Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

On his way to Mass one morning in the winter of 1531, Juan Diego, a poor Aztec Indian, age 57, experienced an unusual encounter. He heard music coming from Tepeyac Hill, then heard a woman's voice calling out his name. Juan Diego made his way up the hill on to discover a young woman, apparently, from her appearance and clothing, one of his own people. She told him that she was la Virgen Maria, and said that he must go and ask the Bishop of Mexico City to build una iglesia on the hill, whose purpose was to help in the conversion of the nation and bring comfort and consolation to the Mexican people. 

Exercising faith, Juan Diego obeyed her request, but the message which he relayed to the Bishop met with great skepticism, even though the Bishop discerned that Juan Diego was well-meaning and a humble Catholic man. Juan Diego returned to the site of the apparition on Tepeyac Hill and reported the Bishop's reaction to Nuestra Señora. She asked that he return to the Bishop and try again, with the same message. The Bishop patiently heard him through, but this time he sent Juan Diego back to ask Nuestra Señora for a sign to verify that, indeed, it was she who wished that a church be built. 

Returning obediently to the hill a second time, Juan Diego relayed the Bishop's request, and, surprisingly, Nuestra Señora agreed to do so. To Juan Diego's astonishment, a variety of roses which, at that time, didn't even grow in Mexican soil, especially in winter, appeared on Tepeyac Hill. Juan gathered roses into his tilma or cloak, and Nuestra Señora carefully arranged the roses in the tilma with her own hands. When Juan Diego returned to the Bishop, he released the tilma, letting the flowers fall at the Bishop's feet. Not only that, but the Bishop was taken aback to find an image of Nuestra Señora imprinted on Juan Diego's tilma.

Falling to his knees, the Bishop believed Juan Diego's story and gave his consent to Nuestra Señora's wishes. In time, a church was built on the site of the apparition, and some 9 million people eventually were baptized as Catholics in a short period of time, upon hearing about or viewing the miraculous image of Nuestra Señora. 

A great amount of testing and modern research has been done on Juan Diego's tilma, which was woven out of coarse cactus fiber and would have been expected to deteriorate within 20 years. In the image, the pupils of Mary's eyes reflect the faces of Aztec people and clergy present at the time the image was first revealed. It appears that no paint was used, and chemical analysis hasn't been able to identify the color imprint. Studies have also demonstrated that the stars on Nuestra Señora's mantle match what people would have seen in the sky in Mexico in December, 1531.

The natives of North America, in relating their stories, often say: "I don't know if this actually happened, but I do know that it's true." The Church has always been deliberate in affirming miraculous occurrences. Nevertheless, whatever happened there on Tepeyac Hill in 1531 struck a note in the heart of the indigenous people of Mexico, and that devotion to Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe today is visibly as strong, perhaps stronger, than it was then.

God of power and mercy, you blessed the Americas at Tepeyac

with the presence of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe:

May her prayers help all men and women to accept each other

as brothers and sisters. Through your justice present in our

hearts may your peace reign in the world.

We ask this through our Savior Jesus Christ, your Son;

who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns,

one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Advent 2

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Hope In His Coming: the Key to Justice & Peace

Storms of fierce rain and wind came through Northern California this morning. I arose at 6 AM and turned on the patio light to see how bad it was. Just after turning the light off, I noticed a quick glow out in the distance and the electricity went off: a blown transformer. Things died down in the next few hours, but when I arrived at church I found that they had the same problem: no electricity. By then the sun had begun to rise, and making do with candles and flashlights the service ushering in the Advent season commenced. It was interesting standing together in the semi-darkness and praying, “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light...” 

The very origin of Advent is somewhat obscure. Apparently it came from Spain or Gaul where the Christian community observed a six-week fast, beginning with St. Martin’s feast on November 11. Gradually it was reduced to a four-week period. The Eastern Church, for the most part, prepares for Advent with fasting, beginning on November 15 and continuing through Christmas Eve.

