Advent Message

Just to get started, what is Advent about? Few of us use the word Advent as it is not part of our holiday lexicon. Culturally Advent is just part of “the holidays,” a safe term to avoid giving any offense so necessary in a society that promotes being offended.  The accepted theme of Advent is being prepared but not the kind of preparations we associate with this time of year.
 
For many, Advent (or if you will, the weeks prior to Dec. 25 ^th) has become a marathon.  Will I endure it?  Will I make it to the finish line?  Advent has become a countdown.  As soon as the table has been cleared from the “friends-giving” dinner, the starting gun is fired, and we are off and running.
 
It is true. We see and experience the weeks before Christmas as one long race of commerce disguised as holiday cheer with the finish line being Christmas day.  Off we go to parties; a predictable round of obligatory social appearances for which we brace ourselves against the onslaught of sugar, carbohydrates and alcohol.   Then we have Madison Avenue who has been preparing us for months to take advantage of the “deals” waiting at the click of a mouse or at the store where the liturgy of shopping assures the balance of power that we call gift giving.  
 
Then there are the cards.  Most no longer send real Christmas cards.  These are replaced by the latest photo of the family taken during the summer vacation.  In a not so subtle reminder that the family unit and not Christ are the center of the celebration, mom, dad and the kids stand in for the Holy Family as the focus of the Incarnation.  Couldn’t we at least dress everyone as Mary, Joseph and the shepherds for our picture on Waikiki Beach?
 
The holiday finish line is in sight and the great day arrives.  Expectations are mostly met and in bleary-eyed exhaustion we end the day saying; “wasn’t it a great Christmas!” Then it’s over. December the 26 ^th.
 
The Christmas tree set up weeks ago has thoroughly dried out signaling the end of the festivity.  The savior, just hours old has ushered in the dawn of hope and the promise of salvation.  The great celebration of the Incarnation, the reality of God among us has begun!  That celebration, however, will be relegated to the church.  In homes all over, yes, even Catholic homes, Christmas is packed away before New Year’s Day.
 
So back to Advent.  Advent really doesn’t have much at all to do with Christmas.  Advent is two signs with one pointing backward and the other forwards.  It is about dreams and visions, old ones from the prophets and how dreams come true in flesh and blood, in a child born to us.
Advent is about judgment and standing in the presence of our Lord reassured that God is on the side of the disenfranchised, the desperate, the individuals and families struggling against the system and falling through the cracks and being blamed for that and a host of social ills largely created by unbridled greed.
 
The Scriptures of the first Sunday of Advent give us the real picture as they tell us that this is a time of patient endurance and waiting, for passionate repentance, for justice to come among us. 
We will have to wait to hear about shepherds tending their flocks, stars guiding magi from the east and the singing of angels.  Before any of that that we must hear about beating our swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.  Isaiah speaks of something better than the violence that has the world firmly in its grip.  St. Paul tells us to wake up.  Make decisions about the sin that we invite and entertain and imagine that in them there is no harm.  “Let us throw off the works of darkness” and go find the dirty, tattered garment of our baptismal holiness and drag it to God into confession so that cleaned and restored we may wear them as a witness to something greater than our own ambitions, greed, and appetites. God is coming and he is creeping up on us like a robber in the night breaking into our house and world. Advent is a guard dog barking loudly and rousing us from our sleep to let us know that there is an intruder in the house, are we awake?
 
Advent is our spiritual wake-up call.  Time to shake off our laziness, our poor excuses for why we are the way we are.  It is meant to be a rude awakening, like a trumpet blast that signals hope, glory and worldwide judgment.  What are we concerned about?  Do our day-to-day lives reveal that we have “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”?  Do we live excessively, emotionally, sexually, with revenge and quarrelling, dissension and jealousy?  Do we participate in war, train for war, and live off the spoils of war?  Are the weapons of war and the violence of war as promoted in gaming on the top of our gift list for our children? 
 
Time and eternity are the universal issues of this season, seen against the backdrop of war and peace, salvation and death.  It is about the connections between the poor and the push to kill through weapons of mass misery, arms sales, and the horrors of millions of people who are victims of such.  In the Maryknoll produced film “Arms for the Poor” the question is asked; “In an economy based on inflicting pain in other people’s lives, where is God in your country?” 
 
Advent is the time when the voices of conscience stir our souls and nudge our hearts and even call to question our politics. Advent begins with the lesson that if we are followers of the child who was threatened by Herod’s sword, then we must convert the ability to kill over and over again into technology for feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sheltering the needy.
 
