reject or accept God’s call.  Human free will, then, is the first point we notice in today’s Gospel scene.

Secondly, today’s Gospel passage presents a double calling.  Jesus calls Philip, and Philip calls Nathaniel.  This double calling sets before us the truth that Jesus’ call is at times mediated through others.  This truth is foundational not only to salvation history as a whole, but also to the life of each Christian disciple.  We must teach those in our care to reject the shallow “me and Jesus” approach to Christianity that refuses to admit that God’s grace is mediated to us through others.  In turn, we ourselves must listen to others not only as fellows, but as potential bearers of God’s Word for us.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Religious
1 John 3:7-10  +  John 1:35-42
January 4, 2018

Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the Devil.

One of the words in today’s First Reading—“revealed”—can help us focus on serving others to foster love.  We continue to hear from the First Epistle of St. John.  The Beloved Disciple is very blunt in his epistles.  He has just as sharp a sense of evil as he does of divine love.  Surely John’s perception of both was whetted on the rock of Calvary.

John declares plainly that “the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the Devil.”  You could say that this sentence sums up John’s Gospel account, as it moves from the signs of Jesus’ seven miracles, to the Sign of the Cross, the glory of which destroys Satan’s power.  John’s account of the Gospel shows how Jesus “revealed” Himself to mankind in stages.  So the Holy Spirit has worked in the history of the Church, and in the life of each saint.  Ask God for yet another Christmas gift:  the same patience with your own spiritual growth that God has with you, as He continues unfailingly throughout your life to love you.

The Most Holy Name of Jesus
1 John 2:29—3:6  +  John 1:29-34
January 3, 2018

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

While the feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus is only an optional memorial in the Church’s liturgical calendar, its meaning dovetails beautifully with the Scriptures the Church proclaims today from the writings of St. John.

The Most Holy Name of “Jesus” literally means “God saves”.  In today’s Gospel passage, when His cousin John sees Jesus approaching he declares, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”  God saves us from the power of sin through the self-sacrifice of the Lamb of God.

One obvious reason why we hear 1 John proclaimed as our First Reading during Christmastide is its emphasis on childhood.  Unbelievers can see the spirit of Christmas in the joy and wonder of a child, even if they choose not to emulate her.  The Beloved Disciple wants us to emulate himself when he beckons us to see “what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.”

It is the love of God the Father that makes us His Children.  This is so because “God is Love”, and in giving us a share in His life, we become like Him.  This love is bestowed on us through the Father’s Gift of His only-begotten Son.

Sts. Basil the Great & Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops & Doctors of the Church
1 John 2:22-28  +  John 1:19-28
January 2, 2018

And now, children, remain in Him….

St. John the Evangelist often writes in a style that can leave you scratching your head.  Even when he tells a story in his Gospel account with a straight-forward plot, there’s a pervasive sense of double meanings.

In his epistles his language can seem abstract.  In today’s First Reading, for example, he uses phrases encouraging his listeners to “remain in” the Father and the Son, and to allow what they heard, and the anointing they received, to “remain in” them.  What does this phrase “remain in” refer to?

The key to everything that John teaches is found in his Gospel prologue:  John 1:1-18.  What can seem at first like philosophy is in fact a profound mystery of our Faith.  This is the truth of the Incarnation, which we celebrate through the five mysteries of the Christmas Season:  “The Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us” [John 1:14].  This mystery is the foundation for the “divinization” that God calls each Christian to, where God dwells in the Christian and the Christian dwells in God (this is sometimes called the “divine indwelling”).

This is not a reality that can be understood through physical terms, but we can base our understanding of it upon a most basic human experience:  love.  The three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are Love, and are the basis for you as a Christian to remain in God’s life of love, and to allow His love to remain in you.

The Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God
Numbers 6:22-27  +  Galatians 4:4-7  +  Luke 2:16-21
January 1, 2018

…God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law….

We are invited as Christians to imitate Mary, the first and best disciple of Jesus.  If we consider the Gospel scene described in the first part of today’s Gospel passage, we are asked to picture in our minds the infant Jesus in the manger, with his mother still lying next to Him, and Saint Joseph standing watch over them.