Originally, the Christmas event wasn’t associated with God as a child. Rather, a close connection was made between the coming of the Word made flesh and the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection. You get a hint of this if you look at the Collects and Scriptures of the three Sundays prior to our Advent 1. Christ’s incarnation brought about redemption. The Son of God, the Father’s Word, became flesh according to the Father’s will, leading eventually even to his ignominious death upon a cross. The birth at Bethlehem began the journey to Calvary.

Even the images associated with Christmas, as it was first celebrated in the 3-4th centuries, are more severe than tender. Jesus is shown to be the true and all-victorious Sun. The prophet Malachi writes: “For behold the day comes, burning like an oven...the day that come shall burn them up...But for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings...” (4:1-2) The liturgy’s first reading today from Jeremiah (33:14-16) echoes that, referring to a “righteous Branch” which will spring up  to “execute justice and righteousness in the land...Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”

Jesus who came in the flesh is viewed as the Sun, the shining out, of God’s righteousness. Though introduced to angels, shepherds and the wise among the Gentiles as an infant, Jesus would grow to manhood as the Holy One who establishes God’s reign of righteousness. Part of his growing and maturing necessarily involved human and personal suffering and death.

Advent celebrates our waiting in solid hope on God’s coming, in the person of Christ, to reign at the conclusion of human history. St. Cyril of Jerusalem writes: “We proclaim the coming of Christ: not just a first coming but another as well that will be far more glorious than the first...At his first coming, he was wrapped in linens and laid in a manger; at the second, light shall be his robe...Let us therefore not stop at his first coming but look forward to the second...” (Catechesis 15:1)

Nevertheless, we need to be realistic about Advent’s full meaning: we do wait for and celebrate Jesus’ birth with all its tenderness, beauty and majesty. At the same time we take seriously the liturgy’s assurance: “Christ will come again.” In the meantime, there’s the painful necessity of the cross in each of our lives as in Jesus‘ life.

During Advent we become vividly aware of two frustrations. 1 Thessalonians (3:9-13) alludes to one of these. Paul prays that God and Jesus may bring Paul back soon to his beloved Thessalonian community. He prays that they may “abound in love for one another and for all”, in other words, for the Lord’s true and tangible presence among them until his final presence, his “coming = parousia: return/advent/presence...with all his saints”.

Advent invites us, calls us, to enter into an expectation and longing which you and I may never, or rarely, have actually experienced. Such Advent hope can’t be feigned. Neither can we replicate the longing which Paul had and which he prayed the Thessalonian Christians would have in exactly the same way.

Perhaps you and I can come to this kind of longing and hope by living, particularly through the next three weeks (Christmas is early this year!), in deep prayer for one another. Think of how often we’re physically present to each other, but not really present in Christ. The aim of our Advent discipline is to experience God-with-us, Emmanu-el, God’s coming to us in the very people and context in which we live day to day, and especially through our mutual ministering to one another.

God’s Word is a surrogate for God, and, as people of faith, you and I are its designated bearers. Advent reminds us that there will  be another advent, a coming of our God, in which God will be present to the world in a way it has never experienced: through Jesus the Christ in the fullness of God’s glory. Paul’s reference in the Epistle to “the coming of our Lord Jesus with all the saints” echoes the prophet Isaiah: “For as the earth brings forth its shoots and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.” (61:11) When Christ comes on “the day of the Lord”, humanity will finally have an inkling of what true justice and peace is.

Which brings us to the second frustration of which Advent makes us aware. This waiting upon the future, this attempt by the Lord that “he may so strengthen [our] hearts that [we] may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus” has everything to do with longing for a God who will vindicate and “comfort all who mourn”, as Isaiah says: a God who works justice and peace.

But only a follower of Jesus out of touch with reality today can presume to be called “Christian” without taking personal responsibility for the work of justice and peace in the world. The commitment we make in Baptism requires it: to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”; to “seek and serve Christ in all persons”; to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being”. That’s a demanding process for each of us. Doing justice and seeking peace in the 21st century, as one writer expresses it, “rest[s] ultimately in the disarmament of the human spirit to God, who alone can give authentic peace. Indeed, to have peace in the world, we must first have peace within ourselves...” The alternative to true justice and peace is violence to body, mind and spirit, violence which has many faces: exploitation and oppression of the poor, especially women and children; deprivation of human rights; economic greed; neglect and abuse of the aging and the helpless; and innumerable other acts of inhumanity.

