The Solemnity of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ

The church tries to present the mysteries of faith as concretely as possible, because we find the mysteries of God hard to understand and need all the help we can get. So,  the church celebrates the mysteries of Jesus throughout the year at times that may help us understand them.

Today is the Solemnity of the Incarnation of the Lord, when we celebrate the beginning of Jesus’ life in the womb of Mary. The Angel Gabriel came to Nazareth and invited Mary to become the mother of Jesus, who would “save his people from their sins.”

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word,” Mary answered.

Usually it’s celebrated on March 25th,  9 months from Christmas, December 25th, the traditional date of Jesus’ birth. Some old church calendars saw this day also as the day on which Jesus was crucified. Because it fell in Easter week, we postpone the celebration to this week.

On this side of the world it’s spring and the natural world is coming to life. Its deepest life comes about through the presence, the birth, the life of Jesus Christ.  Hidden in the womb or dying on the cross, Jesus brings life and spring is earth’s reminder of new life in God.

“May we become more like Jesus Christ, whom we acknowledge as our redeemer,” we say in our prayer for this feast. He is hidden in us as he was in Mary; he grows and matures in us, as he did in her.

We can’t celebrate this feast without thinking of that great woman of faith who believed in the angel’s message. “And the angel left her,” the story of the Annunciation concludes. The angel spoke, then was gone. Even when there was no angel to speak to and few further signs, Mary continued to believe.

Her faith was great;  like her we keep in mind the angel’s words as if spoken to us:

Hail Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with you.

The Holy Family

Luke 2,41-52

For most people, Christmas is over– the music  has stopped; Santa Claus is gone from the malls. The decorations are down and put away. It’s over.

But in church Christmas isn’t over. We’re still singing  carols and continue to celebrate, and with the celebrations we continue to think  about what it means when we say “our God was made visible.”

Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family. The Word was made flesh; Jesus was born; he became the child of Mary and Joseph in the small town of Nazareth in  the hills of  Galilee. He was part of a family.

Let’s  think about this part of the life of Jesus. First, remember something about family life at the time of Jesus. Families of his day were extended families or clans, that lived close together and worked side by side,  as  archeological excavations in Nazareth and Capernaum make clear. They worked  in the fields or in  business,  ate together and moved together, as they still do in parts of the Middle East and elsewhere today.

It’s safe to say that in Jesus’ day nuclear families did not exist. A nuclear family– mother, father and children– is a modern form of family life. For this reason, the picture we sometimes have of the Holy Family– Mary, Joseph and the Child Jesus all by themselves in a small house in Nazareth– is not a realistic picture. Jesus was raised in an extended family where  grandfathers and grandmothers, uncles, aunts and cousins were involved in bringing him up.

That doesn’t  take away the part Mary and Joseph played in his upbringing, of course. They weren’t props, standing at a distance while angels brought him up.

Some of the apocryphal gospels – early stories about Jesus which the church rejected  – picture Jesus’ childhood in almost angelic terms. One  story describes him forming  the figure of a bird from clay, then breathing on it, and instantly it becomes a living bird and flies away. Stories like that presented him as a child exercising  miraculous powers.

The church rejected the apocryphal gospels and stories like that because they gave a  false picture of how Jesus grew up. He “was subject” to Mary and Joseph, the gospel of Luke says. He grew up in their care as an ordinary child would.

Like mothers and fathers everywhere, they saw to his needs, they held him in their arms,  fed him, clothed him,  stayed up at night when he was sick. They taught him his first words,  guided his first steps,  nudged him along this way and that.

They  brought him to church–the synagogue, the temple–as we see in today’s gospel from Luke. They instructed him in his tradition. They taught him to pray,  interpreted events for him,  listened to his questions,  encouraged him over and over. They had their misunderstandings, as today’s gospel  indicates. In fact, they  influenced his life. Yes, angels were there, but at a distance.  Mary and Joseph and that larger family and village around him brought up the Child.

