Wednesday of the First Week of Advent
Isaiah 25:6-10  +  Matthew 15:29-37
December 6, 2017

For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.

The first sentence of today’s Gospel passage sets the scene by echoing two earlier scenes in Scripture.  One scene occurs ten chapters earlier in Matthew.  There, before beginning the Sermon on the Mount, we hear this:  “Seeing the crowds, [Jesus] went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him.”  These disciples are models for us in their ascent of the mountain to be near Jesus.  Of course, both of these occasions in Matthew echo the scene in Exodus where Moses brings the Law of God down from the mountain.  In his Gospel account, Matthew goes to great lengths to portray Jesus as fulfilling what Moses had undertaken.  It’s as the new Moses that Jesus provides for the “great crowds” in two ways.

First, Jesus cures “the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute, and many others”.  Second, knowing the hunger of the crowds, Jesus compassionately works the miracle of multiplying the loaves and fish.  Both of these works of Jesus—healing and nourishing—are also portrayed in the great 23^rd Psalm, which is our Responsorial today.  Of course, to receive nourishment and healing from the Lord, we have to be willing to admit our real hungers and hurts.  In your private prayer today, ask the Lord to enlighten you to see clearly where your mind and heart are in need of healing and nourishing.

Tuesday of the First Week of Advent
Isaiah 11:1-10  +  Luke 10:21-24
December 5, 2017

“Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.”

In today’s First Reading, the verbs “judge” and “decide” are each used twice.  The first sentence is negative, in that Isaiah describes how the “root of Jesse” will not judge and decide:  that is, “not by appearance”, “nor by hearsay”.  In the next sentence, Isaiah gives a positive description of the judgments of the “root of Jesse”.  However, these phrases describe not only how he will judge—that is, “with justice” and “aright”—but also for whom he will judge.  He “shall judge the poor”, “and decide… for the land’s afflicted.”

These two brief sentences foreshadow the person of Jesus Christ, the awaited Messiah.  They also describe those who live in Jesus Christ:  those who through the Holy Spirit are empowered to let Christ work through them, and live in them.  During Advent, as you wait for the coming of the Messiah, ask yourself—especially as you prepare for the Sacrament of Penance—to what extent Isaiah’s words today describe yourself.

Do you judge the significance of others’ lives, or even the significance of your own life, according to appearances or by hearsay?  Or do you judge matters “with justice” and rightly?  On your Christmas wish list, have you written the Holy Spirit’s gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge and piety, in order to care more about the needs of the poor and afflicted than your own desires, and even your own needs?

Monday of the First Week of Advent
Isaiah 2:1-5  +  Matthew 8:5-11
December 4, 2017

“Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain….”

Our First Reading and Psalm today both describe the image of “the house of the Lord”.  In these Old Testament passages, “the house of the Lord” refers not to Heaven, but to the sacred, earthly city of Jerusalem.  Both passages also mention that Jerusalem sits atop a mountain (not on the scale of the Rockies or Himalayas, but a mountain relative to the Holy Land).  The fact that “the house of the Lord” sits atop a mountain implies an ascent, which in turn implies personal sacrifice.  One must stretch and climb to reach His house.  We can relate this ascent both to the long course of Old Testament salvation history, and also to our own religious practices during the Season of Advent.

Today’s Gospel passage presents Jesus’ response to such human initiative.  The pagan centurion not only shows initiative in appealing to Jesus, but also faith.  This pagan utters the cry that each of us echoes before Holy Communion:  “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed.”  Jesus responds to him with a prophecy that fulfills Isaiah’s:  “…many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven.”

Each of us, even if a member of Christ’s Body from birth, should not presume upon God’s grace, but imitate the faith of the pagan centurion.  Make a two-fold prayer on this first weekday of Advent.  (1) Pray that many others will come to Jesus in Holy Mass.  (2) Pray that you will generously take the fruits of the Eucharist to many others though the sacrifices of your daily life.

The First Sunday of Advent [B]
Isa 63:16-17,19; 64:2-7  +  1 Cor 1:3-9  +  Mk 13:33-37
December 3, 2017

“Be watchful!  Be alert!”

Once there was a man who tried bargaining with God.  “Lord,” he said, “to you quantities are insignificant.  A thousand years are only a minute in your sight.  A million dollars is but a penny.  So, Lord, what would it hurt you to give me a million dollars?” God answered, “Well, OK.  Wait here just a minute.”

