The Fifth Day within the Octave of Christmas
1 John 2:3-11  +  Luke 2:22-35
December 29, 2020

“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.

The Holy Innocents, Martyrs
1 John 1:5—2:2  +  Matthew 2:13-18
December 28, 2020

If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

There are two ways to remove sin from people’s lives.  The first, as the Beloved Disciple preaches in today’s First Reading, is to bring one’s sins before God so that the Blood of Jesus might wash them away.  The second is to claim that there neither is nor ever has been any such thing as sin.

The modern world that surrounds us seeks credibility by claiming that there is no such thing as sin.  Some moderns go so far as to claim that there is nothing spiritual at all in existence:  not even God.  Sin and the Almighty are nothing but fables, they claim.

Yet if nothing spiritual exists, then love does not exist.  Pure love is nothing if not spiritual.  Love can take certain material forms, of course, such as loving words or loving works.  Yet pure love is what animates those words and works, and pure love is what can endure after words grow silent and works fade.  This love, the Beloved Disciple explains to us in his epistles, is who God Himself is.  It is this love Who, if “we acknowledge our sins,” will “cleanse us from every wrongdoing.”

St. Stephen, the First Martyr
Acts 6:8-10;7:54-59  +  Matthew 10:17-22
December 26, 2020

“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

The dying words of St. Stephen—“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”—help us understand why the Church celebrates the feast day of the Church’s first martyr on the second day of Christmastide.  These first two days of Christmas, celebrating the birth of Jesus and the martyrdom of St. Stephen, seem oddly juxtaposed unless we consider Stephen’s last words as revealing something important not just about him, but also about Our Lord and, indeed, ourselves who are disciples of Jesus.

First, it’s helpful to fix in our minds that, as the old saying goes, “the wood of the crib is the wood of the Cross.”  In other words, Jesus was born at Bethlehem so that He could die at Calvary.

Second, we have to consider what, by extension, that first truth reveals.  Dying for fallen man’s sins is the earthly vocation of Jesus Christ.  Communicating to fallen man the graces that Jesus won at Calvary is the vocation of Jesus’ Church on earth.  St. Stephen’s vocation as the Church’s “proto-martyr” makes clear that Jesus didn’t suffer and die so that fallen man wouldn’t have to.

Instead, the victory of Jesus on Calvary, for which purpose He was born at Bethlehem, invests the suffering and deaths of Jesus’ disciples with new meaning.  The dying words of St. Stephen, then, are not a mere surrender on the occasion of his murder.  They conclude a life of faith, in which each day is lived by the same words.  Each day is a surrender to the Lord Jesus.  Each day is a dying to self.  The day of death, then, is the conclusion of earthly self-giving and the day of new life:  entrance into God’s eternal presence and everlasting sharing in the love of His Holy Spirit.

Late Advent Weekday — December 24 [Morning Mass]
II Samuel 7:1-5,8-12,14,16  +  Luke 1:67-79
December 24, 2020

“He promised to show mercy to our fathers ….”

This morning’s Mass is the last Mass of Advent, and as such, you might say that it presents to us the close of the Old Testament.  At the center of today’s Gospel Reading is the figure of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist.  John having been born, the punishment of muteness is lifted from Zechariah.  This morning’s Gospel Reading, then, presents his first words.

St. Luke the Evangelist notes in two separate scenes that Zechariah—in today’s Gospel Reading—and his wife Elizabeth in a previous passage—Luke 1:41—were “filled with the Holy Spirit” when they spoke.  St. Luke also notes that Zechariah, “filled with the Holy Spirit, prophesied”.  In these two scenes, the words of Elizabeth and Zechariah—both “filled with the Holy Spirit”—are akin to the words of the Old Testament prophets.  In the Creed’s section about the Holy Spirit, we profess that He “has spoken through the prophets.”

There are two parts to Zechariah’s prophecy, which the Church refers to by the first word of the text in Latin:  “Benedictus”.  The second part is addressed to his infant son John.  We can imagine that Zechariah was cradling John in his arms as he uttered this prophecy.  The words he spoke to John can also be applied to us Christians inasmuch as each of us is called to prepare a way in the world for the power of the Most High.  By our words, works, and prayers we allow others to know about the mercy promised to our fathers:  the Divine Mercy who is Jesus Christ, born for us at Bethlehem.

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph [B]
Sirach 3:2-6,12-14 [or Genesis 15:1-6;21:1-3]  +  Colossians 3:12-21 [or Colossians 3:12-17 or Hebrews 11:8,11-12,17-19]  +  Luke 2:22-40 [or Luke 2:22,39-40]

… they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.

On Christmas Day, we heard in the Gospel Reading how God the Father gave His Son Jesus to Mary and Joseph.  Because they accepted the present of Jesus, we too are offered this gift each day.  We pray especially during Christmas for the humility to accept the gift of Christ into our lives.

On today’s feast of the Holy Family, the Gospel Reading describes the Presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple.  We see how Mary and Joseph give their Son back to God, and to other people as well, and we pray today for the courage to give the gift of Christ to others.