Today’s  feast of the Holy Family takes in the years of Jesus’ childhood and early adult life sometimes called his Hidden Life. His  years in that nondescript town among those ordinary people were truly hidden, yet were they less important  than his Public Life, the few years he taught and did great miracles,  suffered and died and rose from the dead? In those hidden years “he humbled himself.”  A hidden life is important, and a hidden life is what mostly characterizes life in a family.

We need to think about family life today.  It’s in trouble.  For one thing, the nuclear family– father, mother, children– is  in trouble. I read some disturbing statistics recently. In every state in our country, families where children have two parents have declined significantly in the last 10 years. One of three children live in a home without a father. Almost 5 million children live in a home without a mother. A single mother may have an income of $24,000. Two parents are likely to have an income significantly greater.

What can we do? How can we help? Feasts  like the Holy Family focus our attention on important things.  They remind us what’s important in God’s eyes. The feast of the Holy Family focuses on the family. It’s important, it says.  At the same time, it tells us God’s grace will be ours when we work to make families go and when we support them all we can.  God points to family life today. It’s vitally important in our world.

Still Wondering

We don’t stop wondering at the Christmas crib. The next few days the church wonders at other things that are part of this mystery. Today we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen, one of the first disciples of Jesus to die giving witness to him. (Acts 6,8 ff)

In the death of St. Stephen we remember that we too “are born for to die.” Shall we not die like him? Perhaps not in the same way, or in the way some of his disciples like Stephen did, but we are called to live like him and follow him into the mystery of his death and resurrection.

Tomorrow we celebrate the feast of St. John, the apostle, who stood by the cross when Jesus died and then came to the tomb and found it empty. Later, expanding our wonder he would write:

“What was from the beginning,

what we have heard,

what we have seen with our eyes,

what we looked upon

and touched with our hands

concerns the Word of life –

for the life was made visible;

we have seen it and testify to it

and proclaim to you the eternal life

that was with the Father and was made visible to us?

what we have seen and heard

we proclaim now to you…” 1 John, 1-4

On Friday we celebrate the feast of the Holy Innocents, those little children killed by Herod the Great in Bethlehem in his evil hope that no rivals would challenge his power and throne. (Matthew 2, 13-18)

The mystery we wonder about is also a mystery of evil. How powerful and lasting it seems to be, a darkness still challenging the Light that comes into the world. This Christmas the question of evil still causes us to wonder.

I Wonder As I Wander

 ”I Wonder As I Wander.” The American folklorist John Jacob Niles wrote that haunting Christmas carol. You may remember the words:

 

I wonder as I wander out under the sky

How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die

For poor on’ry people like you and like I;

I wonder as I wander out under the sky

When Mary birthed Jesus ’twas in a cow’s stall

With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all

But high from God’s heaven, a star’s light did fall

And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing

A star in the sky or a bird on the wing

Or all of God’s Angels in heaven to sing

He surely could have it, ’cause he was the King

I wonder as I wander out under the sky

How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die

For poor on’ry people like you and like I;

                                                                                                                     I wonder as I wander out under the sky

 

Niles heard a young girl sing a fragment of that song in a little town in North Carolina in 1933. “Her clothes were unbelievably dirty and ragged, and she too, was unwashed,” he wrote in his autobiography, “but she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of the song.”

I wonder. Like so many great Christmas carols this song calls us to reflection, to wonder about the deepest questions of life, questions you only think about as you wander out under the sky. Big questions.

So where do we come from? And where are we going? And what does it all mean? Does God who is beyond our sight, see us? Is Jesus our Savior God’s Son?  Has he really come among us?

I wonder how he came. He could have had anything, our song says, “a star in the sky, or a bird on the wing”…he could have had anything, “cause he was a King.” But he came “for to die.”

I wonder about this fallen world of ours. Why does death still seem so strong?  Why were those innocent children slaughtered by Herod at his birth? And why do innocent children still die, I wonder today? And why in the end did he die such a death?

“When Mary birthed Jesus, twas in a cow stall.” Wise men and ordinary people came to a manger, his first throne on earth. I wonder how God should dwell in so simple a place, where animals were fed. Is it in  simple places like this, in bread and wine, in the simple ways we love each other, that God still feeds us, who wander out under the sky, “poor on’ry people like you and like I?”

