The Quiet Corner,

a weekly meditation on the Sunday Gospel,

by the Reverend John A. Kiley,

as published in The Providence Visitor

since 1974.

The Quiet Corner                             By Father John A. Kiley                         28 July 2005

       The marvelous multiplication of the loaves and fishes by which Jesus fed more than five thousand  followers focuses the believer’s attention on Christ’s “taking, blessing, breaking, and giving,” a solemn, four-fold action which is recalled not only here in the miraculous meadow but also in all the narratives of the Last Supper.  Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson, while a chaplain at Cambridge, reviewed these four memorable steps which, to this day, still form the core of the Eucharistic celebration, the Mass.

       Unlike Jesus’ other miracles in which his words and gestures are his only resource, Christ this time asks for a contribution from his beneficiaries.  It is the crowds, in the person of the young boy, who offer Jesus the material that he is going to multiply and transform.  As Jesus takes the loaves and fish from the lad, and as he holds the bread secured by his disciples at the Paschal meal, he is anticipating the presentation of the gifts at every Mass.  The bread and wine at Mass do not (or should not) originate from the sanctuary.   They are placed in the midst of the congregation, brought to the altar by members of the community, then received by the priest as a presentation from the people of God.  These gifts represent the people.  They represent their daily lives.  They represent the farmers and vintners and bakers and truckers and salespersons without whom the elements of bread and wine would never make it to the parish church.  Such manmade gifts are the secular intruding into the sacred.  Thus all of life, not only prayers and pieties, are presented to God each week at Mass. 

       Once Christ took the loaves and fishes from the young man, he blessed them; he changed them; he transformed them.   Food for a handful became food for the hoard of men and women sitting there before Christ.  At Mass, the worldly elements of bread and wine are similarly blessed, changed, and transformed into the sacred elements of Christ’s Body and Blood.  Food for the body becomes food for the soul.  Now, as then, Christ himself is the miracle worker, the catalyst, the change agent in the person of the priest.  The people present their gifts (bread and wine) to Christ and Christ will present his gifts (Body and Blood) to the people.  At Mass as in the meadow, the blessing, the transformation, the consecration is entirely the generous action of Christ.

       The breaking of the bread is not merely a practical gesture to insure that everybody participates in a large, communal meal.  The bread broken draws the worshipper’s attention to the belief that the Mass is truly the re-presentation of Calvary.  It is the broken, bruised and beaten Christ who is sacramentally present on Catholic altars every time Mass is celebrated. “This is my Body which is given for you…This is the cup of my Blood which is shed for you…”  The Mass makes present again that moment of self-giving when Jesus handed over his body and poured out his blood for the salvation of mankind.  It is certainly true that Christ is risen and dies no more and that it is the Risen Christ whom believers receive in Holy Communion.  But they receive the risen Christ enshrined as at the moment of his death: the body broken, the blood poured out, the sacred elements separated as in death on Golgotha.

       The loaves were taken, blessed, broken and finally given, that is, shared among the people for their sustenance and refreshment.  The giving, or the sharing, occurs on two levels:  Christ shares the bread with his followers, symbolized by the disciples, and then the followers, through the ministry of the disciples, share this bread with one another.  It is not too difficult to see the role of the enduring Church in this scenario.  At the grasslands, Jesus entrusts the blessed bread to his closest friends.  They in turn do the work of Christ distributing that bread to the vast crowd before them.  The disciples were the agents of Christ’s concern.  Today the Church is Christ’s instrument of salvation among the masses of mankind.  It is through the Church that the Bread of Life and the words of Revelation are brought to the nations of the world.

       Taking, blessing, breaking and giving:  the kindly actions of Christ on the grasslands of Galilee are recalled daily in the kindest of all his actions, the Catholic Mass.                                           COMPLETE

       When the Roman Catholic religious history of the Twentieth Century is written, there will be no shortage of incidents competing for the honor of most significant religious event of the last 100 years.  Certainly, the impact of the Second Vatican Council cannot be underestimated.  Nor for that matter can the tragic influence of the spurious “spirit of Vatican II” be discounted.  The several Popes of the last century, from Pius X through John Paul II, were all major figures in both world and church affairs.  The often forgotten number of Catholics dying in the Nazi Holocaust, the secularization of Western civilization, and the dramatic drop in First World vocations were calamities somewhat countered by the expansion of the Church in missionary countries and the new-found camaraderie between Roman Catholics and Evangelicals.  The list of suggestions is endless.  But some have suggested that the most profoundly Catholic event of the Twentieth Century might just be the declaration of the dogma of the Assumption by Pope Pius XII in 1950.  Munificentissimus Deus is clearly the apex of Roman Catholic self-identification, an event that exposed the Church as the ultimate guardian of Revelation, the supreme custodian of Scripture and Tradition.

       Some important Church teachings are obviously rooted in the Natural Law, otherwise known as common sense.  One does not have to be a Catholic, let alone a pope or a bishop, to discern that killing and adultery and stealing and slander are wrong.  This is the common heritage of human nature, observed by most societies.  Nor does one have to be a Catholic to detect the existence of God and the supernatural.  Thoughtful persons of every generation have raised their minds and hearts to a Supreme Being.  Clearly God speaks through the natural world and the Church dutifully interprets this Natural Law for her constituents.  Believers also acknowledge that God speaks in a more focused manner through the Scriptures, the Holy Bible.  The Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the foundation and nature of the Church, the sacraments, prayer, sin, redemption, resurrection, eternal life and a host of other Catholic beliefs are found with fair clarity in the writings of the prophets and evangelists.  The Church has wisely refined these truths down through the ages to make their significance clearer for the average Catholic, but they are all still there in biblical black and white for the individual believer to contemplate and digest at prayer or at study.  Thus significant truths that cannot be readily gleaned from nature can be happily discerned in Scripture. 

       However, the dogma of the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven takes the believer well beyond the Natural Law and frankly even beyond the Scriptures.  Mary’s other great privileges all have some Biblical citations, however tenuous.  Her Immaculate Conception in the womb of her mother St. Ann can cite the Scriptural words of the angel Gabriel “Hail, full of grace…” as a written confirmation for believing that Mary never experienced sin.  References to the “virgin” conceiving and to Mary’s not knowing man give credence to the Virgin Birth.  And certainly the New Testament abounds with allusions to the Divine Maternity: Mary was genuinely the Mother of God.  Yet nowhere in the Scriptures is there any mention of the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven.  The death is Mary is not recorded, nor is there any explanation at all about how she completed her earthly journey.  Mary’s final disposition – from an earthly perspective or from a heavenly prospect – is simply not part of the written word of God.  One might conclude from Scripture that because Mary was without sin she was therefore exempt from decay.  And one can certainly deduce that like the rest of us Mary would eventually enjoy bodily glory in heaven.  But these are implications not revelations.  Accordingly, the doctrine of the Assumption as taught within the Christian community uniquely reflects Apostolic Tradition, the unwritten Word of God entrusted to the Church for the instruction and inspiration of the faithful.  The Church that taught the Good News of Salvation for a generation before a Scriptural pen was put to paper reasserts its Divinely endowed and distinctive teaching authority in the proclamation of the Assumption.  Thanks to the courage and insight of Pope Pius XXI, the Church as trustworthy mother and authoritative teacher was viewed as alive and well, even after 2000 years.                                                          COMPLETE

       The prominence of St. Peter in the Gospel accounts, in the Acts of Apostles, and in the letters of St. Paul is obvious to the impartial reader of the Scriptures.  Still some deny and others ignore the unique role of St. Peter in the inspired Word of God and within the early Christian community.  Yet the evidence of St. Peter’s special role in the plan of God and in the mind of Christ is there is abundance. 

       St. Peter, along with Ss. Andrew, James and John, was among Jesus’ very first followers.  St. Peter, along with Ss. James and John, enjoyed privileges that the other nine Apostles were denied.  They uniquely witnessed the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the agony in the garden.  St. Peter alone had his name changed from Simon to Peter, reminiscent of the great figures of the Old Testament who were destined by God for great things: Abram renamed Abraham and Jacob becoming Israel.  Almost invariably when a response is expected by Christ from the Twelve Apostles, it is St. Peter who takes the initiative.  It is St. Peter who volunteers to walk to Christ across the waters.  It is St. Peter who discovers the temple tax in the mouth of the fish.  It is St. Peter who draws his sword in defense of Christ at Gethsemane.  It is St. Peter to whom Mary Magdalene brings the news of the resurrection and St. Peter who first enters the empty tomb.  It is St. Peter who preaches Christianity’s first sermon to the Jerusalem crowds gathered for Pentecost.  And it is St. Peter to whom St. Paul reports after his conversion and whom St. Paul reminds of his premier duty to give good example. It is St. Peter’s dealing with the Gentile world through the convert Cornelius that St. Luke employs to justify the ministry of St. Paul to the non-Jewish world.  The pre-eminence of St. Peter is palpable in the Scriptures.

       The celebrated confession of St. Peter in Christ as Messiah at Caesarea Philippi, most famously reported in St. Matthew’s Gospel, is nonetheless found in all four Gospels.  St. Mark places this confession of St. Peter in the dead center of his Gospel, a technique that allows him to concentrate on Jesus Christ the miracle worker in his first eight chapters and then, more significantly, Jesus Christ the Suffering Servant in his final eight chapters.   St. Luke acknowledges St. Peter’s confession of Jesus just before he introduces Christ’s triple prediction of the Passion.  Again, as in St. Mark’s account, the confession of St. Peter introduces a deeper appreciation of Christ by the Twelve.  St. John places the confession on the lips of St. Peter at the end of his celebrated chapter six in which he presents his sublime Eucharistic theology.  “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You alone have the words of eternal life.”  St. Peter’s acceptance of the controversial teaching on the Bread of Life signals the acceptance of this teaching by all faithful followers to come.  Recall also that it was in St. John’s Gospel that St. Peter is singled out as the Church’s primary shepherd:  “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep,” is a commission placed only on the shoulders of St. Peter.  In all four Gospels, the role of St. Peter as well as the confession of St. Peter is critically placed. 