Joseph and Mary are faithful Jews, fulfilling in today’s Gospel Reading one of the laws of Judaism:  to take the first-born male and present Him to God in the Temple in Jerusalem.  For many Jews, this law was merely something that had to be done.  For Mary and Joseph however, fulfilling this law had much more meaning, demonstrating their fidelity to the angelic messages announced to each of them many months earlier.

However, we have to wonder if even Joseph and Mary could at this point in time have understood what this Presentation foreshadowed.  The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple foreshadows the self-presentation of Jesus on the Cross.  This reminds us of an important truth about the Sacred Liturgy:  as Advent prepares us for Christmas, so Christmas prepare us for Holy Week.

Some thirty years after the events of today’s Gospel Reading, Mary on Calvary witnessed her Son dying on the Cross because of the sins of others.  Mary could very easily have rejected her Son’s sacrifice and pleaded for Him to come down from the Cross.  But as deeply as her sorrow pierced her heart as if it were a sword, Mary—ever-faithful—joined the sacrifice of her own will with that of her Son, and consented to His Sacrifice.  As Jesus presented his life to the Father on Calvary, Mary presented her son as well.  The “fiat” that she offered at the Annunciation and at the Presentation in the Temple was the same “fiat” that she offered on Calvary.

It is the presentation of Christ on Calvary—of His Body and Blood, soul and divinity—that the priest offers at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  In turn, it is the presentation of Mary on Calvary—of her own will to God—that we as disciples are called to offer each time we assist at Holy Mass.

Hopefully no one who’s present at Mass thinks that he or she is a passive spectator.  Sometimes, religious ceremonies can turn into spectacles, when decorations or music are thought of as more important than what’s being celebrated.  If we come to Mass as a spectator, and expect to be entertained, then it’s very likely that we’re not going to get anything out of the Mass, since we haven’t put anything into it.

Kneeling during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, everyone is to be like Mary at Calvary:  saying “Fiat” to Jesus’ sacrifice.  In this offering we make at Mass, we include everything in our lives that is precious to us.  God may not demand from us what we offer, but we must be willing to offer it.  In this we need to realize that if God were to take anything of ours, He would simply be taking what He had given to us as a gift in the first place.

We might put all this a different way.  When you come up for Holy Communion and say “Amen”, you are saying “Yes, this is truly the Body of Christ that is being presented to me.”  But you are saying “Yes” to something more, as well.

Why is God strengthening you with the Body and Blood of His Son?  You accept the strength of Jesus’ life because God has a mission for you to carry out.  The strength you receive in Holy Communion is given to you, not so that you can use that strength any way you wish.  The strength of Christ’s life is presented to you because God has a plan for your life, and He knows that you will fail without this spiritual nourishment to sustain you.

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1290–1348)

The Nativity of the Lord
December 25, 2020

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

When a person gives someone a gift, if it’s a good gift, it reveals something about the person to whom it’s given.  Christmas is about accepting a gift from God the Father.

One of the most beloved songs of the Christmas Season ponder what sort of gift this is.  It asks:  “What child is this, who laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?”  In the next verse we hear:  “Why lies he in such mean estate, where ox and ass are feeding?”  What does this gift of the Christ Child say about us who are on the receiving end of this gift?

What child is this?  We ourselves speak the answer to that question at every Sunday Mass when we stand and profess the Creed.  About our “Lord Jesus Christ” we profess that He is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God … consubstantial with the Father”.  This tiny infant is God, and the fact that this tiny gift is God tells us something important about why the Father gave this gift to us.

On the other hand, just a few lines later in the Creed, we also say that Jesus “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”  These words describe what today’s feast is all about.  That’s why every year, on the feast of Jesus’ birth, when we profess those words of the Creed, we don’t just bow as we do on Sundays:  we genuflect as we say these words.  But we also need to keep in mind that these lines of the Creed also tell us something important about why the Father gave this gift to us.

Jesus Christ is true God and true man.  From the first moment of His conception, Jesus was fully divine and fully human.  Still today as He sits in Heaven at the Father’s Right Hand, Jesus bears a divine nature and a human nature.  These two truths together tell us what we need to know about the first and greatest Christmas gift:  that is, the person of Jesus Christ.

These two natures which Jesus bears within Himself are the means and the end of what God the Father wants for us who are His adopted children.  The gift of Jesus is the means and the end of our life.  Jesus became human because we are sinners; and because Jesus is God we can become sharers in His divinity.  Jesus became tiny at Bethlehem so that we could become great in Heaven.

At the Annunciation, Jesus became human—the eternal Son of God took on flesh and blood within Mary’s womb—to help us overcome the greatest stumbling block preventing God’s plan for our lives from coming true.  Overcoming this stumbling block is our greatest need in this world.

Our greatest need is salvation:  the forgiveness of our sins.  That is why Jesus accepted the agony of His Passion and Death:  to open the gates of Heaven for us, by offering up His Body and Blood, soul and divinity.  In humility, Jesus was born into this world, so that some thirty years later he could die to open the Gates of Heaven.  As the saying goes, “the wood of the crib is the Wood of the Cross.”