Hanukkah and Christmas

Hanukkah, an eight day Jewish celebration, which can occur in late November to late December, and Christmas, the Christian celebration on December 25^th, are celebrated close together in time, but are they connected beyond that?

The quick answer usually given is no, but think about it a little. Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes IV in 167 BC.

After conquering Judea, the Syrian leader plundered the temple, ended Jewish services and erected an altar to Zeus in it. Leading a Jewish revolt, Judas Maccabeus reconquered the city, cleansed the temple and initiated an eight day celebration in memory of the event. Eight lights lit successively call people to God’s holy place.

Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ approximately 167 years later.

Both of these feasts are about the Presence of God. For the Jews God was in the temple as Creator and their Savior through time. For Christians God reveals his presence in Jesus Christ, who proclaimed himself God’s Son, “the light of the world” as he celebrated the Jewish feasts in the temple. (John 7-10)

All the gospels report that Jesus cleansed the temple  and spoke of himself replacing it. Luke’s gospel  begins in the temple with the promise to Zechariah of the birth of John the Baptist and ends as the Child Jesus enters his “Father’s house.” (Luke 1-2)

Far from being separate, Hanukkah and Christmas are connected in their celebration of God’s presence. Hanukkah reminds us of the temple, the place of God’s provisional presence. The Christmas mystery reminds us of the abiding presence of God with us in Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, the Light that never fails, who gives life to all nations.

Saving Santa Claus

Macy’s had their annual Thanksgiving Parade last Thursday and the key figure, of course, was Santa Claus. He promptly went from the parade into Macy’s to become a salesman and take orders from little kids.

But he’s more than that, isn’t he?

My good friend, Mauro DeTrizio, whose family comes from Bari, Italy, has had a lifelong devotion to St. Nicholas. He’s also a good videographer and his dream has been to produce a video on St. Nicholas, our Santa Claus.

So we teamed up to produce a couple of them as part of our campaign for saving Santa Claus. He’s more than a salesman; he’s a saint, and his gift for quiet giving is part of our seasons of Advent and Christmas. He mirrors God’s love shown in Jesus Christ.

Telling his story is one of the ways to save him from being captured by Macys and Walmart. First, take  a look at our version for little children. Then, you might want to go on to our  modest contribution for bigger children– like us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADevygB9jNs

Jesus of Nazareth, The Infancy Narratives

You wish they would read it instead of looking for a headline. I mean the pope’s new book “Jesus of Nazareth, the Infancy Narratives”  Image Books, 2012. From the headlines the last few days you would think all the pope said was that the ox and the donkey weren’t around the manger at Christ’s birth, and he’s joining others who question the historical reliability of this event.

The contrary is true. As in his previous books on Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict engages what modern scriptural scholarship says about this section of the gospels. (True, he depends on German and French scholarship for the most part) But if anything, the pope sees a swing from not accepting a history behind the infancy narratives to a recognition of historical facts.

But he does more than affirm history. He sees meaning behind the facts. So the manger of Jesus to him is the Lord’s first throne, the humble temple where he comes to feed the poorest of the world.

“So the manger has in some sense become the Ark of the Covenant, in which God is mysteriously hidden among men, and before which the time has come for ‘ox and ass’–humanity made up of Jews and Gentiles–to acknowledge God.”

I downloaded the book yesterday. A good book to read in Advent. Here’s a theologian and mystic at work. I think his three volumes on Jesus of Nazareth will stand as his lasting contribution to the church.

Becoming a Child

The mystery of Christmas is a call for all of us to become like the little Child. Is that what it means to be born again? St. Leo tells us in today’s reading it was the first act of humility that God’s Son made as he came among us and we need to renew this mystery in ourselves as we celebrate his birth.

“ God’s Son did not disdain to become a baby. Although with the passing of the years he moved from infancy to maturity, and although with the triumph of his passion and resurrection all the actions of humility which he undertook for us were finished, still today’s festival renews for us the holy childhood of Jesus born of the Virgin Mary.

“In adoring the birth of our Saviour, we find we are celebrating the commencement of our own life, for the birth of Christ is the source of life for Christian folk, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday of the body.