Just as our Thessalonian sisters and brothers long ago, you and I understand justice and peace to be gifts of a compassionate and loving God. Hopefully this awareness will prompt us to pray constantly, personally and together, and through commitment to the Scriptures, to Tradition and using our God-given reason, will aid us in acquiring the wisdom to search for justice and peace in our times, as the Thessalonians must’ve done in theirs. 

 Theodore Ferris has written a beautiful prayer for this Advent season of hope and work which we begin today:

“Sharpen our minds, O Lord;

humble our spirits, and open our hearts

to take in the love that once became flesh, 

that comes amongst us again and again,

that we may not only take him in,

but show him to others

and let others see him in us.

And we ask it in his name,

and by his power, 

and for his sake.”       

The Candle of Hope

On this eve of the first Sunday of Advent, we light a candle recalling the hope we have in Jesus the Christ. The prophets of Israel all spoke of his coming, of how a savior would be born, in the line of David the king. They spoke of how he would bring wisdom to people and bless all humankind. The Christmas feast celebrates the reality of hope which took human form in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. On Good Friday the Christ of our hope chose to die for us, only to rise again from death and to return to the presence of the Living Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. At the end of human time our hope will draw us definitively into his presence, into the full reign of God. Our purpose in lighting this first Advent candle is to remind ourselves to be watchful and prepared and to use our time well in anticipation of his final coming to us.

Loving God, thank you for the hope which you give us in Jesus the Lord.

Help us prepare our bodies and hearts for his final coming.

Bless our worship. Help us live holy, wise and righteous lives.

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

Setting Aside Our Nets

I'd never heard of Mark Frank until coming across a portion of one of his sermons, on St. Andrew, in Celebrating the Saints, a collection of daily spiritual readings which follows the calendar of the Church of England.

Mark Frank or Franck (1613–1664) was an English churchman and academic, Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Baptized at Little Brickhill,  Buckinghamshire, he was admitted pensioner of Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1627, elected to a scholarship in 1630, and to a fellowship in 1634, having become M.A. the same year. In 1641 he became B.D., and was chosen junior treasurer of his college, and senior treasurer in 1642. He had attracted the favorable notice of Charles I by a sermon he preached at Paul's Cross before the lord mayor and aldermen in 1641, which the king commanded to be printed. In 1644 he was ejected as a malignant by the parliamentary visitors, because he refused to take the Solemn League and Covenant.

Frank was re-established in his fellowship in 1660 after the Restoration, and was rewarded by ecclesiastical promotions. In 1661 he was made D.D. by royal mandate, and was chosen master of his college in 1662, succeeding Benjamin Lany. Archbishop William Juxon appointed him one of his chaplains, and he held the office of domestic chaplain and ex-officio licenser of theological works to Juxon's successor, Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon, by whom he was presented to the archdeaconry of St. Alban's, and to the treasurership of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1660. He was also presented to the rectory of Barley in 1663 by Matthew Wren. He died at the age 51 in 1664, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. His Course of Sermons for all the Sundays and Festivals throughout the Year was published  in 1672, and was later republished in the library of Anglo-Catholic Theology.

Here is the portion of his sermon on St. Andrew which first attracted me: "And alas what have we, the best, the richest of us as highly as we think of ourselves and ours, more than Andrew and his brother: a few old broken nets? What are all our honors but old nets to catch the breath of the world? What are our estates but nets to entangle us? What are all our ways and devises of thriving but so many several nets to catch a little yellow sand and mud? What are all those fine catching ways of eloquence, knowledge, good parts of mind and body, but so many nets and snares to catch others with? The rational soul itself we too often make but a net to catch flies, petty, buzzing knowledges only; few solid sober thoughts. And our life itself, what is it but a few rotten threads knit together into veins and sinews, its construction so fragile that the least stick or stone can unloose it or break all to pieces. O blessed saint of this day, that we could but leave these nets as thou didst thine; that nothing might any longer entangle us or keep us from our Master's service! Follow we St. Andrew as he did Christ; follow him to Christ, cheerfully and without delay, and while it is today, begin our course...let Christ be your business, his life your pattern, his commands your law..." (Celebrating the Saints, compiled and introduced by Robert Atwell, Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1998, p. 453)