Jesus wants us to accept the gift of His Cross, to wash away our sins.  But as great as the gift of His Death on Good Friday is, we must not confuse this means with the end.  That is to say, on the Cross Jesus offers up His Body and Blood in sacrifice for us:  to wash away our sins, to cleanse us, to prepare us.  But what does the gift of His Cross prepare us for?

New life.  Divine life.  The life of God the Son.  This is the end, the goal, the reason for Jesus being born for us today.

God the Father sent His divine Son down to earth so that the Father might adopt each of us as His children.  Through grace, each us becomes one member of Christ’s Body, so that we might live on earth, and die, and live in Heaven, in Christ.

Late Advent Weekday — December 23
Malachi 3:1-4,23-24  +  Luke 1:57-66
December 23, 2020

But who will endure the day of his coming?

Today’s First Reading is taken from the last book of the Old Testament, the Book of the Prophet Malachi.  There is a certain harshness or strictness to this passage that might seem out of place with the humble birth of the gentle Jesus.  Yet Malachi’s message is needed if we are to celebrate Christmas fittingly.

Many passages in the Old Testament’s eighteen prophetic books are apocalyptic in nature.  That is to say, they are prophecies not just about the distant future, but about the “end times” and what the Church calls the “Last Things”:  Heaven and hell, death and judgment.  Today’s First Reading is such a passage.

The Lord God speaks of the coming “day of the Lord” as “the great and terrible day”.  He speaks also about a purgation that will take place akin to “the refiner’s fire” and “the fuller’s lye”.  Yet what is the goal of this purification?  The answer to that question helps us understand the meaning of Advent and Christmastide.

Malachi prophecies that the Lord’s coming is about more pure sacrifice being offered to God.  He foretells that “the Lord whom you seek” “will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or like silver that they may offer due sacrifice to the Lord.”  This helps us as Christians to focus what we’re about during these holy seasons.  The Lord comes in the person of the infant Jesus so that He might grow up and offer His very Self on Calvary, thereby becoming the source of all our worship as Christians.  When we enter into this, Malachi’s prophecy can come to pass:  “Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the Lord, as in the days of old, as in years gone by.”

Late Advent Weekday — December 22
I Samuel 1:24-28  +  Luke 1:46-56
December 22, 2020

“From this day all generations will call me blessed ….”

Yesterday’s Gospel Reading introduced the narrative of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth.  In that passage the evangelist records only the words of Elizabeth speaking.  But today’s Gospel Reading consists almost entirely of Mary proclaiming a hymn of praise to God.  Every evening in the Divine Office the Church prays this hymn.  This hymn’s title is “Magnificat”, which is simply the first word of the hymn in Latin.

One way to reflect upon this hymn is to compare it to today’s Responsorial Psalm.  This comparison could be made verse-by-verse.  Another means of comparison would be to consider the narrative setting of each.  Consider the latter means.

Today’s Responsorial Psalm does not come from the Book of Psalms but from the second chapter of the First Book of Samuel.  The childless Hannah had prayed to the Lord for a son, promising:  “I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life” [I Samuel 1:11].  After Samuel is born, Hannah fulfills her promise by leaving the child at the house of the Lord in Shiloh.  There Hannah offers a hymn of praise to God, from which today’s Responsorial Psalm is taken.

The narrative setting of today’s Responsorial Psalm gives us an example from the Old Testament of what the Blessed Virgin Mary lives out throughout Jesus’ life.  In turn, God calls each Christian to imitate this example of Mary:  not only praising God for His blessings, but more importantly, returning to the Lord His blessings, and in so doing, becoming instruments of His will so that His blessings might be multiplied for the glory of God and the good of others.

Late Advent Weekday — December 21
Song of Songs 2:8-14 [or Zephaniah 3:14-18]  +  Luke 1:39-45
December 21, 2020

“Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

Today and tomorrow’s Gospel Readings together form the narrative of the Visitation.  Whenever we pray the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, this event is the object of meditation for the second decade.  Today’s Gospel Reading is the more narrative of the two passages, focusing upon the interaction between Mary and Elizabeth.

Almost half of today’s Gospel Reading consists of Elizabeth’s words to Mary.  About these words, the evangelist tells us that Elizabeth, “filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice.”  This fact makes the scene more dramatic, drawing more attention not only to Elizabeth’s words, but also to what provoked her words.

In Elizabeth’s cry, we hear the word “blessed” three times.  These three instances focus for us the entire scene of the Visitation.  The first two occur in the same sentence, where Elizabeth cries to Mary:  “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”  Mary and Jesus are united in being “blessed”, yet Mary receives this blessing from Jesus when He descends from Heaven.  On the other hand, Mary and Jesus are united by their shared humanity, which Jesus receives from Mary in her womb.

The third instance of “blessed” in this passage describes Mary in a way that offers hope to each Christian.  Each member of the Body of Christ receives from Him a unique place among the Body’s members.  Not every Christian is “blessed” to be the Mother of God.  Yet God calls every Christian to be “blessed” by imitating that fidelity of Mary of which Elizabeth cries:  “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”