The Holy Family had already made the perilous journey to Bethlehem, and when they arrived they found themselves rejected by everyone from whom they asked a room.  Now here were angels and shepherds and kings from the east praising them.  It’s no wonder that as Mary rested in the hay she wondered about all this, and pondered these things in her heart:  complete rejection, and utter acceptance.

If Mary had not been full of grace, she might easily have become cynical at such a young age, seeing how she was only in her early teens.  Like each of us, Mary was beginning to see how the world treats people:  there are ups and there are downs in life.  One moment no one seems to give you the time of day, and the next moment everyone is your best friend.  You are still the same person as always, but because of some change in fortune or circumstance, people react very differently toward you.

As Mary pondered these things in her heart, she realized that this was going to be the pattern throughout her son’s life:  acceptance, and rejection, based upon the attitudes of others, and based on the circumstances of the day, month, or year.  If others witnessed miracles—whether angels singing in the sky, water turning to wine, or a blind man regaining his sight—they would very likely praise Jesus.

But if following after Jesus meant watching Him being turned out of the synagogue in Galilee where He had grown up, or being mocked by the scribes and Pharisees for trying to teach them something new about God, or being whipped and crowned with thorns after being condemned to a traitor’s death, or even watching Him die that slow death on the cross hanging between two criminals—what would people say about Mary’s son then?

Celebrating this feast of Mary, the holy Mother of God turns our own minds to wondering about how much faith Mary must have had to accept this child as part of her life, realizing what that motherhood would mean to her.  For ourselves, as followers of Jesus, we are asked to ponder on this mystery of Christmas:  that the birth of God the Son as a human means that following Jesus takes the sort of faith that accepts suffering just as certainly as we accept the joy of being part of God’s family.

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph [B]
Sir 3:2-6,12-14  +  Col 3:12-21  +  Lk 2:22-40
December 31, 2017

“Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word….”

Despite the fact that stores are now selling Valentine’s Day candy, Christmas is not actually over.  Christmas does not last only one day, and Christmas is not only a celebration of Christ’s birth.  Christmas is a season which begins on December 25 and lasts through early January.  This Season of Christmas celebrates several mysteries, the first of which is Jesus’ birth.  Today we celebrate the second mystery of Christmas, the Holy Family of Nazareth.

The Church calls us to meditate upon this Holy Family.  In doing so, we realize that, just as celebrating Jesus’ birth helps us reverence how human life is created in the Image of God, so our celebration of the Holy Family helps us reverence the human family as an image of the Church.

For many of us, the past week has presented opportunities to be with members of our families.  No matter what difficulties might exist within our families, time spent together can help us realize one of the facts that is rejected by the world, but preached as Truth by the Church:  that the family is the foundation of all social life.  The family teaches us how “to be with others”, which in turn disposes us to carry out Jesus’ second great command:  to love our neighbors as ourselves.  This is why the Church calls the family “the domestic Church”.

Those who are middle-aged often fall prey to thinking that what they do for others or give to others is what matters most.  But those who have many years of life under their belts are like those who are very young:  they recognize that time spent with others is of much greater value than things given to others.

Spending time together on a regular basis may not seem to amount to much.  But when that foundation is there, the love and care that’s fostered supports family members when they end up in a crisis, as all families eventually do.  The Holy Family, still weary from their journey to Bethlehem, and weary from searching through Bethlehem to find suitable lodging, were forced after Christ’s birth to flee their country to the foreign land of Egypt out of fear for Jesus’ life.  This was only the first of many sorrows for the Holy Family that was predicted by Simeon in today’s Gospel passage.

The habits of the Holy Family must be the habits of our own families.  If we truly care for the members of our family, we are willing to both pray for each other’s well-being, and willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to keep each other safe from the dangers of the world.  Among the more important, if difficult, of these sacrifices is freely extending mercy to family members who have hurt one or more members of the family.

After the great sacrifices made during His infancy, Jesus grew up in the town of Nazareth under the care of His foster-father, Saint Joseph, and His mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.  This life was not spectacular.  From the time He was a baby to the time He was thirty years old, we know of only one thing that happened to Jesus:  Mary and Joseph finding him in the temple.  By and large, the first thirty years of Jesus’ life were simple ones in which His mother and foster-father made ordinary sacrifices for Jesus’ well-being, day after day.  The Holy Family prayed together as a devout Jewish family, and they took the steps necessary to care for one another.  When Saint Joseph died, Mary and her son carried on alone.  Yet no matter what God the Father asked of them, they prayed and acted together according to the Father’s Will.