       The four evangelists clearly understood that St. Peter as a man of faith, indeed, the foremost man of faith, was being selected by Jesus and by the heavenly Father as well as the firm foundation upon which the faith of subsequent generations of believers would rest and by which the faith of subsequent generations would be measured.  St. Peter was being formed by Christ into the rock that would tenderly shelter responsible doctrine and relentlessly smash reckless dissent. 

       The declaration by St. Peter that Christ was the Messiah signaled not only a professional link but also a personal bond between this Apostle and Christ.  The celebrated nomination of St. Peter as head of the Church by Christ underlines the mounting trust and budding confidence emerging between Christ and the fisherman from Galilee.  At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus discovered an ally and St. Peter discovered his mission.

       The funeral of Pope John Paul II and the installation of Pope Benedict XVI gave the Catholic world and as the secular world plenty of time to reflect on the glory of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Much of the ceremony was celebrated in the grandeur of the public square outlined by the symmetry of the colonnades and the majestic stature of the church itself. Certainly the exterior splendor is matched by the artistry within the Baroque building itself.  The famous Holy Spirit sunburst, the striking columns of the baldachin, the very breadth of the edifice all bespeak the same dignity seen outside the doors.  The architects of this Renaissance marvel have happily scrolled in Latin in the frieze above the sanctuary and nave the reason for all this magnificence and splendor.  “Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram…”  “Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  The enduring faith of St. Peter, the solid foundation in which the centuries-old teachings of the Church flourish, the secure anchor protecting the Christian community from ship-wreck, is appropriately and graphically celebrated by this stately Church building and its adornment.  The role of St. Peter in salvation history is rightly emphasized by this splendid bit of real estate.

       Amid this fitting tribute to St. Peter and the Petrine office – a tribute that dates back to the Scriptures themselves – one should respectfully recall that there was another view of St. Peter given by those very same Scriptures.  While Simon Peter the saint deserves the believer’s respect and homage, Simon Peter the devilish oaf should not be overlooked. 

       The Scriptures reveal a St. Peter who was not only hardworking and dedicated but also a St. Peter who was impetuous to the point of thoughtlessness.  It was St. Peter who was quick to hop out of the boat to meet Christ in the middle of Sea of Galilee.  It was St. Peter who tried to re-organize the Transfiguration by constructing huts for Jesus, Moses and Elias.  It was St. Peter who defended Jesus with his sword at Gethsemane. It was St. Peter who sneaks about the palaces and courtyards of Jerusalem keeping a safe distance from the condemned Christ.  It was St. Peter who flees the Upper Room to confirm the empty tomb on Easter morning.  It was St. Peter who grew impatient with Christ’s triple interrogation: “Do you love me…?”  And, of course, it was St. Peter who cautioned Christ about pursuing his ministry as Suffering Servant evoking the shocking response from Christ toward his old friend and new lieutenant: “Get behind me, Satan!  You are not thinking as God thinks but as man thinks!” 

       St. Peter, the soon-to-be head of the Church, is thus recalled as a man graced with divine charisma but also burdened with human frailty.   Simon Peter was the quintessential saint and sinner.  Truly, St. Peter represents a miracle of grace.   No doubt he was a good and faithful Jew, a disciple of John the Baptist before meeting Christ, a working man, a family man, an alpha type male.  He had a lot going for him.  But, as mentioned above, he had his faults.  And the early Church remembered these faults.  And perhaps the first Christian community was scandalized by these faults.  They certainly did not sweep them under the rug – as Scripture itself testifies.  On the other hand, perhaps the early Church was fortified by these recollections of St. Peter’s blunders.  Perhaps in St. Peter’s repentance and perseverance, the early Church saw its own religious experience.  They too had been called by Christ.  They too were instructed in his words.  They too had come to know him in the breaking of bread.  Yet they too were sinners.  They were greedy and lustful and deceptive and unkind as the Biblical writings themselves confirm.  They too were saints and sinners. 

       The spiritual journey of Simon Peter is the spiritual journey of every believer, of every man and woman.  Each believer is called by God to a unique life of service – perhaps not as exalted as that of the first bishop of Rome but nonetheless divinely inspired and humanly worthy.  As St. Peter’s faults did not hinder him from his Divine mission, so the Church’s sins should not impede its Divine destiny.  Christ’s final words to a puzzled St. Peter, “Follow me,” are meant for all weary believers.          COMPLETE

       The word “church” occurs only twice in St. Matthew’s Gospel.  The well known words addressed to St. Peter are the first instance in which the word “Church” is found on the lips of Jesus:  “…upon this rock I will build my church…”  In this context “Church” clearly means the world wide Church of Christ, the Christian community, the Catholic Church.  New Testament salvation history in its entirety is implied here.  The religious future of mankind is at stake.  Skipping briefly from chapter 16 of St. Matthew’s Gospel to chapter 18, the word “church” is discovered for the second and last time.  Speaking of Fraternal correction within the Christian community, Jesus instructs his first followers, “If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.”   Here Jesus is certainly speaking of the local church, the local Christian community, the urban and rural assemblies that would be the backbone of Christianity for all time.  Jesus speaks here of the diocese and no doubt of the parish (labels that would come much later).  The Savior sees in the local community a valid microcosm of the entire Church. 

       Jesus further salutes the influence and prestige of the local Church community employing some of his most memorable words:  “Again, amen, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.”  In spite of the faulty English transfer from second person to third person, the meaning is clear.  The power of the authentic local community is equal to that of the entire believing Church.  God will heed the prayer of the earnest few just as surely as he will respond to pleas of the entire Communion of Saints.  And so as to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about the power of the assembled faithful, no matter how insignificant and paltry their numbers might be, Jesus adds very comfortingly, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”   The authority, the strength, the resources of the local Church community cannot be over-stressed.  As long as the local church – the diocese, the parish – is united with the universal Church – the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church – then all the spiritual resources granted to the worldwide Church can be shared even on a neighborhood level.  There are no more spiritual resources available in the major basilicas of Rome than they are in the parish churches of a mission land.  Where ever the authority of the world wide Church is respected and regarded, an authentic Christian community exists.  “Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia,” observed the fathers of the Church.  “Wherever you find Peter, there you find the Church.”  No matter how miniscule, no matter how majestic – fidelity to St. Peter and the teachings of the universal Church will guarantee an authentic Christian community, a true Church, for the faithful assembled as one.

       Some Biblical commentators on this Sunday’s Gospel passage exalting the local church understand Christ to be undoing the unique Office of Peter that has been the focus of the Sunday readings these past two weeks.  Catholics assisting at recent Sunday Masses heard the clear words of Jesus to St. Peter:  “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."   The authority of St. Peter within the Church community appeared quite exalted and quite exclusive when these words are considered.  St. Peter was indeed the Supreme Pontiff.  But here, once again the exact words are found on the lips of Jesus, this time addressed to the local Church: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  These words were singular case when uttered to St. Peter and are now plural case when spoken to the local community.  Otherwise the phrases are identical.  Is Jesus reneging on his commission to Simon Peter?  Is he having second thoughts about nominating a single vicar to guide the infant church?  The answer is, “No.”  Jesus granted universal jurisdiction to St. Peter and to St. Peter alone.  His teaching authority is secure.  But Jesus also recognizes the claim of the local church in disciplinary matters.  Jesus respects the right of the local church to maintain standards.  In difficult situations, excommunication is a serious but viable option for the local church.  Today Jesus says he will endorse this weighty decision.

COMPLETE

       Father Maurice Belliere was an uncertain seminarian when he wrote to the Carmelite convent at Lisieux requesting the mother superior to give his name to a nun who would pray for him and his priestly vocation.  The nun to whom the name of the future Missionary of Africa was entrusted was none other than Sister (now Saint) Therese of the Child Jesus, the Little Flower.  Belliere at his seminary and Therese in her cloister began a memorable exchange of letters in which he poured out his hesitancy and diffidence in facing his vocation and she replied with faithfilled words of encouragement and support.  St. Therese died before Father Maurice was finally ordained; and he lasted very briefly in the ministry also dying prematurely, and miserably of a flea bite received in the missions. 

       The dozen or so letters sent by the saint to the seminarian have a single, overriding theme: the loving mercy of God made accessible in Jesus Christ.   Father Maurice was an earnest but mediocre seminarian and a well-meaning but ineffective priest.  His superiors both in his diocese and in his religious congregation always evidenced some mild reserve about his suitability for the missions.   Their caution did little to build up his self-confidence.  St. Therese’s letters were just the balm that this diffident youth needed to assist his perseverance in his vocation.  When superiors could appear harsh and his own efforts seemed deficient, the Carmelite’s insistence on the loving mercy of God in Christ would sustain him until his prospects brightened.  St. Therese would tersely insist in her letters: “Jesus is merciful love.”  For St. Therese, mercy was not just a virtue or a quality or a power exercised by Jesus when circumstances called for kindness and compassion.  For the Little Flower, Jesus is mercy.  Jesus cannot react to human needs or human wants in any way other than through mercy.  In the mind of this cloistered Carmelite, Jesus’ very nature is to be merciful, to be compassionate, to be sympathetic.  Remember that this was a woman who knew she was dying of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four.  Yet she did not let her tragic illness diminish her conviction that Jesus was mercy.  In the end, even her suffering would turn out to be a gift from Jesus.  She firmly believed that even her pains would manifest Jesus’ mercy.  Jesus would not let her down, and consequently she would not let Jesus down. She persevered in her convictions about mercy to her sorry end.  Her message to Father Maurice was that he should do the same as he lived out his checked priestly career. 

       One of the most familiar aspirations repeated by devout Catholics is the well-known phrase: “My Jesus Mercy.”  Most of the time when these words are uttered the pious soul places an invisible but perhaps audible comma between the words “Jesus” and “Mercy.”  “My Jesus, mercy.” i.e., my Jesus have mercy on me, my Jesus be kind to me, my Jesus remember me.  Certainly these are worthy sentiments.  Yet this brief aspiration is much more powerful when it is uttered not as a petition (My Jesus, mercy) but rather as a statement (My Jesus Mercy).  The flat statement, the bold declaration that Jesus is mercy is a powerful act of faith in the Divine Nature.  Mercy is not just something Jesus calls upon from time to time as the need arises.  Rather it is the very nature of Jesus to be merciful.  As St. Therese wrote to her pusillanimous correspondent:  “Jesus is loving mercy.”  Jesus cannot act otherwise than to be merciful, generous and forgiving even when the believer might feel tested and challenged, as Father Maurice did.