“Every individual that is called has his own place, and all the children of the Church are separated from one another by intervals of time. Nevertheless, just as the entire body of the faithful is born in the font of baptism, crucified with Christ in his passion, raised again in his resurrection, and placed at the Father’s right hand in his ascension, so with him are they born in this nativity.”

Age, race, sex, social status, temperament, individual gifts separate us, but “the entire body of the faithful” come during this holy season to be born with him in his nativity.

I Love Christmas

I Love Christmas

 

I love Christmas – all about Christmas -

‘Tis the season to be jolly, and happy,

and light-hearted…

Oh, go away Spirit of Christmas Past,

You fill my eyes with tears,

You make my heart cry,

With a longing for loved ones.

And places and events which are no more.

But I do love Christmas – all about Christmas -

The gift wrapping, the “secrets,”

The beautifully decorated stores,

The choosing of the tree,

 Bringing out the “Christmas box,”

The carols, the parties and get-togethers…

Oh, Spirit of Christmas Present,

Why must you show me visions of starving children,

Of the homeless,

Of old people alone and lonely,

Of all those who have lost hope?

But I do love Christmas – all about Christmas -

The visit to Santa Claus,

The excitement as the day approaches,

The cookie baking,

The magic reflected in the children’s faces,

The joy and warmth of family and friends…

Oh, Spirit of Christmas Present,

You persist in showing me visions of those children

Who have never felt that warmth,

Whose eyes will never reflect that magic,

Who are already old and wise

In the harsh, unloving ways of our world.

But, I do love Christmas – all about Christmas -

For the treasures you have given us,

Oh, God, we thank you.

And we ask that you guide us

And teach us how to share them.

I love Christmas

Because through the tears and the glitter,

Shines the LIGHT!

 

Teresita J. Blake

I Wonder as I Wander Out Under the Sky

Of all the gospels, St. Luke’s gospel gives the most complete account of the birth of Jesus and events leading up to it.  Luke also points out the historical importance of his birth, not only for the Jews but for the world itself. He does it by noting at the beginning of his gospel that it was in the days when Caesar Augustus ruled in Rome. Previously, he noted that King Herod the Great ruled in Judea in those days.

Those men were well known to Luke’s first readers. Caesar Augustus brought about an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity in the Roman empire. He was considered godlike. Herod the Great ruled with an iron fist in Judea; there were fearful signs of his presence everywhere.  People kept out of his way.

The child born in a stable in Bethlehem was more important than them and the great ones who followed them. He brought greater peace than any emperor could bring. He was more powerful and more present than Herod or anyone like him could possibly be.

Luke in his gospel gives an orderly account of Jesus, from his birth to his resurrection, and he also wrote a further account–the Acts of the Apostles– about  how his message was spread by his followers from Jerusalem to the great cities of the Roman empire, and finally to Rome itself. His message went out to all the world.

I was thinking of the spread of the gospel as I read the report issued a few days ago from the Pew Research Center about religion throughout the world. There are approximately 6.9 billion people in the world in 2010. There are 2.18 Christians in the world, about a third of the world’s population.

The report notes that since 1910 a great shift has taken place among the religions of the world. Instead of being concentrated in Europe, Christianity has grown enormously in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, where there were relatively few Christians at the beginning of the 20th century.  “Christianity has become a global religion. Christians are also geographically widespread – so far-flung, in fact, that no single continent or region can indisputably claim to be the center of global Christianity.”

A third of the world’s population call themselves Christian. Half of them are Roman Catholic.

Over two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, of poor unknown parents. He grew up unrecognized in a small discounted Galilean town called Nazareth. For a few years he taught, he healed people of illnesses, he raised the dead to life, he gathered disciples who followed him. They abandoned him when he was put to death on a cross. Then he rose from the dead.

He shot across the sky of time like a meteor. However, you would might expect that history would forget him as it does so many others. But Jesus Christ hasn’t been forgotten.   Over two billion people in our world today remember him and follow him.

We believe he’s still present and his promise of peace is still waiting to be fulfilled.

This causes me  to wonder at the mystery we celebrate at Christmas when we come to the stable and see the tiny Child.