Today God presents the Holy Family as a treasure.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were not only holy themselves:  they help us to be holy.  We all know that our world is troubled, and that our country is troubled.  We don’t have to dwell on that.  But the cure is right here before us:  to strengthen the family, to build up the family, and to improve family life through God, which in turn will build up the life of our community, country, and world.

The Sixth Day within the Octave of Christmas
1 John 2:12-17  +  Luke 2:36-40
December 30, 2017

Do not love the world or the things of the world.

Throughout the weekdays of Christmastide, the First Reading is taken from the First Letter of Saint John.  In one sense, it can seem in listening to the letters of John that he treats of a very few number of themes, repeating them over and over.  However, these themes—love, light, and life—are repeated and are simple because God is simple.

History tells us that St. John wrote his New Testament letters in his old age.  Remember that he was the only one of the Apostles (excepting Judas, of course) not to be martyred.  As so many older persons do, with advancing age John realized the simplicity of the Gospel.  Advanced age allows one to see that so many of the things we believe are important when younger are shadows and illusions.

In today’s First Reading addresses children, fathers, young men:  to all of them as something of a patriarch, as the last remaining Apostle of Jesus.  He’s speaking simply and bluntly about priorities, and in the midst of his teaching he warns them about “the world”.  If St. John speaks simply about God, he also speaks simply—if not as often—about “the world” as the alternative to God.  We as children of God can live for God, or for the world, but not for both.  In our modern world where we tell ourselves that it’s possible to “have it all”, we need St. John’s message of simplicity:  we cannot have both God and the world.

The Fifth Day within the Octave of Christmas
1 John 2:3-11  +  Luke 2:22-35
December 29, 2017

Whoever loves his brother remains in the light….

The branch of theology called Christology explores answers to the question posed by the old Christmas hymn:  “What child is this?”  Many Scripture passages about the nativity and early life of Jesus reflect on the question of His identity.  For example, the three gifts of the Magi represent the Person before whom they prostrate themselves.  When Mary and Joseph are confused at finding the child Jesus in the Temple, Jesus drives home the point that He is the Son of God who belongs in His Father’s House.

Of course, for a disciple of Jesus, we want to know more about Him not for the sake of knowledge itself.  We want to know who Jesus is so that we might love Him better:  more thoroughly, more deeply, and more selflessly.

Throughout the Christmas Season, the Sacred Liturgy turns to St. John the Beloved Disciple for an answer to that hymn’s question, “What child is this?”  Throughout John’s Gospel account, and even more so in his epistles, the Beloved Disciple teaches us that “God is love”, and John teaches us what it means for a disciple to enter into this love.

In today’s First Reading from the First Letter of Saint John, the Beloved Disciple responds to the question of “How do we know Jesus?”, which is a variation on “What child is this?”  John’s response is that “the way [to] know Jesus is to keep His commandments.”  This might seem an odd answer:  how would one’s commandments tell us about the commander’s identity?  If we were to reflect further on this question, we might realize how one generally commands about matters only of importance to oneself.  In the case of God, His commands are commands to live in Him:  to live in love, or rather, simply to love.

The Holy Innocents, Martyrs
1 John 1:5—2:2  +  Matthew 2:13-18
December 28, 2017

Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet: ….

As did the feast of St. Stephen the Proto-Martyr, today’s feast on the fourth day in the Christmas Octave points our attention to the way in which birth and death are intertwined.  Birth and death are not just ends of an earthly spectrum.  The link between them is more profound than that.

Of course, today’s feast commemorates not the experience of natural death, or even the death of martyrs who chose to offer themselves in witness to Christ.  The horror at the heart of today’s feast—the slaughter of untold innocent infants by a king—stands as a stark contrast to the joy of the Nativity.

Nonetheless, King Herod in his rage and fear takes seriously the threat that the newborn king poses to his earthly power, even if he doesn’t understand the purpose of this infant’s birth into this world.  Certainly the reign of Christ the King will put an end to the thrones of all earthly powers.  But Christ is the King of Kings.  Unlike Herod, He seeks to destroy no one, but to give life to everyone, and to give it to the full.  Even for those who seek the end of His earthly life, Christ reigns to give them unending life in Heaven.