       In this Sunday’s Gospel, the vindictive servant is chastised precisely because he fails to imitate the compassion of his master.  “Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant as I had pity on you?”  the disgusted master inquires of his heartless servant.  The servant who had just experienced the mercy of his master in having his debts forgiven should have had the decency to act likewise toward his own debtors.  Alas, the example of his merciful master was wasted on him.  The Old Testament witnessed to the “loving mercy” of God the Father as he repeatedly embraced his wayward ancient people.  The New Testament presents the “loving mercy” of God present in Christ as he reconciles errant mankind to the Father.  Mercy, as St. Therese rightly indicated, is the very nature of God.  God is mercy. 

       My vacation took me to the Far West or maybe I should write the Far-Out West.  Perhaps somewhere on the Pacific coast a choir of cloistered nuns was chanting God’s praises while a priest filled the sanctuary with the aroma of incense.  It was my ill fortune to encounter congregations celebrating life with a piano-guitar-tambourine back-up.  First of all, in the churches attended I had to ask the location of the tabernacle.  One tabernacle was placed in the wall of a former cry-room now used as a daily Mass chapel.  Another tabernacle, a magnificent wooden structure maybe seven feet tall, was solitary in a darkened room.  Ironically huge baptismal fonts were typically visible at the Church door.  One parish even had the Book of the Gospels displayed in the tabernacle’s former locale!   The Our Fathers and Hail Marys that used to be on the lips of Catholics as they recollected themselves before Mass have sadly disappeared.  A merry hubbub was enjoyed by parishioners arriving for Mass and inquiring over the pews:  “How’s the new job?…..Who’s the kid’s new teacher?…..Is Mary out of the hospital?”  Building community has eliminated the former focus on the Divine Presence.  The celebrant entered, attired in alb and stole. A chasuble would have been too clerical.  The Mass began with an invitation for everyone to turn to the neighbor and offer a friendly greeting.  The Penance rite was replaced by a brief consideration on how grateful the assembly should be for God’s gifts.  The Service of the Word with a folksy but decent homily passed without incident. 

       The innovative Creed was actually a modified renewal of Baptismal vows.  The congregation dutifully answered “We do” when asked if they believed in God the Creator, God the Redeemer and God the Sanctifier.  In lieu of the General Intercessions, persons celebrating birthdays, anniversaries and other memorable occasions were invited to come and stand at the altar and receive the community’s recognition.  Kitchenware replaced precious metals as the altar was prepared for the memorial meal.  As one might have guessed, the entire congregation stood during the Eucharistic Prayer.  (The deliberate lack of kneelers insured this.)  Of course, there were no bells.  The assembly joined with the priest in reciting the final solemn words of the Canon: “…through Him, with Him, and in Him…”  And then redundantly sang “Amen” to re-affirm what they had just declared.

       During the Lord’s Prayer, small children were invited to the altar to form a circle of hands with the celebrant.  It was so cute.  The remainder of the congregation held hands across pews and across aisles in a “Hands across America” gesture that has become the hallmark of the caring and sharing generation.  The “Deliver us, Lord…” was skipped so the whole assembly could raise their held hands high and conclude the Our Father in Protestant fashion: “…for the kingdom, the power and the glory…”  The Sign of Peace is better imagined than described.  Filene’s Basement on the day after Christmas could not be more hectic.  Needless to say, about a dozen Extra-Ordinary Ministers of Communion approached the altar during the Lamb of God, formed a semi-circle behind the priest, a la concelebration, and then received Communion simultaneously with the priest.  The congregation continued to stand until a lay person (of course) returned the residual hosts to the quarantined tabernacle.  The celebrant concluded the Mass by not concluding the Mass.  The Mass does not end, we were reminded.  It continues in our daily lives.

       When Christ instituted the Eucharist, he commissioned his disciples: “Do this in remembrance of Me.”  Very little of the liturgical action out West evoked the memory of Jesus Christ.  The entire liturgy was an exercise in self-promotion.  Persons greeted one another in neighborly concern but there was no hush acknowledgment of the Divine Presence.  Persons stood erect in affirmation of their own dignity; they never once knelt in recognition of God’s transcendence.  Glass and ceramic vessels spoke of their workaday world; gold and silver would have connoted something much too otherworldly.  Hands reached out toward one another in community; they were never once folded in a gesture of adoration.  Clergy and laity co-chaired the whole exercise; the priest’s unique action in the person of Christ took a back seat.  And the saddest aspect of this liturgical embarrassment?   The people loved it.  COMPLETE

       A Jamestown resident tells the story of the elderly gentleman in that small New England village who was suddenly being given the cold shoulder by his fellow townsfolk.  A neighbor noticed that the long time inhabitant was being shunned by formerly friendly villagers.  Inquiring about the abrupt snubs, the neighbor was informed that, instead of being content to live on the interest of his bank accounts, the elderly gentleman had dipped into his capital.  After all, everyone knows that capital is for investing, not for spending.

       Americans of an earlier generation accepted that inherited family money was not a personal gift to be spent at will.  Rather they understood that a family legacy was simply entrusted to them to be handed on intact or augmented to the next generation.  “Dipping into one’s capital” was a major transgression for the bourgeoisie of a previous era.  Family money was considered a trust, a responsibility, a charge.  Ancestral capital could be used to increase the family’s holdings by wise investments and shrewd business practice.  But to diminish that initial capital in any way was considered an offense against the previous generation that accumulated it and an affront to the coming generation that would rely on it.  Indeed, capital was for saving, not for spending.

       Roman Catholics are the religious beneficiaries of a spiritual capital that goes back twenty centuries.  The martyrs of the early Church, the monks of the Dark Ages, the scholars of the Middle Years, the teachers of the Counter-Reformation, the moralists of the Enlightenment, the missionaries of the nineteenth century, the parish congregations of the pre-Vatican II Church have bequeathed to the present generation a liturgical, educational and ethical legacy faithfully drawn from Scripture and Tradition.  The prayers memorized as a child, the devotions enjoyed during the liturgical seasons, the moral guidance provided by parents and teachers, the social awareness engendered by Church leaders, the spirit of evangelization shared with missionaries, are just a few of the spiritual riches that two thousand years of Catholic Church life have produced.  The lamentable question is whether the present generation of believers is at least preserving this heritage intact or eagerly augmenting this inheritance for the generation ahead -- or mindlessly and selfishly squandering it.

       Her Majesty the Queen once observed in a Christmas address: “I fear that we are living off the spiritual capital of another age.”  Elizabeth II was, alas, correct.  Catholicity for many today is simply an inheritance from the past which the believer makes little attempt to preserve or increase.  To be Catholic means to be from Irish or Italian or Polish or Portuguese stock.  To be Catholic means a baptism years ago at Holy Name or a First Communion at St. Michael’s or a marriage at Blessed Sacrament.  To be Catholic means having an aunt who is a nun in Canada.  To be Catholic means to have graduated from LaSalle or St. Xavier Academy.  Such a foundation is a fine inheritance.  But this spiritual capital will soon be exhausted if the believer contributes nothing to sustain or supplement it. Mom’s going to Mass every morning and Grandpa’s saying his rosary each day does not make the newer generation of Catholics good stewards.  Children cannot expect merely to live off their parents’ capital.  They have to have a sense of good stewardship themselves. 

       Saint Paul wisely admonishes his readers in this Sunday’s second reading:  “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory;  rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others.”  St. Paul’s words are a perfect description of Christian stewardship: “…looking out for the interest of others.”  The alert steward will certainly understand that the spiritual capital bequeathed by his ancestors in the faith is not just there for his personal enrichment.  On the contrary, stewardship means thoughtful and generous service. The practical steward will jealously preserve what was best in the past and hand it on enhanced to the generation to come.  Otherwise living off the spiritual capital of a bygone era will sadly lead to spiritual bankruptcy just as surely as draining the family funds will eventually lead to financial ruin.    COMPLETE

       A sigh of total exasperation escaped my lips when I viewed the advertisements for a new television show entitled “Inconceivable.”  The program is set in a fertility clinic where couples (and perhaps not couples) who are desperate for offspring seek out practical guidance for beginning a family.  The impotent husband, the sterile wife, the same sex couple, the surrogate mother, the baby conceived in vitro, and various other medical anomalies will be the sum and substance of this weekly presentation -- for as long as it lasts.  The review in the Providence Journal was happily negative, possibly and hopefully forecasting a quick demise for this reproductive muddle.

       In an age that defends abortion (as 63% of Rhode Islanders sadly do) and does not vigorously promote adoption, the infertile couple still generates a great deal of ironic sympathy and compassion.  The Church can, at times, seem heartless in its resistance to medical innovations regarding reproduction.  Sperm banks and egg donations do not fit into the Catholic world view.  So an engaging television show on contemporary reproductive techniques might have wide if misguided appeal.  Sympathy easily triumphs over rationality in the popular mind if the stars are attractive enough and the direction is clever enough.  Ideas do have consequences and even wrong ideas can take hold in the general population if they are packaged in a smart and eye-catching framework.  This is an age in which beauty is treasured much more than truth.

       It has been pointed out that fifty years ago sodomy and abortion were criminal offenses; now they are constitutional rights.  This transition came about largely because of the kindly and sympathetic treatment these issues were accorded by the press and media.  Those who favor virtue over vice are vilified and maligned in the media as conservative, fundamentalist, doctrinaire.  Those who embrace every new moral aberration as enlightened conduct are hailed as liberal, open-minded, tolerant.  Cohabitation, homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, recreational drugs and sex, and other threats to life and family have been completely exonerated in the popular mind because of the gentle and sometimes enthusiastic treatment these issues receive on television, over the radio and in the press.   Like the vineyard mentioned in this Sunday’s first reading, ours is a society that is vigorously bringing forth mere wild grapes.