Matthew’s gospel gives us no hints of tinsel to come.  His message is connected to Isaiah’s vision of the Son of Man and it is a frightening and terrifying one much like we hear from the prophet Daniel. Matthew wants us to be prepared for a day of judgment when the coming of Christ will take us by surprise as were the people who were surprised by the flood in Noah’s day.  Matthew says be prepared, and that’s what Advent is about.  Not the preparedness that involves Amazon Prime, but rather in the prime time spent in prayerful reflection of our own lives and how we live them in the context of our baptismal covenant. 
 
Advent is a time for repentance, hope and light.  It is a time for seekers of vision and hope-bringers.  The kingdom is come and dwells among us, but where?  Have we made space for him?
The Holy One is coming to visit and is intent on stealing us away from all we are attached to and binding us to one another in peace…and when we least expect it!  That sounds a little ominous, like we should be prepared or something.
 

What is Your Mustard Seed?

Fr. Larry's Homily on the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, C

Have you ever had the experience of trying to buy something with useless currency?
I tried, once, to use a twenty-five-year-old British One Pound note only to be told that they aren’t accepted anymore.  Imagine that feeling. One moment you have in your hand what you believe is exactly what you need to get what you want only to be told that you do not. And this is not the friendly and beneficent “your- money- is- no- good- here” kind of statement.  It’s the bold fact that what you trusted has let you down.
 
The disciples had also reached that point in their walk with Jesus, so much so that they finally broke down and blurted out: “Increase our faith.” A simple demand, a reasonable request made by those who had seen Jesus do some astonishing and spectacular things.  If he can cause great miracles to happen, summoning faith should be a snap. But Jesus gives a peculiar response.
 
He gives them outlandish comparisons about mustard seeds and mulberry trees.  The rhetoric may be outrageous, but the reality is rich.  Forget about the scenery…the mulberry and the ocean; focus on the fundamental affirmation. In fact, Jesus’ answer does not really meet the disciple’s request; he does not say, “OK, here’s some more faith.” He puts the disciples on the spot.
 
For the Jesus we encounter in the gospel of Luke, what is important is not the amount of faith but the kind of faith. If it were no bigger than a mustard seed, it would still be of unbelievable power.
 
The point for Luke is this: with even the tiniest amount of genuine faith, men and women who listen to Jesus’ word and commit themselves to him can do things impossible to naked human nature. Can you recall how the gospel of Mark ends? “These signs will accompany those who believe: BY using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will lay their hands on the sick, and the sick will recover.
 
What about us? What is this faith as we experience it? Especially as Catholic Christians? What is this commitment in concrete reality?
 
First off, faith is not the same thing as certainty. Many people get the two mixed up. Many ask for faith but what they really want is certainty. They want to be excused of all responsibility on their end. “Give me absolutes so that I can get on with my life and not have to think about it anymore.” While that sounds ideal, there is nothing in our faith that points to such a transactional, detached and irresponsible position. Nothing of that speaks to a living, daily relationship.
 
Honestly some think of the pursuit of faith as if it were like their internet or cable provider.
“I just want to make my payment and then always get what I want when I want it.”  When the service fails…and it usually does, then they say: “Well, you just cannot trust them…” 
“I say my prayers, I go to Mass, I give when I am asked…and then God lets me down…”
Faith in God is never the result of any quid pro quo arrangement.
 
For us there are two aspects to faith. First is the intellectual reality and by that, I mean the so-called Act of Faith.  This is what we have been taught and retain in our memory. These are the fundamental truths of our faith in Jesus Christ: “I believe everything the Catholic Church teaches, because God has revealed it through Christ; I accept it not because the church says so; I accept it because through the Church God has made it possible for me to accept it. 
 
It is on God’s word that I can make the declaration: “There is but one God in three divine persons; The Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary. This wafer that looks like bread and tastes like bread is not bread but the flesh and blood, body, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.”
This is essential for a genuinely Catholic faith, and why? Because the Son of God took on flesh and blood and died for us to tell us something…about God, about ourselves and about living and dying. It is important for us to take God’s truth on God’s word…but faith is not simply a matter of the intellect.
 
What the disciples were asking for could not be provided by a catechism or a laundry list of doctrines to be accepted without delay. Nor was Jesus about to tell them what doctrines they had to believe to enter the kingdom.
 
