The Saint of Light

"When a martyr lives and dies in Sicily, has a world-famous song written about her which is still sung 1500 years after her death [Santa Lucia], has her name included in the Canon of the Roman Mass, is listed in the oldest Christian Sacramentaries, has two churches dedicated to her in pagan England before the 8th century, is the most popular saint in Sweden and Norway, had her biography written by a member of the Saxon royal family, and a poem about her by John Donne, and whose feast day was originally the date of the winter solstice, she has to have been some remarkable lady!

And such a person is Saint Lucy – the ever-popular Santa Lucia."

In those few words, Fr. John Julian, OJN, in his wonderful collection of stories of the saints, captures the popularity of St. Lucy of Sicily, Virgin and Martyr (d. c. 304) The details of Lucy's life are quite obscure and, understandably, many legends and traditions have arisen to fill the gaps. Lucy was martyred at Syracuse, Sicily, in the reign of Diocletian. One can argue the details that have been reported surrounding the event, but the important thing is that Lucy is one of the most important saints in the Church's history, and had a following in Rome in the early 500's as one of the most beloved of all the virgin martyrs. She is remembered for her purity of life and the gentleness of her spirit. Her name, Lucy or Lucia = light, occasioned her being looked upon as the patron of people with eye trouble. She's often depicted, especially in medieval art, holding her eyes on a dish. This was probably a cultic transfer of the representation of a pagan goddess, Lucina, shown with a tray holding two tiny cakes, looking very much like eyes.

In popular piety, Lucy is honored on December 13, which, for many centuries, was the shortest day of the year. Later calendar changes by Gregory VIII shifted the shortest day to December 21/22, depending on the year. A traditional aphorism, popular in England, marks Lucy Day as the winter solstice:

Lucy holy, Lucy light:

Shortest day and longest night.

In Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden, there has long been a festival celebration of light, both ecclesiastically and domestically. In the domestic Lucia-fest, a young girl in the family dresses in pure white and a red sash, symbolizing Lucy's faith, purity, and martyrdom, and wears a crown of lighted candles on her head with a wreath of lingonberry greens, a sign that light is returning on this day. She then, preceded and followed in procession by her brothers, "star boys", serves her parents a tray of coffee and saffron yeast buns, called Lussikattor = Lucy's cats. This latter is connected to the legend of the Norse mother-goddess, Freya, from which we get our word "Friday". Freya was said to drive an amber chariot of the sun through the skies, drawn by a pair of giant grey forest-cats.

After several transfers of St. Lucy's remains from the original site in Syracuse, her relics finally rest in the Church of SS. Geremia and Lucia in Venice. 

Encouragement In the Midst of Our Irrationalities

Today we celebrate Gaudete or Rejoicing Sunday: a sort of “breather” in the middle of Advent. In Roman Catholic parishes, and in some Episcopal churches, festive rose-colored vestments are worn, just as some Advent wreaths have a third, pink, candle. This touch of the festive, in mid-Advent, is a symbolic encouragement to us as we journey through these four weeks, and, indeed, through life: facing challenges, suffering, questioning, and irrationalities every day. At this halfway point in the waiting season our eager sense of anticipation of Christ’s coming anew is heightened by the liturgy’s words of encouragement and hope.

The passion of Advent’s final days finds further expression, beginning on December 17, next Friday, as the Church reflects in the Evening Office on the eight ancient “O Antiphons” for Vespers, the words of which are found in the Advent hymn, O Come, o come, Emmanuel: “O Wisdom”, “O Lord of Lords”, “O Root of Jesse”, etc.

On this Third Sunday of Advent, we want to spend a few minutes reflecting on the Gospel reading (Matthew 11:2-11): specifically, about the irrationality of John the Baptizer, the irrationality of Jesus’ hearers, and our own irrationality. We can best do this against the background of Matthew’s 3rd-4th chapters.

John baptizes Jesus in the Jordan River. The Spirit then directly leads Jesus into the desert. When Jesus emerges, he leaves his hometown, Nazareth, goes up to Galilee, lives at Capernaum in the northeast, and there he begins to preach: “Change your hearts, for the reign of heaven is at hand.” For the next seven chapters in Matthew, Jesus exercises a ministry of preaching and doing, which sounds good enough, except that he stirs up what can be called irrationalities in his cousin, John the Baptizer, in his followers, and he often does the same even to us.