       In this Sunday’s second reading from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, the Apostle wisely admonishes his readers to rise above the workaday world of smut, slander, sensuality and sin whose hellish considerations impede the mind, heart and soul.  St. Paul counsels his beloved congregation to favor lofty thoughts, avoiding the tawdry attractions of the pagan world in favor of the superior delights of the Divine universe.  St. Paul writes: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”   Alas, in a society where “Desperate Housewives” is awardable entertainment, St. Paul’s exhortation to prefer honor, purity and grace will go sadly unheeded. 

       As a remedy for the superficial attractions of this world, the Apostle encourages his readers to return to their Christian roots, the perennial message that has been with them from the beginning.  “Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard…”  Nothing is going to come along and supplant the Christian message.  The Gospel is irreplaceable and irrevocable.  Christians can do nothing better than to reflect on the treasures of wisdom and knowledge already entrusted to them through the Church.  Meditation on the truths of the faith is the only authentic counterweight for the ways of the world.  The “stone rejected by the builders,” i.e., the basic truth found in Christ and rejected by the world, will in the end prove to be the only enduring cornerstone on which to build a truthful society.

       T. S. Eliot informed his readers that “humankind cannot bear too much reality.”  Perhaps this is why the current lectionary permits this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading to be cut short.  The publishers have determined that the Biblical call for an appropriate wedding garment for those invited to the banquet of life might prove a bit disconcerting for some lackluster parishioners that might be among the congregation.  Furthermore the mere mention of being cast into the “outer darkness” where there will be “the wailing and the gnashing of teeth” is altogether too violent an image for a Church that has changed sins into failings and trespasses into mistakes.   God forbid that society and even the Church should come face to face with the prospect of eternal damnation.  Hence the final paragraph of St. Matthew’s parable on the royal banquet may be omitted.

       Scriptures scholars will rightly point out that the final paragraph in question was probably added by St. Matthew or by one of his redactors or even by Christ himself to the original parable of the guests at the wedding.  Frankly the wedding garment addition does change the tenor of the initial parable.  Without the mention of the need of the wedding garment, the parable of the guests at the wedding is similar to the parable of the wheat and the weeds and the parable of the dragnet.  Jesus knew that his Kingdom on earth would expand down through the ages and that all sorts of people would find their way into his new community.  There would be the saints and the sinners, the devoted and the half-hearted, the zealous and the indifferent, the conservatives and the liberals.  Jesus also knew that his first apostles as well as later generations of Christians might be easily scandalized when they realized that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church would consist of the likes of Judas as well as John, of Simon Magus as well as Cornelius, of Ananias and Sapphira as well as Prisca and Aquila.  The Church never was and Jesus knew it never would be a community of the entirely virtuous.  The wheat and weeds, the good fish and bad fish, the worthy guests and the unworthy visitors, would exist side by side in the Kingdom until the end of time.  Christians should not be scandalized at their own imperfections.  God would sort everything out in the end.  And just perhaps, what the faithful thought were weeds or foul fish or unworthy guests might surprisingly turn out to be valuable assets to the Christian community after all.   The wise Christian will go around with one eye closed, awaiting the final and Divine analysis of salvation history.

       Nonetheless St. Matthew’s concluding paragraph to the wedding banquet parable does readily fit into the overall Gospel message.   The inevitable presence of the worthy and the worthless within the Kingdom of God must not be used as an excuse for inaction on the part of the faithful.  The assessment that God tolerates the good and the bad, the believer and the skeptic, within his ecclesial community should not become a justification for sloth and indifference.  In the end, God will expose the undeserving for what they are.   “God is not mocked,” St. Paul would later write, “as a man sows, thus shall he reap.”  Good doctor of the law that he was, St. Matthew was not going to let his readership use faith as a rationalization for idleness.  Mere presence within the believing community is not enough; an active contribution to community life is clearly demanded by the Gospel message.  Inner faith and outer works are the twin pillars on which the Christian life rests.  The Creed internalized must become the Commandments realized.  There will be no sluggards in the final Kingdom.

       The relationship between faith and works, grace and the law, call and response, would perennially disturb the peace of the Kingdom of God upon earth.  St. Paul was harassed by so called Judaizers who were scandalized by his exaltation of faith over works.  St. James would rally to the side of the old time religionists declaring faith without works to be dead.  Luther would react to the good works of the Medieval Church (pilgrimages, votive Masses, donations, devotions) by announcing that Christians were saved by faith alone – uniquely adding the last word to St. Paul Epistle to the Romans.  Good works are the Thank You note for God’s gift of a place at the banquet of eternal life.                       COMPLETE

Richard McBrien

A few months ago, The New York Times Magazine published a cover-story on Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. The article focused on various aspects of his life and political career, including his religious affiliation and convictions.Senator Santorum is a Catholic, albeit of a particular kind. He attends Sunday Mass along with Justice Antonin Scalia and other prominent Catholics of similar orientation at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls, Virginia, where the liturgy is in Latin and the priest prays with his back to the congregation, just like it was in the days before the Second Vatican Council.However, at 47 years of age today, Senator Santorum was only 4 years old when the Second Vatican Council opened in October, 1962, and only 7 when it adjourned in December, 1965. He never attended a Catholic college or university, having received a B.A. in Political Science from Penn State in 1980, an M.B.A. at the University of Pittsburgh, and a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from the Dickinson School of Law in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. One of his fellow Catholic senators, Susan Collins of Maine, has referred to him as a Catholic missionary in the Senate. She occasionally attends the study group he organized to promote more knowledge of the Catholic faith. Only Republicans are invited.One is tempted to ask if this is one of those cases of the blind leading the blind (with apologies to anyone offended by the politically incorrect usage). Indeed, there is a book, Catholicism for Dummies, co-authored by two priests who also lack theological credentials. But they are “safe” enough to have a regular program on Mother Angelica’s Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).In the Times Magazine article, Senator Santorum is portrayed as exuberant over the election of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new pope. “What you saw,” he claimed, “is an affirmation by the cardinals that the church is not going to change, even though maybe Europe and North America want it to. It is going to stay the way it has been for 2,000 years.” A remarkable statement indeed from someone who has never had a graduate-level course in church history.Blessed John XXIII reminded us in his opening address to the Second Vatican Council that history is “the teacher of life.” Without a sense of history, one is always vulnerable to the temptation of accepting and repeating generalities that are without factual basis or, more specifically, are contradicted by the facts of history.Many Catholics believe, for example, that only the pope can appoint bishops. But the pope has only exercised that prerogative for the universal Church since the 19th century. Before that, bishops were selected by various processes, the most common of which during the First Christian Millennium was election by the clergy and laity of the diocese in which they would serve.Catholics today take for granted that bishops can be transferred from smaller dioceses to larger dioceses when they are deemed suitable for greater pastoral responsibilities. But in the early Church that was not only uncommon; it was absolutely prohibited -- and by no less than the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the same council that defined the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ.Indeed, the body of a deceased pope, Formosus (891-896), was dug up and placed on trial because he had accepted election as Bishop of Rome when he was already the bishop of another diocese in Italy (Porto). A few months ago many people both inside and outside the Catholic Church speculated about whether the new pope would come from Latin America or perhaps from Africa. Through-out the First Millennium, this would have been unthinkable. Bishops were elected from the local diocesan clergy, and once in office they remained in the same diocese until death.But these are only a few examples of changes that have occurred in the Catholic Church. There are countless others in the realm of doctrine (the Church once approved of slavery, while condemning the taking of interest on loans), liturgy (the Mass was originally in Greek, then Latin, and then in many other languages), and even the making of saints (it was not until the year 993 that a saint was canonized by a pope; before then it was a matter of acclamation by the people).Senator Santorum is surely not the only Catholic who is unaware of the lessons of church history. Nor is he alone in mistakenly believing that “the church is not going to change,” that it is “going to stay the way it has been for 2,000 years.”But if history is “the teacher of life,” we need to learn from it.

       Sometime ago National Public Radio featured a discussion concerning life on other planets.  A variety of differing perspectives were presented ranging from a Fundamentalist Born-Again Christian to an acknowledged atheist.  The Fundamentalist was convinced that because the Bible did not discuss or even hint at extra-terrestrial beings therefore such creatures did not exist.  One could easily cite the words of St. Augustine as a caution for this absolutist view of the Fundamentalist:  “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”  The Bible’s silence on outer space, frankly, proves nothing.  The atheist on the panel, as one might expect, took great exception to using the Bible to prove anything.  The Scriptures were no more than ancient reminiscences in his estimation and of little historical or scientific value.  But in his enthusiasm to deflate any aspect of a faith perspective on this issue, the non-believer touted as mere self-interest the Christian belief that mankind was graciously and possibly uniquely created by God and placed here on earth eventually to enjoy eternal happiness with God in heaven.  The notion that man might be alone in the universe and singled out by God for particular benevolence was labeled the “height of arrogance” for this disbeliever.  The Christian belief that man was someone special was misguided and absurd to this humanistic panelist.

       Whether there is life on other planets and, more so, whether there is humanoid life on other planets, remains a matter for discussion and investigation.  Worthy answers are simply not available at the present moment.  Perhaps mankind does have cousins in other parts of the universe who reflect the glory of God in their own way.  But this remote possibility must never detract from the firm Christian belief that mankind has been singled out by God for an exceptional relationship with Him through Jesus Christ.  Other non-human creatures may be dealing with God in their own way, but this must never diminish the munificence and largesse which God has lavished on the human race through Christ.  Others might interpret this belief as arrogance or conceit or pride.  But the point is that Christian men and women are indeed God’s beloved, God’s chosen, God’s specially selected creatures.

       The creation of Adam and Eve, made male and female in God’s image, was, as far as anyone really knows, a unique gesture of love on God’s part.  These two were indeed God’s beloved.  They had gifts of nature and grace.  And, even more significantly, they had the personal company of God during the day.  They were his beloved.  The election of the Jews through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was another singular act of personal benevolence by God.  Isaiah cites this choice in today’s first reading: “For the sake of Jacob, my servant, of Israel, my chosen one…”  The Jews, unique among the nations, were God’s chosen people, the nation through whom God would compellingly display both his power and his mercy.  St. Paul even more clearly designates the Christian community as particularly loved by God: “We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind our work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father, knowing, brothers and sisters loved by God, how you were chosen.” 