"Never Call Me A Saint"

Dorothy Day spoke those words, I believe, out of her great humility and distaste for worldly honor. She was the first to admit some of her glaring human faults, even in the midst of those whom she helped, as her diaries [The Duty of Delight, Robert Ellsberg, ed., Marquette University Press, 2008] well attest. Somehow, I suspect that, in God's eyes, the magnitude of suffering she experienced during her life more than made up for them.

Dorothy died on November 29, 1980, and on a card found in her final journal St. Ephraim the Syrian's Prayer of Penance summed up her deep religious spirit: "O Lord and master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faintheartedness, lust of power and idle talk. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother, for Thou art blessed from all ages to ages. Amen."

Despite her strong feelings about not wanting to be considered a "saint", the U.S. Catholic bishops decided recently to push her cause for canonization. A long-time admirer of Dorothy Day since my college days, I'm with the bishops on this one. Her very human life and example can only give tremendous inspiration to many thousands of us ordinary folks who have known spiritual failure as well as abundant blessing. Join me in praying for the time when we can ask the intercession of "Saint" Dorothy Day.

The Reign of God is NOW!

The liturgical lessons for today (Daniel 7:9-10; 13-14; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37) bring to a conclusion once again the cycle of the Church Year. As we now stand at the brink of a new year, with the start of the season of Advent, the coming of Jesus, next week, two images come to mind: today, that of the reigning Christ, the One who’s been given “dominion and glory and kingship”, the One “who is and who was and who is to come”; and beginning next Sunday, that of the infant Jesus about to be born. We celebrate Christ’s ongoing reign over the entire universe: “all peoples, nations, and languages”, and in our everyday lives in the world; and we anticipate Jesus’ being born in the flesh, an infant lying in a manger, to initiate that reign.  In either case, “the time has arrived; the reign of God is at hand.”

You and I can’t know the glorified Christ without also knowing the Jesus of Bethlehem.  It would, however, be a mistake to let oneself be seduced by a “sweet-Jesus-in-the manger” image.  The Carmelite St. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), martyred at Auschwitz in 1942, in her magnificent spiritual essay The Mystery of Christmas. which I’ve read annually for some 53 years, observes: “Darkness covered the earth, and He came as the Light that shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend Him...This is the bitterly serious truth which ought not to be obscured by the poetic charm of the Child in the manger. The mystery of the Incarnation is closely linked to the mystery of iniquity...The Child in the manger stretches out His small hands, and His smile seems to say even now the same as later the lips of the Man: ‘Come to me, all you that labour and are burdened’...These Child’s hands say ‘Follow me’ just as later the lips of the Man will say it...Ways part before the Child in the manger. He is the King of kings, the Lord of life and death. He speaks His ‘Follow me!’, and if [one] is not for Him, [one] is against Him. He speaks also to us, and asks us to choose between light and darkness...” ("The Mystery of Christmas", pp. 22-24, Writings of Edith Stein, Selected, translated and introduced by Hilda Graef, The Newman Press, 1956)

I once saw a cartoon depicting a little man with long hair and a  beard who’s carrying a placard with the words: “Repent: the end is near!” One passerby with a worried look on his face stops to inquire: “When?” The little man replies: “Oh, in a billion years or so!”  In today’s liturgy the Church is a little like the man with the placard, reminding us of the urgency to give serious thought to ultimate matters, even though we don’t know when “He is coming with the clouds...” Several Christian liturgies use the proclamation: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” (And, by the way, if I may interject a pet peeve, the emphasis in that last phrase is not on “will” ["Christ will come again"], as if we’re dictating what Christ should do, but on “again” ["Christ will come again"]!) It’s this reality that we’re bidden to contemplate today, even as we liturgically anticipate Christ’s coming in the Advent/Christmas mystery.