The beginning of today’s Gospel passage makes it obvious that a good bit of time has passed since the events of Chapters 3 and 4. Jesus is still on the road, but John is now in prison. In prison John is growing tired and confused. He seems to have lost some of the confidence with which he first bore witness. He keeps hearing about what Jesus is doing, even as he’d been aware of Jesus’ earlier deeds. But Jesus hadn’t seem to measure up to John’s expectations. For example: Jesus ate with the very people of whom John demanded repentance. Jesus didn’t fit the traditionally expected role or exert the visible Messianic power which John assumed he would have. Matthew’s Gospel points out at least three previous times when John and his disciples have misunderstood Jesus and what he was doing: in Mt 3, where John mistakenly interprets Jesus’ ministry in terms of the refining fire of Messianic judgment; again in Chapter 9, where they challenge Jesus and his disciples for not fasting; and now, in Chapter 11 where John’s disciples give voice to his unspoken doubts: “Are you the One who is to come...or should we begin looking for another?” John has seen and now hears from prison what Jesus is doing; but he doesn’t seem to really connect the deeds with the message of the words. You might say that John the Baptizer was having a crisis of faith, becoming irrational, beginning to doubt if Jesus was really the Promised One for whom John had been preparing the way.

Leo Rosten, in his book The Power of Positive Nonsense, says: “The only force I fear more than human irrationality is irrationality armed with passion.” John had such passion, such deep feelings. It was John who leaped in Elizabeth’s womb at the mere voice of Jesus’ mother’s greeting. It was John who was overwhelmed that his cousin should come to him for baptism. It was John who’d said: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the world’s sin.” It was John who’d heard the voice from the clouds: “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” It was John who proclaimed: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Yet, though he saw, John didn’t understand. He doubted, and he needed reassurance. The restless, irrational prophet who’d done the grunt work of preparing the way for others to know Jesus, has become the seeker, the searcher, desiring with all the passion in him to know for sure, so that, in any case, he can get on with making some sense of his present situation. Jesus, quoting, among other texts, the very moving passage from Isaiah in the first reading today (35:1-10), sends back a coded message: “Go and tell John what you hear and see…” Barbara Brown Taylor beautifully paraphrases Jesus’ words: “People who were blind to the love loose in the world have received sight; people who were paralyzed with fear are limber with hope; people who were deaf from want of good news are singing...And best of all, tell John that this is not the work of one lonely Messiah but the work of God, carried out by all who believe, and that there is no end in sight!”

All the signs of the Messiah are evident. The coming reign of God also now is. Jesus is clearly the One who not only promises God’s reign, but who initiates here, now; who embodies God’s purpose and plan in his words and deeds. And it’s to and in this mission and ministry that Jesus calls John, and his hearers, and us to participate: here, now; not just in the future. But Jesus hints that God’s reign, God’s way, will continually meet with resistance and rejection for all who participate, just as it will in Jesus’ life.Yet he calls all of them and us to this costly faithfulness of discipleship, to walk the way of the Cross, to face and embrace our fears and doubts and irrationalities in solidarity with him.

The second half of the Gospel passage intimates that John’s followers also continued to share John’s misgivings, his irrationality and questioning. John was an immensely popular man of God: even after he and Jesus were gone we see references to John’s disciples at Ephesus, for example, in Acts 19, 3. John recognized his call as forerunner of the longed-for Messiah. Just as John, his followers wanted to believe that; they felt deeply, passionately about the coming Savior/Messiah. But as Jesus goes about working his wonders for others, John lays wasting away in a prison. If deliverance is really the heart of the Good News which Jesus preaches, then why is all this happening to John and to them? “Our dreams have turned to nightmares; our plans have gone up in smoke. We see blind eyes opened, true, and the deaf now hearing, and the lame walking...but what about our situation, where everything seems to be crumbling? Are you really the One…?” Jesus can only respond: “Go and tell John what you hear and see, and blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

The New Covenant, the time of fulfillment, Jesus says, is now, with us who are among “the least in the reign of heaven”. Deliverance is evident to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. But that doesn’t automatically free us from our inner and outer prisons, from our own doubting and irrationality. The plain fact is that, within God’s reign, not every human situation gets better, on the personal, the communal, or the world level; healing and curing aren’t the same and don’t always happen together.