       As latter day Christians, each believer must be convinced that he or she has been called forth by God the Father, saved by Christ the Son, and infused with the gifts of God the Spirit.  The singularity and superiority of God’s kindness toward the believing soul should not be an occasion for arrogance or self-importance.  Rather God’s generosity toward the soul should effect a similar generosity in the soul toward God.  The chosen soul, the beloved creature, the favored person, must reply to God in kind, responding with grateful heart and eager hands ready to do his service.  There are times of course when even the devout Christian feels remote and removed from God.  The mercy of God can prove very elusive when personal misfortunes, national calamities, and social evils overwhelm the soul.  Sometimes the believer may feel singled out for punishment rather than favored by providence.  Here faith must awaken and remind the believer that, in spite of any evidence to the contrary, God is a merciful Father who takes great personal delight in and great personal care of his beloved children.            COMPLETE

       A penitent will occasionally drop himself down at the confessional screen and acknowledge, “Father, I’ve committed every sin in the book.”   The confessor is often tempted to ask, “Have you laid violent hands on the Holy Father?”  “Have you forged some checks?”  “Have you been involved with insider trading or drug trafficking or child abuse?”  The penitent would draw back aghast at the very suggestion of these sins.  So it is clear.  No one commits every sin in the book.  The fact is that most people commit the same few sins over and over again.  Liars are not necessarily thieves; adulterers are not automatically gamblers; child abusers may never miss Mass on Sunday.  Most people, instead of boasting a litany of sins, should admit to one or two fatal flaws that probably impact negatively on everything they do.  After all, there are only seven capital sins.  And, if the truth be known, each believer has his or her own pet sin – perhaps greed, or anger, or lust, or gluttony – that will haunt the soul from youth into old age.  Knowledge of one’s own fatal flaw, one’s own vice, one’s own particular brand of brokenness, is the first step in conversion and reconciliation.

       Wisely does the Church encourage, and sadly do the faithful ignore, the practice of frequent confession.  Older Catholics easily recall the youthful habit of weekly confession.  Saturday afternoons meant a double feature at the local theatre, a stop at a neighborhood church for confession on the walk home and frankfurters and beans waiting on the family table.  A weekly confrontation with our own weaknesses did us no harm.  Professional religious, furthermore, employed a daily exercise called the “particular examen” during which the conscience was probed one sin at a time.  Once each sin was dealt with, another flaw would be added to the survey. If most persons commit the same few sins over and over, then perfection was never very far out of reach – at least in theory.  And of course an act of contrition before going to bed at night during which the conscience was examined for the day’s tally of offenses was another helpful practice.  As commonplace as these religious practices might appear, they did help keep the reality and the proximity of sin in mind.  Sad to say, the loss of the sense of sin is one of the great spiritual tragedies of modern times – as Pius XII well pointed out in 1943.  Many persons only realize their sinfulness, their brokenness, their flawed existence, when some major catastrophe – a death, a divorce, a disaster – trips them up and forces them to re-examine their lives.  Conversion experiences are too often the result of “bottoming out” when they should be the fruit of time-honored religious practices revealed in the lives of the saints. 

       The admission and acceptance of one’s brokenness, one’ sinful state, is just the first step on the journey to healing and wholeness.  With God’s help, the true Christian can actually turn his own weaknesses into occasions for strength.  “Strength is made perfect in weakness,” wrote St. Paul insightfully.  The weaknesses in our lives, the brokenness we experience, the crosses that are laid on our shoulders, can be refused as curses or they can be embraced as occasion for growth.  The man who recognizes his anger has taken the first step toward gentleness.  The woman who admits her avarice is on her way to detachment.  The believer who owns up to lust is already reaching out toward chastity.  Even our sins can be blessings in disguise since they make us yearn for God as the only hope of conversion and wholeness. 

       Certainly we should not rejoice in our sins; but we should acknowledge that even our sins can be turned into blessings if they force us to pray to God for strength and encouragement.  The God of our Fathers has traditionally been a God who brings light out of darkness, life out of death, good out of evil.  When a man understands that his own soul has been broken by greed or anger or lust, when that man perceives his own emptiness and shallowness, this should compel him to look to the Father, to reach out toward the Savior, to invoke the Holy Spirit as sources of encouragement, direction and strength.  By “blessing” our brokenness, as Henri Nouwen wrote, even our sins can serve God’s purposes and become occasion of transformation for us.

COMPLETE

       “If it were a dog it would bite you,” my father would remark when I was looking for something that was in plain sight.  Perhaps my keys or a school book or a tool would elude my view even though it was within arms reach.  My father’s smug observation was usually well received although sometimes it was a gentle blow to my pride.  If I would complain about the rake while gathering leaves or about the shovel when removing snow, my father would observe, “A poor workman always blames his tools.”  On the other hand, a good performance would be acknowledged with the concession: “Well, you have to give the devil his due.”  My father would dismiss my fussiness at table by quoting the Bible, “Eat what’s set before you” – a quote he used to hear from his mother.  The Scriptures, of course, are a great source of proverbs.  Samuel Butler’s paraphrase of Proverbs 13 -- “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” -- guided most home discipline until the recent past.  Moses’ succinct “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” ranks him with greatest of lawgivers.  Turning “the other cheek” and going “the extra mile” are found on the lips of believers and unbelievers alike.  And, of course, the Beatitudes that form the Gospel of All Saints Day are the pre-eminent Christian maxims.

        My mother, too, often expressed her opinions in proverbial fashion.  After all, “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” If a prominent family fell on hard times, she would lament: “It’s three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves.”  If she encountered someone who was particularly stand-offish, she would remark: “Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”  And, if a day passed without any mail, she would always quote her own mother, “No news is good news.”  On an especially hectic day, she would observe that “it never rains but it pours.”  And she would always advise: “It’s an ill wind that didn’t bring someone some good.”    My mother’s cousin Betty would express her astonishment at a very obvious question by asking, ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?”  Margaret, a close family friend, would describe people who were without personal warmth as being “cold as charity.”  A friend’s aunt would dismiss a bewildered person by observing: “He didn’t know whether he was afoot or on horseback.”   A rectory housekeeper, if maintenance were not up to par, would kindly suggest: “No one riding by on horseback will ever notice.”  And, of course, a “gift horse” was never looked in the mouth. 

       It seems to me that my parents and their friends were always quoting maxims and aphorisms.  “Don’t correct your elders” and “Children should be seen and not heard” might have been written in bold letters across the front door of our Woonsocket home.  Ours was definitely a proverbial household. “Business before pleasure,” was understood and unquestioned. Reflecting on my parent’s generation using proverbs, aphorisms, and maxims makes me wonder how often parents nowadays employ these terse sayings to advise or chastise their offspring.  Proverbs are brief but authoritative statements.  They represent hundreds if not thousands of years of wisdom, observation and experience.  To take exception to a proverb was not just contradicting your parents, it was contradicting Western civilization.  Everyone knows, for example, that “practice makes perfect.,” and that “pride comes before a fall.”  To gainsay such insights is done at one’s peril. 

       Proverbs thrive in stable societies.  When successive generations hold the same values and endure the same experiences, the wisdom of one era can be handed on succinctly to the next.  Where children, parents and grandparents are of like mind, proverbs make compact sense.  The “pot calling the kettle black” made just as much sense in 1940 as it did in 1740.  But will it survive into the microwaveable future?  Old timers believed, as their ancestors did when facing a risk, that one “might as well be hanged for a sheep as a goat.”  Does anyone today even know the distinction between a sheep and a goat?  Similarly, will “In for a penny, in for a pound,” survive the Euro?   And will there be any need “to pay the fiddler” in the Ipod generation?  The demise of proverbs is another indication of the individualization and isolation of society.  Modern man is destined to “re-invent the wheel.”    The downfall of the proverb is a true loss.   After all, “epigrams succeed where epics fail.”                                  COMPLETE            

       As the Church’s liturgical year approaches its completion, the readings at Sunday Mass focus on the need for preparedness in the face of Christ’s expected return.  Perhaps the return of Christ will be his final return at the end of time as outlined today in St. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians.  Or perhaps the return of Christ will be that personal visit known as death.  Whether it be the end of the world or the end of one’s personal world, Christ will come again, “to judge the living and the dead.”  Today’s reading from St. Matthew reminds the worshipper of the need for preparation, that is, the need for good deeds, for good works, for old-fashioned Christian charity.  St. Matthew, as a good Jew and a good Pharisee, was keen on carrying out the works of the Law.  For him, as for most Jews of his era, good deeds were a sign of a good relationship with God. For this Evangelist, works prove faith.

       The familiar Parable of the Ten Virgins which forms this Sunday’s Gospel is actually a colorful presentation of an important teaching that St. Matthew reserved for the end of his celebrated version of the Sermon on the Mount.  Reflect for a moment on these serious words that conclude that teaching:

Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house

on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse;

it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them

will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and

buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined."

The contrast here is between the “wise man” who builds his house solidly on a rock and the “fool’ who builds his house upon sand.  The contest is between wisdom and foolishness.  Wisdom is practical and productive; foolishness is careless and neglectful.  Faith that is true and authentic will eventually bear fruit.  It is this productivity that St. Matthew has in mind.  “Faith without works is dead,” as St. James would later concur. 

        With this Matthean background, the Parable of the Ten Virgins (or Ten Bridesmaids) can be properly understood as a pointed demand by Christ for good works.  And bear in mind that good works are not only external activities like visiting the sick or teaching catechism or writing a weekly column for the Catholic press.  Good works also include personal prayer, Scripture study, spiritual reading, regular confession, and all the other practices that constitute a committed Catholic life.  As in the Sermon on the Mount, the eponymous virgins are divided into two categories: “Five of them were foolish while five of them were sensible.”  The foolish ones, the reader is told, brought no oil along for their lamps.  But the sensible (or wise) ones took flasks of oil along as well as their lamps.  Oil here is clearly a symbol for good deeds.  When the bridegroom arrives those with the oil are welcomed while those without the oil are confined to the outer darkness. Good deeds determine the status of the virgins for eternity.  Certainly a no-nonsense message!