What Peter, Matthew, and John wanted was an increase of trust. Faith in its fullness is a surrender of my whole person. My intellect will not save me…nor will it save anyone.
To believe means that I yield everything, including my whole self, to God. Here it is that I risk all.
Against all odds, against all fears, against all objections and in a sense against all reason.
I utter a total yes to God whose will in my regard I often find difficult to understand.
 
A total yes in darkness.
 
Here belief involves total trust. It’s Abraham leaving country and his kin…” not knowing where he was to go”, not knowing what would happen to him along the way, knowing only that God was calling him …at the age of 75, to leave what he loved and to settled where God alone knew.
That’s why we call Abraham “our father in faith.”
 
It is poor old Job sitting on a dung heap crying out in the middle of his torments. “Though God slay me, yet will I trust in him.” 
 
It is Mother Teresa explaining her success to an inquiring reporter: “I am like a little pencil in God’s hand.  The pencil has only to be allowed to be used.”
 
It is the mom and dad accompanying to the cemetery their second child who has died in tragic circumstances to be buried next to the first… not reciting the Creed, only repeating over and over again; “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place my trust in you…”
 
Or how about Jesus? I suspect a fair number of people do not realize that Jesus lived a life of faith. We tend to see him so absorbed in his Father, so protected by his Father, that faith played little or no part in his life. Not so! A famous German theologian Karl Rahner brought this home to me in his writing about belief in Christ:
“ According to Scripture we may safely say that Jesus in his life was the believer…he is the one who hopes absolutely…loves absolutely.  Jesus surrendered himself in his death unconditionally to the absolute mystery he called his father, into whose hands he committed his existence, when in the nigh of his death and forsakenness he was deprived of everything that is otherwise regarded as the content of a human existence…everything fell away from him, even the security of the closeness of God’s love, and in this trackless dark there prevailed silently only the mystery that…has no name and to which he calmly surrendered himself as to eternal love and not to the hell of futility.
 
The point is this:  For all that he was the Son of God, for all that he had a unique relationship with his Father, this man too died not with experience of resurrection, not with any unassailable proof that he would rise from the dead; he died with faith in his Father,
with hope of life forever. That’s why the last words from the cross are so striking…and faith-filled: “ Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Remember what his enemies said as they taunted him on Calvary? “He trusts in God; let God deliver him how, if he wants to” …He trusts in God.
 
The disciple’s request for an increase of faith is our request as well. The answer Jesus gives them and us concerns no what can be done for us but what we ourselves can do.  It begins by surrendering anxious lives for the peace that is ours if we decide that there is, instead of ourselves, someone else in charge of everything. It means taking our desire for certainty and placing it where it belongs, in the knowledge that God wants wonderful things for us when we give up trying to buy them with currency for which he has no use. If currency is still the image that works best, then the only currency Jesus takes is us.
 
The boldest move a poker player can make is to say “ I am all in.” Recognizing that God always has the upper hand, maybe our best move is to lay all our cards on the table.
 
May we pray?
Father we often confuse faith with certainty.  It comes from our desire to be the gods of our own little worlds.  Remove what keeps us from surrendering ourselves completely to you that we may with total trust in your plan for our lives, live fully in sure knowledge of your love.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen
 

“Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard
comes from the preaching of Christ”

- Romans 10

 

 

Organic Gift

by Parker Palmer

 
Years ago, I heard Dorothy Day speak. Founder of the Catholic Worker movement, her long-term commitment to living among the poor on New York's Lower East Side - had made her one of my heroes. So it came as a great shock when in the middle of her talk, I heard her start to ruminate about the "ungrateful poor."

I did not understand how such a dismissive phrase could come from the lips of a saint - until it hit me with the force of a Zen koan. Dorothy Day was saying, "Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself. If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived, and that is not what the poor need; it will only impoverish them further. Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward."

When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless - a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other's need to be cared for. That kind of giving is not only loveless and faithless, based on the arrogant and mistaken notion that God has no way of channeling love to the other except through me. Yes, we are created in and for community, to be there, in love, for one another. But community cuts both ways: when we reach the limits of our own capacity to love, community means trusting that someone else will be available to the person in need.

One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess - the ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have; it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place. 

May Sarton, in her poem "Now I Become Myself," uses images from the natural world to describe a different kind of giving, grounded in a different way of being, a way that results not in burnout but in fecundity and abundance:

As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root...

When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself - and me - even as I give it away. Only when I give something that does not grow within me do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.
About the Author: Excerpted from Parker Palmer's book "Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation"