December 15, 2013

Gospel Commentary from the Irish Dominicans

John the Baptist is almost a New Testament figure; he is a kind of honorary member of the new community. The Church does not refer to Isaiah or Jeremiah or any of the great prophets as ‘Saint’, but we call John ‘Saint John the Baptist’. Yet, as Jesus said to the crowd, “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

Do you feel greater than John the Baptist? Few in history could equal him for fire and passion. Jesus said of him, equivalently, that he was the greatest man who ever lived. But membership of the new community does not depend, it seems, on the qualities that John had to such an exceptional degree. What does it depend on, then?

John's ‘persona’ was 100 percent adult male; he was the original Iron John, hard and demanding. He lived on the edge of society, unintegrated with it and perhaps unintegrated in himself. There are many like him, there always have been. It is a straightforward, two-dimensional image, lacking in depth and humour. The essential missing ingredient is paradox. There are Christian preachers (especially on TV) whose persona is exactly John’s.

Kierkegaard (1813-1855) identified three stages in the spiritual development of a human being: the aesthetic, the moral, and the spiritual. The first (the stage of beautiful thoughts and feelings) runs aground after a time, and you grow (probably through crisis) into the second, the stage of responsibility and moral awareness. But after struggling here a long time you come to know your own weakness and the ambiguity of your motives; you learn that it is impossible to be a moral person if you are attempting only to be a moral person. You realise that your religion has become self-righteous, judgmental, resentful, even hypocritical. This crisis opens you to deeper spiritual reality. When you can no longer disguise your failure, you learn the wisdom of failure; you learn the meaning of the Cross of Christ. God has to come to you from beyond all your efforts.

Jesus, like John, came from the desert and appeared at the edge of society. But unlike John, he came in and sat down with sinners and outcasts. He created a new kind of society in which the values of the old were inverted: success/failure, first/last, even death/life. If John had lived he would surely have embraced the new society and its paradoxes; he would not have run from Calvary as the others did; it was never in his nature to be a reed shaken by the wind. His raging fire would long since have been transformed into intense love, his judgments into compassion.

-- Today’s Good News, the website of the Dominicans of Ireland

There comes a ship a-sailing

With angels flying fast;

She bears a splendid cargo

And has a mighty mast.

This ship is fully laden

Right to her highest board

She bears the Son from heaven

God’s high eternal word.

And that ship’s name is Mary

Of flowers the rose is she

And brings to us her baby

From sin to set us free.

- Medieval Carol

Good news, but if you ask me what it is, I know not.

It is a track of feet in the snow;

It is a lantern showing a path;

It is a door set open.

- G.K. Chesterton

The Third Sunday of Advent: Gaudete Sunday

Each Mass has its own “Entrance antiphon.” This is a sentence or two, most often from the scriptures. We can sing it as the beginning of Mass (although, in our country, we usually begin mass by singing a hymn instead of the antiphon). Years ago, people gave a title to each Sunday’s Mass. The title came from the first Latin words of the day’s antiphon. The entrance antiphon for the Third Sunday of Advent begins, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” These words are from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. In Latin, “rejoice” is gaudete (gow-DAY-tay). The antiphon tells us why: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, rejoice! The Lord is near.”. – Mary Ellen Hynes, Companion to the Calendar

ADVENT PRAYER

Lord Jesus, master of both the light and the darkness,

send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas.

We who have so much to do seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day.

We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us.

We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom.

We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence.

We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light.

To you we say, "Come Lord Jesus!" Amen.

-- Henri Nouwen

Veniet Dominus et non tardabit,

Ut illuminet abscondita tenebrarum.

The Lord will come soon, will not delay.

The Lord will make the darkest places bright.

-- Monastic liturgy

Reflection for December 15, 2013: Gaudete Sunday

“Rejoice in the Lord, always!” St. Paul says in the Letter to the Philippians that supplies the antiphon for today’s Mass, and therefore its Latin name: “Gaudete Sunday.” “Rejoice!” Paul tells us, ringing the word like a great holy bell. And this scruffy old tentmaker, so often caricatured as a grim and misanthropic killjoy more prone to lecturing sinners than to giving good cheer, goes out of his way to tell us again, emphasizing the repetition himself: Rejoice! he exclaims. I shall say it again: Rejoice! … The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

But that’s not always easy to do, in this difficult world we live in. We have so much to fret about, so many griefs and woes, so many fidgety anxieties nibbling away like mice at the cheese of our souls. It’s been a long time since I heard anyone over the age of, oh, 20 or so, say with complete sincerity on December 1: Hurray! Hurray! Christmas is coming! Most of us experience at least an occasional desire to duck our heads and dive for shelter, dodging the incoming carols as if they’re heat-seeking missiles pointed at us. And yet I think that even the most cynical-sounding of us, deep in our very most hidden hearts, still love and yearn for Christmas with a wistful, aching feeling that somehow never quite manages to die, no matter how often it’s threatened.