        The reader is thrown off somewhat by the parable’s mysterious conclusion:  “The moral is: keep your eyes open, for you know not the day or the hour.”  This would make sense if the difference between the wise and the foolish virgins were that the wise ones stayed awake all night while the foolish ones dozed off.  But this was not the case.  St. Matthew clearly notes that “they all begin to nod, then to fall asleep.”  So attentiveness is not the distinguishing trait between these wise and the foolish ladies.  Preparedness, rather, is what sets the sensible apart from the senseless.  The wise virgins might well get a good night’s sleep since their oil, their good deeds, was easily attested.  They were prepared for Christ whenever he might arrive.   The prepared Christian does not have to worry about the return of Christ – be it today, tomorrow or not for millennia.  The prepared Christian’s flask is filled with the oil of good deeds, with the evidence of good works, with the fruit of a lively faith.     COMPLETE

       Christians believe, and rightly so, that Jesus Christ is the embodiment of charity.  Those attentive to the Scriptures see him reaching out towards the blind, the deaf, the lame and the afflicted.  In an era before health coverage and Medicare these were the genuinely poor, the undeniably needy, the patently destitute.  Jesus took their plight to heart.  “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers…” are certainly among the Master’s most memorable words.  Jesus was also concerned with the masses of people, the crowds that relished his words.  He feed them in the wilderness on more than one occasion and warned them relentlessly of the deceptive practices of the civil and religious leaders of the day.  He lamented that they were like sheep without a shepherd.  And of course his suffering and death on behalf of sinners was his supreme act of charity to benefit his earthly brothers and sisters.   

       Since Jesus’ fraternal charity is clearly undeniable, there is a phrase found several times in the Gospel versions of Saints Matthew, Mark and Luke that seems to fly right in the face of Jesus’ legendary goodwill.  The words are found in this Sunday’s Gospel passage about the distribution of talents: “For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what little he has will be taken away (Mt.25:29).”  This sentence appears particularly heartless in a man who not only loved lepers and foreigners but who died for the repentant and unrepentant alike.  Jesus has no trouble denouncing the rich elsewhere in his pronouncements.  Recall the camel attempting to squeeze through the needle’s eye.  Yet today he praises the rich:  “…to everyone who has, more will be given…” and he disparages the impoverished: “…even what little he has will be taken away.”  Is Jesus speaking out of both sides of his mouth?

       Jesus has not changed his tune about material goods.  He knows they are deceptive and illusory.  And man’s quest for them is never really satisfied.  Material riches must multiply in order to satisfy man’s ever increasing appetites.  Bigger television screens, more square footage in a home, closer seats at a sporting event, more books on the family room shelf: material goods ironically consume the consumer.  Jesus would be doing mankind no favor by gratifying man’s material wants.  He would be feeding man’s basest cravings.  “Avoid greed in all its forms,” Jesus accordingly advises materialistic mankind.  So Jesus here is not speaking about rewarding the rich or increasing a man’s possessions.

       Jesus knows that, unlike material goods, spiritual goods on the other hand tend towards simplification.  The genuinely spiritual man gradually sheds his materialistic desires and begins to focus on the one thing necessary: an interior relationship with God.  All other attractions loose their appeal as man’s fascination with God grows.  As the spiritual man renounces every material thing, he begins to grow rich in the sight of God.  Although the spiritual life demands mortification and detachment, it ironically has its rewards: “…to everyone who has, more will be given.”   The authentic Christian will grow rich in the spirit even as he grows humble in the view of the world.  Sadly, the person with few spiritual resources will discover them diminishing daily before his very eyes: “…even what little he has will be taken away.”   Spiritual capital bears astounding interest if it is applied daily to the soul.  Spiritual capital dwindles dramatically if it is neglected for any length of time by the lukewarm believer.  The ten, five or single talents entrusted to the soul by God can spiral upwards into eternal glory or they can plummet downwards into empty accounts.  The spiritual life rewards commitment and it penalizes neglect.

       Jesus elsewhere instructs:  “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence; and the violent bear it away.”  Jesus is not speaking here of destructive violence nowadays associated with terrorism and aggression.  Violence here implies energy and enthusiasm and eagerness.  Jesus commends those who are keen on the spiritual life.  The Master applauds those devout go-getters who do not neglect their spiritual talents and their religious opportunities.  He approves those Christians who refuse to bury their sacred gifts in the ground of indifference but rather work tirelessly toward an eternal reward.       COMPLETE

       No Catholic teaching gets more of a bum rap than the doctrine of purgatory.  It is true that All Souls Day endures and that relatives still have memorial Masses offered for their deceased.  But prayers offered on November 2^nd and anniversary Masses celebrated for loved ones tend to be tributes to the dead rather than appeals for Divine mercy.   Memorial Day at the end of May and All Souls Day at the beginning of November are almost indistinguishable.  Instead of placing flowers before a head stone, envelopes are left at the parish altar.  Indeed, people continue to remember the dead but, alas, they neglect to pray for the dead.  After all, to pray for our beloved dead would be the tough admission that they indeed need our prayers, that they might actually have sinned, that they had weaknesses and even  vices like the rest of us.  Failing to pray for forgiveness for the dead is just one of many symptoms indicating that Catholics have forgotten the need for forgiveness in general.  Acknowledging the sins of the dead would mean acknowledging the sins of the living.  Admitting that our loved ones need pardon suggests that we ourselves might need pardon – a harsh admission in a world that has completely lost its sense of sin.  On the contrary. to pray for the dead “that they might be loosed from their sins,” as the Book of Maccabbees recommends, is no insult to the deceased rather it is a kindness done toward the dead. 

       Mourners think that they are appropriately honoring the dead when they eulogize, in fact, canonize them at the time of death.  It is understandable that the bereaved want to ease their own grief by thinking kindly on the one who has passed away.  Mourners do well to rejoice in the wonderful gifts of nature and grace which God bestowed on the beloved.  But the dead are no different from the living. They need mercy, they need pardon, they need forgiveness, just as those who are left behind do.  To deny the dead our frequent prayers for Divine clemency is to cheat and to disappoint them.  Frankly, if painfully, to admit that the dead need our prayers is a profound statement on the reality of sin, the power of prayer, and the worth of eternal life.  What a shame it would be if the reticence of the present generation to admit the reality of sin in our own lives and in the lives of our loved ones delayed our prayers on their behalf and denied them even one moment of the Divine Presence! 

       Although the ancient Jews had very fuzzy notions about the afterlife, God began to introduce the possibility of eternal life into the Jewish frame of mind about two hundred years before Christ.  The hero Judas Maccabbeus knew that “it was a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they might be loosed from their sins.”  The Book of Wisdom famously teaches that “the souls of the just are in the hands of God…they are in peace.”  But the same inspired book admits that even the just might need to be “chastised a little.”  An early hint of purgatory?  The Christian catacombs testify to the ancient practice of praying for the dead to speed them into heaven by the inscriptions written universally on those underground walls: “Pray for him…Pray for her.”  Over the centuries and in various cultures reverence for the dead has taken many forms – from black bunting on the parish church door to Gregorian Masses at a nearby monastery.  And purgatory has been understood both as a place of cleansing and as a place of punishment. 

       While God’s justice might encourage the notion of purgatory as a place of atonement, his mercy should remind the believer that purgatory is even more a place of purification.  God would be doing the dead no favor by allowing them into his presence with any residue of sin to diminish their vision of him.  By cleansing the soul of any excess of sin, by eliminating even the slightest barrier between the soul and the Divine Presence, God demonstrates his final act of mercy toward his beloved creature.   God destined the human race for eternal happiness with Him.  And his cleansing the just of even minimal obstacles to that happiness is a testament to God’s thorough and unrelenting love for his sons and daughters.  Our prayers, encouraged by our respect for the dead and by our awareness of sin, can hasten the entry of our loved ones into the Presence of God all the more effectively.  Thus our prayers are not only a tribute, they are also a gift.       COMPLETE

       Dame Juliana of Norwich, a medieval mystic, was born about 1342.  When she was thirty years old, she became gravely ill and was expected to die. Then, on the seventh day, the medical crisis passed, and she had a series of fifteen visions, or "showings," in which she was led to contemplate the Passion of Christ. These insights brought her great peace and joy. She became a hermit, living in a small hut near to the church in Norwich, England, where she devoted the rest of her life to prayer and contemplation on the meaning of her visions. She recorded the results of her meditations in a book still widely read. During her lifetime, she became known as a counselor, whose advice combined spiritual insight with common sense, and many persons came to speak with her. Since her death, many more have found help in her writings.  Her cause for sainthood was never introduced and she was neither beatified nor canonized.  Yet she is popularly called Blessed Juliana of Norwich.  The precise date of her death is uncertain but May 8, 1417 is often suggested.

       Blessed Juliana’s writings reveal some succinct sayings that still provide much worthwhile meditation.  “The worst has happened and has been repaired,’ she wrote.  The worst, of course, was the death of Christ.  What more horrible event could occur than that the Son of God would be refused and slain by the human race: the Creator rejected by his creature; Divinity refused by humanity.  Yet even that dastardly act was reversed by the Resurrection and man was redeemed through God’s grace.  If this greatest of human tragedies can be repaired, then certainly there is hope for a successful outcome to the misfortunes and heartbreaks in the life of any believer.  Even the death of Christ did not compromise the enduring benevolence of God the Father.

       Another saying of Blessed Juliana at first reading appears quite naïve; but on continued reflection reveals a notion that is at the heart of the Christian message:

All things shall be well;

And all things shall be well;

And all manner of things shall be very well.