As we enter the season of Advent, we need to recall that God’s ways are not our ways, and that God’s time is not our time.  To prepare for the sacred mysteries of the Christmas Season, consider three questions:  1) What do you do to prepare for Christmas?  2) What is it you are preparing to celebrate?  And 3) What should your life look like after you celebrate Christmas?  We can answer these questions by looking at three different persons waiting to celebrate Christmas.  These are certainly stereotypes, but they allow us to ask whether anything in their approaches to Advent is like our own.

The first person is a youngster waiting for Christmas morning.  What does the youngster do to prepare for Christmas?  Nothing, really.  The waiting is simply a time of anticipation.  All the youngster’s thoughts are consumed with the idea of Christmas morning.  Christmas is a moment, a flurry of activity that’s over in the twinkle of an eye.  Once the presents are open, Christmas is over.  The gifts themselves hold the youngster’s attention for very little time, and the celebration of Christmas brings no real change in the youngster.

The second person is a college student waiting for Christmas Break.  He’s working like mad to complete all the projects, papers and tests that are due before he can celebrate Christmas.  Christmas, for this student, is a time of rest.  Advent and Christmas are two opposites for this student:  work, and rest.  Christmas brings about a complete change in the student, but only for a few weeks, perhaps.  After that, it’s back to the books and the same old grind.

The third person for us to consider is a woman waiting for the birth of her child.  As she bears her child in the womb for nine months, her attention is not focused solely on the birth of the child, like the youngster who for a month can think of nothing but opening his presents on Christmas morning.  She will make sacrifices of her self in order to ensure the health and safety of her unborn child, but meanwhile she has other obligations to attend to.  She bears the child within herself as she tends to the needs of others.

She waits for the time of birth, although even the most experienced of doctors cannot assure her when exactly it will take place.  And when the expected time does come, it is neither the youngster’s brief moment of pleasure at opening presents, nor the student’s days of rest from labor.  For the expectant mother, the waited-for moment is itself a time of labor and of pain.  Yet despite the pain, it is also somehow a time of joy.

Somehow.  Somehow the waiting itself is a time of longing for labor and joy.  Is it any wonder that our Blessed Mother Mary plays such an important role in these seasons of Advent and Christmas?  Who was ever a better disciple of Jesus than Mary?  Who has ever been a better example of what it means to long for the coming of the Lord?  There are many scenes which we picture in our minds and which we hear proclaimed during this Advent of the Lord’s coming.  Joyful mysteries such as the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the Immaculate Conception help us prepare for the gift of Jesus.

Saturday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Daniel 7:15-27  +  Luke 21:34-36

“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy….”

Today is the liturgical equivalent of New Year’s Eve.  With the end of the Church’s liturgical year, there is a note of celebration.  We look back at this concluding year of grace and give thanks to God for the gifts of life and growth in Christ.

Nonetheless, the Church’s liturgical year is never simply about the here and how.  The end of each liturgical year is not simply about looking back at the previous 52 weeks.  Each year looks back far into history; indeed, even back to that time “in the beginning” when God chose to act as a gracious Creator.  Each year also looks forward in hope to the good things that God has promised us.  It’s this looking forward in hope that the year’s end in particular focuses upon.

At first glance, the Scriptures of the Sacred Liturgy at the end of the year may not seem very hopeful.  In fact, they may seem to focus on quite ominous matters.  The “fourth beast” in Daniel’s vision in the First Reading illustrates this focus.  Jesus in the Gospel passage seems to issue a warning about “that day”, which “will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth”.  Jesus also implies, however, that His followers have good reason for hope.  He encourages them to hope for “the strength to escape the tribulations… and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Daniel 7:2-14  +  Luke 21:29-33

His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away….

Today’s First Reading from Daniel follows naturally from last Sunday’s celebration of Christ the King.  There are few queens and kings in the world today who truly rule as monarchs, and the peoples of many nations (such as the United States) reject the very idea of having a queen or king.  Indeed, in modern Western thought, government is “by the people”, and all elected officials hold power only through consent of the governed.  While such ideas hold merit when it comes to civil government, problems arise when they are applied to the spiritual life and to the life of the Church.

In Daniel’s vision, the “son of man” “received dominion, glory and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him.  His dominion is an everlasting dominion”.  The word “dominion” comes from the Latin word “dominus”, meaning “lord” (either human or divine).  Older Catholics are familiar with the phrase “Dominus vobiscum” (“The Lord be with you”).  The English word “dominate” is a cognate.

Secular Western culture rejects all ideas of domination, even in the spiritual life.  There are many “brands” of religion and spirituality that reject even the notion that God should be seen as a “lord” who has “dominion”.  At the heart of many modern religions and spiritualities is the idea enshrined in a modern U. S. Supreme Court decision that each human being has a right to create her or his own view of reality, including the definition of life itself.  Whatever the origins of such ideas, they cannot be reconciled with the Bible, whose God is, at one and the same time, both a loving Father and a providential Lord.

St. Andrew, Apostle
Romans 10:9-18  +  Matthew 4:18-22
November 30, 2017

And how can they hear without someone to preach?

There are many things about a man entering the seminary that are misunderstood.  One important point, that many people are not clear on, is that a man enters the seminary in order to continue to discern the calling that the Lord has made to him.  He does not enter the seminary because he has already made a decision to be a priest.  The Lord calls out to every young man, “Come after me….”  What differs from one man to another is the phrase that follows “Come after me….”  For some, the words that follow are “Be my faithful disciple, and serve me through the wife and children I will gift you.”  To others, Jesus says those words by which we hear him calling Simon and Andrew:  “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  The prayer that a man offers while in the seminary asks the Lord for help in clarifying just which call it is that the Lord has made to him.

“Fishers of men.”  This is a metaphor, of course:  one that speaks to Simon and Andrew, whose lives as adults had been given to the livelihood of being fishermen.  Regardless of the livelihood which they had chosen for themselves, the Lord’s words mean “Come after me.  I chose you to be the servants of my Church.”  No matter the Christian, and no matter the vocation to which the Lord calls him or her, the root of each vocation is service.

Wednesday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Daniel 5:1-6,13-14,16-17,23-28  +  Luke 21:12-19

“By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

So many people grow fearful thinking about a cataclysmic end of the planet, even though the vast majority of mankind will never face it.  Perhaps you’ve seen one of those movies where there’s a dramatic end to life on the planet Earth as we know it.  Movies like that can draw a great deal of attention, and sell a lot of tickets and popcorn.  Nonetheless, it doesn’t matter if you die from an ice age covering the whole continent, or from old age in your own home:  death is death.

We reflect on this sobering truth at the end of each Church year:  in November, we pray to the saints in heaven, and for the faithful in Purgatory, and the Church reminds us of the “last things”:  heaven, hell, death, and judgment.  All this give us perspective.

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus declares to His disciples, “By perseverance you will secure your lives.”  What does this mean?  Every day, God calls us to offer Him our lives in faith, and to live for others.  That’s how we can reach the hour of our deaths in God’s sight.  When all is said and done, there are two types of persons.  There are those who say in the end, “Heavenly Father, thy will be done.”  Then there are those to whom the Father says in the end, “My child, thy will be done.”

Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Daniel 2:31-45  +  Luke 21:5-11

“…there will not be left a stone upon another stone….”

Everything that’s built by human beings can be destroyed.  That’s why something like the Great Pyramids of Egypt are so awesome:  not simply because they are colossal, but because they have—to an amazing extent—survived the ravages of time.  By way of contrast, you could think of one of the large cities on the West Coast of our own country:  from the air, as you fly into the area, you can be filled with awe.  Yet an earthquake could destroy everything in the area in a matter of minutes.

Through the prophet Daniel, God wanted King Nebuchadnezzar to know that his kingdom, so dear to him, could and would undergo destruction.  Other kingdoms would take its place, but they, too, would last only a time.  This prophecy of Daniel foreshadowed the words of Jesus, when he spoke of the Temple of Jerusalem:  it, like everything built by human beings, would be destroyed.  These are not the sorts of things to place our hope in.

But Daniel also prophesied that God would set up a kingdom that would not be destroyed.  There was no way that Daniel could understand this prophecy, but through Daniel, God was speaking about the Church:  not church buildings (even Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome will some day fall), but the Church herself, made up of “living stones”.  Those who place their faith in Christ the King, and live in Him as members of His Mystical Body, will have eternal life.