Despite the passion with which each of us has come (or will come) to an authentic encounter with the Living One; despite centuries of witness by patriarchs, prophets, martyrs, and saints; despite all the
nurturing of the Church through her sacramental life, we, too, so often succumb to our fears, doubts, and irrationalities, just as John and the others did. Almost daily we find ourselves, or those we love, in situations which seem impossible, which challenge us to our limits, which threaten to break us. “Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for another?”

We must come to realize that the heart of faith and hope within God’s reign is finally coming to understand that God’s power can heal us even when no cure is possible. “My grace is sufficient for you...my power is made perfect in weakness.” The Acts of the Apostles constantly repeats what’s required to belong to the reign of God: 1) Repent: that is to say, turn your heart around; 2) Be baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit. Immerse yourself in the Covenant of the Love of God and your neighbor, as in a refreshing stream; 3) Confess that Jesus is Lord. Act and live as Jesus did. So simple. So uncomplicated. But never easy!

The Church calendar commemorated the noted Trappist monk and writer, Blessed Thomas Merton on Friday, December 10: the day of his tragic death by accidental electrocution in 1968. As you and I walk through the remainder of this Advent season of waiting, even in the midst of our own fears, doubts, and irrationalities, may we pray with and for one another in the spirit of this prayer of Merton’s:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain

where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that

I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am

qctually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You

does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that

I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that

desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the

right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I

will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the

shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me,

and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

- Thoughts in Solitude, p. 79

Advent 3

We light the candle of hope and of peace, and along with them this week the candle of joy. What joy Mary must have felt when the angel Gabriel told her that a special child would be born to her, a child who would save and deliver the people. God wants us all to have joy. The angel who announced to the shepherds that Jesus had been born told them: "Do not be afraid. I am bringing you good news of a great joy for all the people -- for to you is born this day, in the City of David, a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord." We light this third candle to remember that Christ brings the promise of a new life, in which the blind receive sight, the lame walk again, and prisoners are set free. He is the bearer of true and everlasting joy.

Loving God, we thank you for the joy you bring us.

Help us to prepare our hearts for this gift.

Bless our worship. Help us to hear and to do your Word.

We ask this in the name of the One born in Bethlehem. Amen. 

Blessed Thomas Merton (Fr. Louis, OCSO) - 1915-1968

"What I wear is pants.  What I do is live.  How I pray is breathe."

(From Day of a Stranger)

Celebrating the Conception of Mary, the Theotokos

O Mother of God

we take refuge

in your loving care.

Let not our plea to you pass unheeded

in the trials that beset us,

but deliver us from danger,

for you alone

are truly pure,

you alone

are truly blessed.

According to Roman Catholic tradition, today's feast is called the "Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin". It refers to the the Virgin Mary's being conceived by her mother, St. Anne, without any stain (macula) of original sin. It is one of the four official dogmas in Roman Catholic theological understanding of Mary. The teaching of the Roman Church states that, from the first moment of her existence, Mary was preserved by God from the original sin of Adam and Eve, and filled with sanctifying grace that would normally come to a human being through baptism after birth. Catholics also believe that Mary was free from any personal or hereditary sin. It's important not to confuse Mary's immaculate conception with the conception, the incarnation, of her son, Jesus. Jesus' conception is celebrated as the announcing to Mary (Annunciation) that she would become the Theotokos = the God-bearer.

From early on in the history of the Catholic Church, the writings of numerous Church Fathers are cited as places where this belief is implicitly stated. For many centuries there have been regional and local liturgical celebrations of a feast day in honor of Mary. To sum up a rather complicated subject in a few words, the Roman Catholic Church has used as its theological basis for this belief the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, great 4th century Western Father of the Church. It wasn't until December 8, 1854, relatively recently, that the Immaculate Conception was solemnly defined as an official teaching and matter of faith of the Church by Pope Pius IX.

Orthodox Christianity has seen all this from a very different viewpoint. It views the teaching of the "Immaculate" Conception of Mary as a response to a situation created by the Roman Catholic dogma of original sin. Following Augustine, Rome teaches that man inherits from Adam a "stain" of original sin, primarily manifested in concupiscence, the tendency to sin. So Rome had to provide an explanation of how Christ could be born of a human parent, yet without sin. The teaching of the Immaculate Conception tries to break this chain by making Mary the exception, not Christ.