These phrases read as if Dame Juliana is attempting to talk herself into something.  They hint at auto-suggestion.  Perhaps her confidence in God is failing and she needs to convince herself that the Biblical goodness and kindness of God has not diminished.  Her faith is not in vain, she tells herself, and she should persevere in the Christian life.  Yet a second more thoughtful reading of the lady’s words reveal not lack of confidence but an abundance of confidence.  She is not telling herself anything she does not already know and accept.  She means it when she writes: “…all manner of things shall be very well.”  She is making a bold and daring act of faith in the Fatherhood and Providence of God.  In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, in spite of any personal challenge or social upheaval, God will be true to his Biblical promises.  God has sworn and he will not repent.

       In the second reading for this First Sunday of Advent, St. Paul writes concisely of God’s trustworthiness in words that anticipate Blessed Juliana’s pithy insights.  He writes to the Corinthians tersely: “God is faithful.”   Those brief words are almost a summary of the Judaeo-Christian tradition.  They recall the fidelity of God in keeping his pledge to the aged Abraham that he would have progeny numerous as the shore’s sands and the sky’s stars.  They evoke the loyalty of God in delivering his chosen people from bondage and resettling them in the land he had promised them.  They summon up the constancy of God in sending his Son to redeem mankind from sin, error, and corruption, offering heavenly joy and eternal peace instead.  They call to mind the steadiness of God in guiding his Church through an often turbulent history so that the Gospel may be preached to every creature.  Indeed God is faithful.  Indeed all things shall be well.  True faith allows no second thoughts about the fidelity of God.  Like God, the faithful Christian must remain, in St. Paul’s words, “firm to the end.”          COMPLETE

       Advent not only evokes the image of John the Baptist, the precursor of Christ, it also elicits a vision of Elias, who himself was the prefigurement of John.  Elias, whom the Catholic Encyclopedia labels “the loftiest and most wonderful prophet of the Old Testament”, is identified in the Bible only as a Tishbite. Like John, his lifestyle was a brave protest against an idolatrous age. His camel-skin garment and leather belt, his physical agility, his dwelling in mountain caves, his sleeping under a make-shift shelter, clearly distance him from the corrupt society of his day.

       Elias debuts by warning King Ahab that YHWH will punish the idolatry of Israel by bringing a long drought on the land. For three years no rain would fall in Israel; the land would be barren.  Once his message was delivered, the prophet fled to the brook Carith, where the ravens brought him bread and meat and he drank from the stream. When the brook itself dried up, Elias, under God’s direction, crossed over to pagan territory. There he was kindly received by a poor widow whom the famine had reduced to her last meal.  Her charity to Elias was rewarded by increasing her store of meal and oil. Elias even restored her child to life.   Meanwhile King Ahab scoured the countryside in search of Elias. Finally Elias resolved to confront the king once more.   When they met, Ahab bitterly scolded the prophet for the drought. But the prophet flung back the charge: "It is not I who disturb Israel, but you and your family, by forsaking the commands of the LORD and following the Baals (1Kings18:18).”  Elias then dared the king to summon the prophets of Baal to Mount Carmel, for a decisive contest between their god and YHWH. An altar was erected by the Baal-worshippers and a bull placed upon it; but their cries, wild dances and self-mutilation availed nothing.  Elias then prepared his sacrifice.  As he was praying earnestly, "the Lord’s fire came down and consumed the holocaust (1Kings 18:38).”  The issue was fought and won. The people slew the pagan prophets. That same evening the drought ceased with a heavy downpour of rain. 

       Elias's triumph was decisive but short. The anger of Queen Jezebel forced him to flee and take refuge at Mount Horeb. There, in the wilds of the sacred mountain, broken in spirit, he poured out his complaints before the Lord who strengthened him through “a tiny whispering sound (1Kings 19:12) and restored his faith. Three commands were given him: to anoint a new King of Syria, a new King of Israel, and to select Eliseus as his own successor. At once Elias set out to accomplish this new burden. On his way to Syria, he met Eliseus plowing and, throwing his mantle over him, made him his faithful disciple, inseparable companion and inevitable successor. The treacherous murder of Naboth from whom King Ahab had stolen land was the occasion for a new reappearance of Elias as a champion of the people's rights and good order.  He announced the impending doom: Ahab's house shall fall. Conscience-stricken, Ahab relented before the prophet and the threatened ruin of his house was delayed.

       When Ahab's son received severe injuries in a fall, the prince sent messengers to the pagan shrine of Beelzebub to inquire whether he should recover. They were intercepted by Elias who sent them back to their master with the news that his injuries would prove fatal.  Joram, King of Juda, had also indulged in Baal-worship.  He too received a message from Elias warning him that l his house would be smitten by a plague, and that he himself was doomed to an early death.

       Elias vanished just as mysteriously as he first appeared. Like Enoch, he was "translated", so that he should not taste death. As he was conversing with his spiritual son Eliseus, "a flaming chariot and flaming horses” took him to heaven.  Elias’ invective against the idolatrous Jews but his kindness toward the pagan widow illustrates a favorite Biblical theme:  From those to whom much is given, much will be demanded.  Elias was kind to the pagan widow since she knew no different.  But he was very harsh to the Jewish leaders since they knew YHWH and were bound by the Covenant.  Certainly they should have known better.   Modern day believers can still be attracted by the false gods of pleasure, wealth and power.  Advent is a season for Christians to examine how faithful they are to the knowledge of God and to the New Covenant God has made with them through Christ.                                            COMPLETE

       In the early 1950s, rushed but clever Americans began to write “Merry Xmas” on their Christmas cards, in their advertisements and on billboards.  The Knights of Columbus rightly reacted to this abbreviated greeting with their legendary campaign to “Put Christ back into Christmas.”  The Knights were admittedly successful.  The Greek initial “X” as a substitute for the English “Ch” is rarely seen in this context anymore.  However “Merry Xmas” seems downright respectful when compared to the non-committal “happy holidays” and even “warm, winter wishes” with which one is greeted nowadays.  The secularization, commercialization and, more importantly, the privatization of Christmas grows apace. 

       Of course the secular world is only doing to Christianity what Christianity has done to the secular world for centuries.  Christianity has been marvelously adept at assimilating worldly customs into its repertoire of pious practices.  The Christmas tree, the holly wreath, the Yule log, the calendar date and probably the ubiquitous fruit cake all had pagan origins.  Furthermore the Christmas celebrations that Americans mainly remember owe more to Queen Victoria’s husband Albert than to Christian tradition.  Most Americans cherish a late nineteenth century understanding of Christmas as a family celebration rather than a Church solemnity.  Remember, too, that earlier Americans from Plymouth Rock to the Civil War despised this holy day as too Catholic, too Roman, too papist.   So American Catholics must be careful about criticizing society for neglecting the true expression of Christmas.  Christmas expressions have been evolving for centuries.  Certainly there were no poinsettias at Bethlehem.

       This having been said, it must also be stated that what today is promoted as tolerance is actually just another step toward the complete privatization of religion.  The fear of offending minorities is cleverly employed to silence the traditions of the majority.  In the mind of the secular world, an expression like “Merry Christmas” or Tiny Tim’s “God bless us one and all” or Santa Claus’ origin as a third century bishop or biblical figures like the Magi, shepherds, angels and manger animals all draw one too close to the genuine meaning of Christmas: the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the birth of a Savior, the beginning of redemption.  Even a hint of the supernatural is threatening to today’s secularist culture.  Toleration by believers for non-Christians is not the real goal of the “happy holidays” crowd.  Reticence and finally silence among believers themselves is the humanist’s true target.

       St. John the Baptist, Advent’s most celebrated emblem, is a model for the modern Christian awash in the confusion over Christmas.  The Bible carefully notes that the Baptist divested himself of all earthly attractions in his effort to prepare himself for the arrival of Christ.  His clothing was a simple animal pelt and modest undergarment.  His food indicated a barely sustaining diet: locusts and wild honey.  He lived as a recluse in the wilderness, apart from city or village.  He did nothing to ingratiate himself with the civic or religious leaders of his day.  He antagonized the king and embarrassed the priests.  The coming of the Messiah was his supreme value and neither earthly comfort nor human consideration would interfere with that.

       The exclusive focus of St. John the Baptist on Christ’s arrival has set the tone for all successive generations of Christians who have fashioned the Church’s religious observances into the mighty cultural forces that they have been for so many centuries.  Christmas became a great cultural force not because of buying and selling, not because of decorating and entertaining, not because of trees and wreaths and mistletoe.  Christmas became a great event in Western Civilization because the Christian world was firmly convinced that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin at Bethlehem to save mankind from sin.  Christmas faith came first; then Christmas practices followed.  If Christmas practices seem threatened today – even among believers –perhaps it’s because the Christmas faith has been sidetracked.  Perhaps the winter wonderland has become more fascinating than the sheep fields of Bethlehem.  Perhaps jingle bells sound a more familiar note than the angelic choirs.  Christians should examine the intensity of their own observance of this holy day before expecting the secular world to understand and appreciate the birthday of the Messiah.  COMPLETE

This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else

By ADAM COHEN

Published: December 4, 2005

Religious conservatives have a cause this holiday season: the commercialization of Christmas. They're for it.

The American Family Association is leading a boycott of Target for not using the words "Merry Christmas" in its advertising. (Target denies it has an anti-Merry-Christmas policy.) The Catholic League boycotted Wal-Mart in part over the way its Web site treated searches for "Christmas." Bill O'Reilly, the Fox anchor who last year started a "Christmas Under Siege" campaign, has a chart on his Web site of stores that use the phrase "Happy Holidays," along with a poll that asks, "Will you shop at stores that do not say 'Merry Christmas'?"

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio - is an odd one. Christmas remains ubiquitous, and with its celebrators in control of the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and every state supreme court and legislature, it hardly lacks for powerful supporters. There is also something perverse, when Christians are being jailed for discussing the Bible in Saudi Arabia and slaughtered in Sudan, about spending so much energy on stores that sell "holiday trees."

What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas's self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting the holiday's history. They claim that the "traditional" American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson, another Fox anchor, calls "professional atheists" and "Christian haters." But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.

The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued even after Puritanism waned. In 1827, an Episcopal bishop lamented that the Devil had stolen Christmas "and converted it into a day of worldly festivity, shooting and swearing." Throughout the 1800's, many religious leaders were still trying to hold the line. As late as 1855, New York newspapers reported that Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches were closed on Dec. 25 because "they do not accept the day as a Holy One." On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just 18 states.

Christmas gained popularity when it was transformed into a domestic celebration, after the publication of Clement Clarke Moore's "Visit from St. Nicholas" and Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly drawings, which created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be given over to drinking and swearing, but it introduced another concern: commercialism. By the 1920's, the retail industry had adopted Christmas as its own, sponsoring annual ceremonies to kick off the "Christmas shopping season."

Religious leaders objected strongly. The Christmas that emerged had an inherent tension: merchants tried to make it about buying, while clergymen tried to keep commerce out. A 1931 Times roundup of Christmas sermons reported a common theme: "the suggestion that Christmas could not survive if Christ were thrust into the background by materialism." A 1953 Methodist sermon broadcast on NBC - typical of countless such sermons - lamented that Christmas had become a "profit-seeking period." This ethic found popular expression in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." In the 1965 TV special, Charlie Brown ignores Lucy's advice to "get the biggest aluminum tree you can find" and her assertion that Christmas is "a big commercial racket," and finds a more spiritual way to observe the day.

This year's Christmas "defenders" are not just tolerating commercialization - they're insisting on it. They are also rewriting Christmas history on another key point: non-Christians' objection to having the holiday forced on them.

The campaign's leaders insist this is a new phenomenon - a "liberal plot," in Mr. Gibson's words. But as early as 1906, the Committee on Elementary Schools in New York City urged that Christmas hymns be banned from the classroom, after a boycott by more than 20,000 Jewish students. In 1946, the Rabbinical Assembly of America declared that calling on Jewish children to sing Christmas carols was "an infringement on their rights as Americans."

Other non-Christians have long expressed similar concerns. For decades, companies have replaced "Christmas parties" with "holiday parties," schools have adopted "winter breaks" instead of "Christmas breaks," and TV stations and stores have used phrases like "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" out of respect for the nation's religious diversity.

The Christmas that Mr. O'Reilly and his allies are promoting - one closely aligned with retailers, with a smack-down attitude toward nonobservers - fits with their campaign to make America more like a theocracy, with Christian displays on public property and Christian prayer in public schools.

It does not, however, appear to be catching on with the public. That may be because most Americans do not recognize this commercialized, mean-spirited Christmas as their own. Of course, it's not even clear the campaign's leaders really believe in it. Just a few days ago, Fox News's online store was promoting its "Holiday Collection" for shoppers. Among the items offered to put under a "holiday tree" was "The O'Reilly Factor Holiday Ornament." After bloggers pointed this out, Fox changed the "holidays" to "Christmases."

Bill Donahue

Walmart is a world wide organization and must remain conscious of this. The majority of the world still has different practices other than ‘christmas’ which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with ‘christmas’ red and white are actually a representation of of the aminita mascera mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses, mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world.

11/22/05 -- Benedict XVI used his address to comment on the canticle of the first chapter of the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, verses 3-10, which begins with the famous hymn: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens."  In this passage, the Pontiff explained, "the figure of Christ is central, in which the work of God the Father is revealed and fulfilled."  Quoting the canticle, the Holy Father said that Christ is the axis that recapitulates in himself all "things in heaven and things on earth." To emphasize his message, the Pope quoted a second-century saint, Irenaeus, who recognized that "there is only one God and one Jesus Christ, … the Word of God became man" for his salvation.

       Many readers of The Quiet Corner can recall fondly the Masterpiece Theatre presentation of Upstairs/Downstairs in which the public and private lives of the aristocratic Bellamy family and their dedicated servants entertained viewers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.  Lord Bellamy and Lady Marjorie upstairs and Mr. Hudson and Mrs. Bridges downstairs, along with Rose and Sarah and Ruby as well as Lady Prudence and Mr. Jeffries and Sir James, interacted in the weekly episodes according to the rules of strict Edwardian etiquette.  Upstairs knew what to expect and downstairs knew what was expected.  The household at Eton Place did have to face many ordeals like an unexpected pregnancy and a loss of life on the ill-fated Titanic.  But life’s issues, whether salutary or unsavory, were handled with delicacy and dispatch – and strictly according to the rules.

       The class-conscious conduct of the first decade of the twentieth century, so effectively depicted in Upstairs/Downstairs, contrasts greatly with the egalitarian attitude of the first decade of the twenty-first century.  The habitual expectations of the patrician masters and the prompt obedience of the plebian servants can appear unfeeling and insensitive and degrading in the classless society fostered nowadays.  Deference to the will of a superior is almost viewed as a mental illness or a moral defect.  Independence is the hallmark of the liberated man or woman of today.  Obedience is synonymous with subservience, submission, and surrender in today’s world. 

       Most Americans are not relegated to a life “beneath stairs” in the larder or the scullery.  But this does not mean that our society is exempt from obedience.  Even if most of us would like to be our own boss in the secular world, all of us must still remember that we are not our own boss in the spiritual world.  And this is where the bum rap given to obedience in this day and age does immeasurable harm.  True, God is not an Edwardian gentleman living upstairs to whom we must respond at the sound of a parlor bell.   Nor is the sacramental life of the Church a mere living by the rules no matter how sensible or sane they may be.   And with all due respect to the sisters who taught us in grammar school or the brothers who instructed us in high school, mindless obedience is not the epitome of Christian virtue.  Yet obedience still has a significant place in the Christian life.

       The second reading for the fourth Sunday of Advent this year is taken from the final lines of St. Paul’s Epistle the Romans.  After thanking a good number of his fellow workers by name, the Apostle blesses them in the name of God who has revealed through the Gospel the mystery of the ages leading towards “the obedience of faith.”  This phrase was employed previously by St. Paul in the very first verses of this epistle where he defines his whole ministry, his entire apostleship, in terms of bringing about “the obedience of faith.”  St. Paul’s beginning this epistle with the same phrase with which he concludes it illustrates the importance of these words.  For St. Paul, faith implies obedience.  Faith is not simply dogmas and doctrines which delight the intellect but have no influence on the will.  Nor is faith merely rules and regulations which mindlessly guide conduct.  Faith for St. Paul is an interior appreciation of the mystery of redemption which leads to a manner of life reflecting this knowledge from God.  “The obedience of faith” is conduct born of conviction.  “The obedience of faith” is man’s response evoked by God’s revelation.  “The obedience of faith” is our works spawned by his Word. 

       The Biblical “obedience of faith” is not the blind subservience, submission, or surrender of a servant to the will of his master – no matter how benevolent that master might be.  The Scriptural “obedience of faith” is the active employment of one’s own potential when one meets God in his Word, in his Church, in his Spirit.  The man who sincerely believes in God is enabled effectively to believe in himself.  One who commits to God is emboldened to commit himself daily to life.  The “obedience of faith” is the noble human response of a Divinely ennobled soul.

COMPLETE

       Believers familiar with the Sacred Scriptures and with the Judaeo-Christian tradition may be pleasantly surprised but are certainly not shocked that God’s Providence culminates in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.  The active presence of God with his people down through the centuries leads almost predictably to God’s Son becoming one with the human race in the flesh as well as through his Spirit.  God the Father visited Adam and Eve regularly in the Garden, strolling with them in the “breezy time of the day” discussing with paternal interest the adventures of his first creatures.   God was very close to man’s first parents.  God heard the anguished voices of the enslaved Hebrews who had even forgotten his name during their centuries of servitude in Egypt.  Their anonymous cries for relief evoked his personal response to their plight.  He was really never very far from them.   The celebrated march of the freed salves through the wilderness again found God accompanying them as a cloud during the day and as a pillar of fire during the night.  He never abandoned them.  As their journey progressed and as they finally settled in the promised land, the presence of God to his people became even more obvious as the Jews came to appreciate the significance of the Mercy Seat, that spot just above the treasured Ark of the Covenant where the Spirit of God was firmly believed to dwell.  This belief in the dwelling place of God with his people led to the great reverence with which the Jews regarded their Temple.  The Temple was indeed “the house of God and the gate of heaven,” recalling that awesome encounter between God and Jacob in which the patriarch saw heaven and earth linked by a celestial ladder.  The Biblical images of togetherness are countless.

       The oneness of God with his people during Jewish history and throughout all Scripture makes the arrival of Jesus Christ into this world as a fellow human being, as a flesh and blood brother, as a man in all things save sin, much easier to grasp.  The whole of revelation is a celebration of unity:  God’s unity within himself: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; God’s unity with his creation: from those first walks at Eden to the final assembly of the faithful around the heavenly throne.  Jesus Christ, at once God and man, is the visible celebration of this unity.  He is the promised oneness made real, made actual, made even palpable.  Christ is indeed Emmanuel – God is with us.

       Although the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is almost the logical consequence of God’s Divine Providence, the Scriptures are insistent that the Savior’s arrival in man’s midst is a pure gift from God.  Mankind did nothing to earn or merit or compel the nearness of God with which the human race has been blessed.  The Incarnation amply confirms the nearness of God but also the gift of God to which the rest of Scripture bears witness. 

       In the second reading for the second Mass of Christmas, St. Paul stresses to his disciple Titus just how much of a gift the Incarnation of Jesus Christ truly is.  The Apostle writes that “when the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared” in Christ, it was “not because of any righteous deeds we had done” but rather was a result of “his mercy.”  St. Paul, citing baptism and the anointing with the Spirit as God’s instruments, sees these sacraments as the generous means by which God “richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior” his gifts of deliverance and perseverance.  Salvation, Titus is instructed, is entirely a result of God’s “grace,” not man’s efforts.  It is God who has made men “heirs in hope of eternal life,” beneficiaries of God’s kindness, recipients of his largesse, inheritors of his bounty.  St. Paul makes it clear that salvation and eternal life are entirely the results of God’s thoughtfulness and not in the least the consequence of man’s worthiness. 

       Although the gift giving associated with Christmas can be abused and commercialized, the notion of a gift freely bestowed is essential to the true meaning of this holy day.  Christmas, like any other authentic Christian feast, celebrates the mercy of God.  Christmas is God’s mercy made visible in Christ.