Still, sometimes it seems as if the season’s very brightness only exaggerates the troubles of our own lives – as if its very light brings out the shadows that we cast. None of us will ever quite live up to the jolly perfect healthy happy Norman Rockwell-type families we see on TV, smiling and singing in Christmas specials and glowing with an almost radioactive cheer on cards and ads and commercials. We know this, of course, and we love our families anyway – we love them for the people they are, not just as the “perfect” beings we sometimes wish they could be – but there’s no doubt about it: Real life is a whole lot messier and noisier and it takes up a lot more space and time than the prettified pictures of our daydreams. Real life gets cranky when it stays up too late and eats too many sweets. Real life has to work too hard (and can’t find work at all) and it never gets enough sleep. Real life is once again going to be late sending out Christmas cards (if it even gets around to doing so), and it hasn’t a clue how it’s going to pay all the bills. Real life looks at the calendar and occasionally feels a lot like screaming. Real life has arthritis and insomnia and a kitchen overflowing with dirty dishes. But Real life always, always ends too soon, and very often when we least expect it. I’ve been wrestling with this particular reality all year, and I’m far from the only one. This Saturday is the anniversary of the terrible massacre at Newtown, and there was another school shooting in Denver just yesterday. Not to mention all the wars and acts of violence, the hurricanes and earthquakes and other disasters, the cancers and heart attacks and accidents and dementia and infinitely tragic ills that flesh is heir too. When your own heart has been broken into pieces, or even just slightly battered by worry and woe, it’s hard to hear people shrilling at you with manic glee from the loudspeakers everywhere: “Have a holly jolly Christmas!” and not at times be tempted to burst into tears, perhaps followed by hysterical laughter and a wild assault on the nearest Christmas display. Not that I would ever do such a thing, of course. But I’m warning you here and now, Frosty the Snowman: Keep your distance, dude, and tone it down. I really mean it this year.

We don’t help the situation by the way we, as a culture, have exploited and transmogrified Christmas. We have come to a point where it is considered our patriotic duty to go as deeply into debt as we possibly can. We’re urged to wallow in food like pigs, and yet be thin and gorgeous at Christmas parties. Our culture works itself into an absolute frenzy this time of year, and then collapses, exhausted, in a stupor, well before noon on Christmas Day. We tend to be burned out and ready for Christmas to be over, long before the day even arrives. Any attempt to turn down the volume a bit is seen by some folks as a kind of attack on Jesus.

But the fact is that it isn’t Christmas yet. It’s still Advent – and Advent is a season that is, in many ways, the opposite of Christmas. Advent is the quiet time before the party starts. It’s the darkness in the early morning, before the sun comes up. If we could learn to celebrate Advent as we ought to, perhaps we’d be able to celebrate Christmas as it should be celebrated. That’s hard, of course, when we all have so much stuff to do. But it’s worth trying.

Everybody has so much extra stuff to do this time of year that it seems pretty darn obnoxious to suggest still more – and yet taking the time to come to church – to pray and give thanks and be quiet – is the very best way to survive this season. If we live Advent properly and prayerfully, we will find that Christmas loses its neurotic terror and becomes the day of joyfulness it should be. Advent is the season when we are called to make straight the path of the Lord! And where can we better prepare for the Lord than to clean out our muddy and trampled-down, cobwebby hearts? We all hold candles in our innermost souls, candles lit by God at our births, and that light is always still burning inside us, no matter how dark the times may be. At Christmas time we bring our candles together, and gently blow them brighter. And music is the finest way to bring that fire to life.

I’m having a hard time rejoicing this year; I’m finding out that I make a really lousy orphan (Shirley Temple was just so much cuter, you know) and some days I have trouble visualizing what Isaiah says, when he talks about how “the lame will leap like a stag,” given that this particular piece of lameness has a tough time staggering around with two crutches to help. Yes, I know: I’m just feeling sorry for myself, plain and simple, and thereby making things worse for everybody around me, including myself. But it’s not just me: I’m feeling even sorrier for other people. I can’t seem to read the paper these days without feeling like crying, which is pretty pathetic, especially if it’s the crossword puzzle or comics I’m looking at. Then I open up today’s scriptures and Isaiah tells me: Strengthen the hands that are feeble, make firm the knees that are weak, say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Well, Isaiah, you are welcome to start with me. I could use some strengthening. Talk about feeble hands and a frightened heart! I embarrass myself sometimes.

And yet, here it is: Gaudete Sunday. Rejoice Sunday! And through the creaky clamor of my own crankyness I can hear the unusually tender voice of Paul, who knew even more than most folks about worry and woe and trouble and grief. This guy had one horrendous thing after another happen to him and those he loved, and yet still he can say: Rejoice! Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: Rejoice!Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

That peace that surpasses all understanding is God’s Christmas gift to us – and we don’t have to wait until Christmas to open it. It is always waiting here for us, under the evergreen tree of our souls – wrapped in love and mercy by the God who made us. And even the feeblest hands and the most frightened heart can open that gift with the help of grace. Which is exactly what I plan to do, right now. Here in the church, in prayer before the altar, in the light of the candles and the peace and love of our Savior. Rejoice in the Lord. Yes, Paul, that sounds like a great idea. I think I’ll try to follow your advice. In Jesus’ name. ----- Diane Sylvain