In the East, Eutyches [c. 380—c. 456, a presbyter and archimandrite at Constantinople, and later condemned as a heretic] had argued that, if Christ had a real human nature, he would also have inherited the stain of sin. Pope Leo the Great countered by making a distinction between the nature, which Christ did indeed assume from Mary, and the guilt which He did not assume, "because His nativity is a miracle". There was never any idea of Mary's own preservation from original sin. In one of Leo's sermons (62,2) we read: "Only the Son of the blessed Virgin is born without transgression; not indeed outside the human race, but a stranger to sin... so that of Adam's offspring, one might exist in whom the devil had no share."

The Orthodox Church's theological basis for understanding Mary's conception is based heavily on the theology of St Athanasius, specifically his treatise On the Incarnation. There Athanasius holds that, when man, in the persons of Adam and Eve who have passed on to us our human nature, first sinned, man became separated from God. This separation from God is what Orthodox Christianity understands as the "original sin", having two consequences. First, separated from the source of all good, man becomes morally corrupt, with an innate tendency to sin. Secondly, separated from the source of all Being, man begins to return to his original state, i.e., to the nothingness from which God created him. Thus, the corruption and death experienced by humankind.

 In other words, "original sin", in the Orthodox understanding, isn't a "stain" but rather an absence. Given that, there's no need to explain how Christ failed to inherit it along with his human nature from Mary, because the Incarnation itself is the end of the separation. From the moment of incarnation, Jesus Christ was both God and man. Therefore, his human Nature never experienced the separation from God which all other humans have experienced since the Fall. Christ does not give us life and righteousness as things apart from himself. He is our life and righteousness.

 The Orthodox Christian view would not say that the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception is wrong per se, but rather that it makes no sense theologically if the understanding of original sin is more from Athanasius than from Augustine.

Even Christ's ancestral lineage wasn't distinguished for holiness. Indeed, the lineage isn't through the favored son, Joseph, but through Judah, whose casual sin with his daughter-in-law, Tamar, was less than edifying. Matthew mentions four women in Christ's genealogy, all of them of questionable reputation. 1) Tamar, who enticed her father-in-law into sleeping with her. 2) Rahab, the prostitute. 3) a former pagan, Ruth. 4) Bathsheba the adulteress. Matthew seems to want his readers to be aware that it's not Christ's ancestry which makes him the Savior.

Ambrose of Milan (339-397)

You may have experienced finding yourself in what you think is the wrong place at the wrong time...but as things unfold you're later made to understand that you were just in the right place and time where God wanted you to be. Ambrose, I think, must've had that feeling any number of times in his life.

Born in Trier, Germany, Ambrose's father was the Roman governor of Gaul (current Spain & Britain). Ambrose's family raised him as a Christian, but he was, amazingly, never baptized. Growing up in an aristocratic family, it was almost a foregone conclusion that he'd serve in some exalted political post. Educated in Rome, he became a highly successful attorney.

So it was that Ambrose became governor of northern Italy, with headquarters in Milan, just at a time when heretical Arian Christians were battling with the orthodox Christians over theology, and, wouldn't you know it, at the time when Bishop Auxentius of Milan, an Arian, had died, and a contentious election had begun for a successor. It fell to Governor Ambrose to get himself involved in the process, addressing the unruly opponents so as to keep some semblance of peace during the election. Suddenly, during one of the lulls of quiet in the midst of the infighting, a little child's voice was heard to cry out over and over: "Ambrose! Bishop!...Ambrose! Bishop!" Tentatively, a few people in the crowd began to take up the cry. Soon more and more voices joined in, until a crescendo of both Arians and orthodox Christians were thundering: "Ambrose! Bishop!" Ambrose was flabbergasted, and probably a bit mortified! Definitely wrong place, wrong time! He was still only an unbaptized catechumen.

Ambrose resisted, to the point of fleeing from Milan in the dark of night, with the intention of going to Pavia. In the darkness, however, he lost his way, wandered about, and took a wrong turn. As the sun arose, a weary Ambrose found himself at the city gates...of Milan! Wrong place, wrong time...again! As the old saying goes, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" Realizing in his heart that God had put him in the exactly right place at exactly the right time, Ambrose relented and agreed to be baptized and consecrated as the new Bishop of Milan.