The whole question of “when” the Christ will finally appear has been the favorite focus of self-proclaimed prophets and doomsayers for centuries.  It happened as the year 1000 A.D. approached, throwing people into mass confusion and terror. People sold their possessions and fled to the hills to be safe. Our generation heard a little of that as the year 2000 approached, but, of course, the new year came and passed without incident. More recently the prophetic pundits are at it again. The 2012 prediction encompasses a range of beliefs about the end of the world, according to which cataclysmic or transformative events will occur next month, on December 21. Some regard this as the end-date of a 5125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. 

A New Age interpretation claims that this date marks the start of time in which earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, marking the beginning of a new era. Others, mostly fundamentalists, suggest that the date marks the end of the world, or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world include the arrival of the next solar maximum, an interaction between Earth and the black hole at the center of the galaxy, or Earth's collision with another planet.

Scholars from various disciplines have summarily dismissed the idea of such cataclysmic events. Professional Mayanist scholars tell us that predictions of impending doom aren’t, in fact, found in any existing classic Mayan accounts, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Mayan history and culture. Astronomers and other scientists have outright rejected the proposals as pseudoscience which conflict with simple astronomical observations and amount to "a distraction from more important scientific concerns, such as global warming and loss of biological diversity". Such predicting is little bit like the Charlie Brown-trying-to-kick-the-football syndrome, with Lucy inevitably pulling the football away at the last minute. Jesus’ simple message to you and me is that “The reign of God is within you”. The “when” of Christ’s coming isn’t the central focus. Faith bids us to be busy about the real work of loving God and one another.

The other temptation during these next four weeks as the holidays approach, of course, is to lose ourselves in getting and spending. The surrounding society is already playing upon our national addictions and our inability to delay gratification, bombarding us with the glitter and tinsel and talk of the “bottom line”. This year Wal-Mart and other purveyors of mostly non-essential “things” didn’t even wait for Thanksgiving to be over, but enticed folks away from the dinner table with the turkey and trimmings fairly unswallowed in their mouths, much less digested! Buying into all this senseless foolishness, is a colossal distraction and diversion from the urgent, pressing reality of the needs of real people all around us: Palestinian people in Gaza and Jews in Israel dodging live rockets and real people dying; the approximately 12 million people who are jobless; those who are routinely ignored and shuttled aside in the health care system; our LGBT sisters and brothers who continue to be victimized by proposed legislation, such as that in Uganda; those who in just two states, New Jersey and New York, have lost homes and possessions, and live not only without power or clothing or food, but many times are alone and in despair. We can also be sidetracked even, from our own inner needs for genuine renewal, spiritual balance, and God’s healing grace.

Today’s liturgy and those during Advent bid us to enter into a deeper, more serious reflection on what’s truly ultimate in our relationships and in our living, both with others and with God. ”I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven... To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.” “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come...who loves us and freed us by his blood.” “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

You and I are called to promote and participate actively in the reign of Christ, to enter into it intentionally, and from today through the Advent season ahead is as good a time as any to begin doing that. The reign of Christ bids you and me to live each day as if it were our last, to realize that there is only the “day of the Lord‘, and that that day is every day.

The late Fr. Karl Rahner, great Jesuit theologian, says this in his book The Eternal Year (Helicon Press, 1964, pp. 15-16): “...Christ is in a mysterious way already present in the believer as his future. This future has already come into the believer in a hidden way; he is already, in a hidden way, what he will be when all that is now hidden is unveiled. What will one day be our complete perfection has already begun. And this reality begins precisely because we believe. It is by faith that we are the people of God and children of eternal life, in whom the strength of eternity has already become an operative reality. This one event that is ‘now‘ taking place in the world began with the incarnation of God’s Son...This event will be completed with Christ’s ‘Second Coming,‘ which is not so much a second arrival as a bringing to perfect completion God’s own life already established in the world by the Christ event [emphasis mine]. This event permeates the believer to the extent that he believes and loves. The believer already possesses his future because his future is Christ...”