And what a bishop he turned out to be! He became a compelling teacher, a popular preacher, always defending Christ's divinity, the local hot-button theological issue, as central to the Christian faith. Ambrose was the first to introduce hymns into the Western liturgy, and even contributed several theologically rich compositions of his own. With the backing of his whole community, he stood firm against the imperial powers' attempts to interfere in Church affairs and matters of faith.

In 384 a new professor of rhetoric, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, arrived in Milan. At 30 years of age, he was young, handsome, definitely a ladies-man, and a brilliant and popular teacher. Ambrose, no slouch himself academically, had become aware of the new arrival's presence, mainly through the man's mother, Monica. Monica was, as they say, verklempt with fear for her son's spiritual destiny. He'd lived a raucous life since his adolescence, and was very taken with a bizarre and dangerous philosophical school, Manichaeism, which, Monica knew, had little in common with her own Christian belief. She, of all people, was aware of her son's brilliance and essentially good heart, and she wanted only the best for him. So she approached Bishop Ambrose and plead with him to do something about it. Ambrose, to her astonishment, said "No...but let him be. Only pray to the Lord in his behalf. He will find out by reading what is the character of that error and how great is its impiety."

What Monica didn't know at the time was that Ambrose himself, as a small child, had been given over by his deluded mother to be educated by the Manichees. He not only read all their books, but even copied them out. On his own, Ambrose had concluded that the truth was not there, and that he should flee from it as quickly as possible, which he did. But Monica keep pressuring Ambrose, over and over, shedding copious tears, to talk to her son and set him straight. Finally, Ambrose, probably feeling this was the wrong place, wrong time again, got a bit ticked off, and said to Monica: "Go away from me now. As you live, it is impossible that the son of such tears should perish." Three years later, at Easter in 387, the same year that Monica died, Bishop Ambrose baptized that young man as a Christian, as well as his illegitimate son, Adeodatus, composing for the occasion a great canticle which we now sing at Morning Prayer on major feasts: the Te Deum laudamus = We praise you, O God. We know the young man as Augustine, later Bishop of Hippo, and one of the greatest saints and doctors of the Western Church.

The moral of the story: think twice the next time you find youself in what you think is the wrong place at the wrong time! 

St. Nicholas of Myra (d. c. 342)

Little is factually known about St. Nicholas, who is one of the patron saints of Russia, other than that he was a 4th century bishop, at Myra, in what is now southern Turkey, and was reputed to be a worker of wonders. A 9th century hagiographer expanded on the latter a collection of what could almost be called wonderful hero or adventure stories about St. Nicholas. Many of them recount his love and care for children, his feeding of the hungry, his healing the sick and caring for the oppressed. The photo [shown on the right] depicts Nicholas rescuing three boys in a barrel from possible cannibalism, something reprehensible to our modern ears, but an occasional occurence factually verifiable at that time of great famine in Asia Minor. Another story tells of how he saved three girls from a life of prostitution by providing them, at the last minute, with dowries. Thus developed a tradition of bringing gifts to children on St. Nicholas' feastday, a tradition appropriated in later Christmas celebrations.

Fr. John Julian, OJN, in his Stars In A Dark World, makes this interesting observation about the corruption of the St. Nicholas tradition in the United States: "In early New York, 'Saint Nicholas' was recognized by the Dutch Protestant settlers as 'Sint Klaes', and, apparently preferring paganism to popishness, they mixed the saint’s story with the Scandinavian legends of Thor who, as the god of fire, dressed all in red, rode across the sky in a chariot drawn by two goats named Gnasher and Cracker, entered homes through chimneys and hearths, and was worshipped and honored by the burning of a Yule Log. This less than-creditable hybridization produced, of course, the totally secular, uniquely American, and notably un-saintly 'Santa Claus', the greatest symbol of contemporary consumerism. And, sad to say, this perversion of sanctity was advanced considerably by the word of an Episcopal priest and seminary Dean, The Rev. Clement C. Moore, who wrote what became the classic pagan Yuletide poem, 'The Night Before Christmas'." Only in America!

Now that our rampant and insane practices of acquiring and consuming more and more trifling things on a mega-scale has begun to come back and haunt us in the serious recession we're currently experiencing, perhaps this would be a good day for us pause and resolve to remember and begin to emulate the spirit of a man who devoted himself to far nobler human and spiritual ideals: providing for the welfare and future of children, the feeding of the unemployed and the poor, and the selfless easing of others' sufferings and burdens.