January 20th, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
I don’t think that there is any doubt that today’s Gospel except from the second chapter of St. John is one of most people’s favorite scenes from the New Testament. It is very concrete. It is very earthy. It describes a scene with which we are all familiar and it inserts both Jesus and his mother into that scene in a very dramatic and pleasurable context. There was a wedding in Cana way up north in Galilee. It must have been quite an affair. The text begins by stating that the mother of Jesus was there and then adds that Jesus and his disciples had likewise been invited to the happy celebration. Well, if you add 14 people at the last minute, it must have been quite a crowd. To me that also seems to be indicated by the fact that for a long period of time the wine had run out causing Mary to say to her son, “They have no more wine.” You know the story. Jesus’ first move is to act unconcerned. Mary gives directions later, “Do whatever he tells you” and that, of course, is to fill good sized vats with water. In an outcome that would have made any Irishman happy, the water is not only changed into wine but the very best wine!
This story is told endlessly as a way of documenting the influence that Mary has over her son. Maybe we have made a little too much of it but it is certainly a wonderful story and it shows a very human Jesus. He is with friends, he is at a wedding, they have been celebrating for a long period of time and he takes action to eliminate embarrassment – all very human traits – and ones that we should think of when we are praying to our Lord. While we worship Jesus as divine, we must, at the same time, be conscious of the fact that this was a real human nature through which he was dealing with us, a nature that enables him to be one with us and enables us to more easily identify with him.
Care for any more wine?
 

Share on Facebook

Feast of the Holy Family
From time to time, I mention that I am really fascinated by the Church year. By that I mean the liturgical year, and how the church has chosen to order all 52 weeks in a 3 year cycle that beautifully summarizes the whole story of salvation, and most especially the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
I believe that’s always the case, but you couldn’t get better than today’s feast day, the formal title of which is the Feast of the Holy Family.
It’s a week after Christmas, and most of us have great family celebrations, but who is not exhausted? Today’s gospel excerpt simply could not be better, nor for me, more delightful. Remember the Church has to move fast with the liturgical year. One week ago we were celebrating His birth. Today He is twelve! And since Jesus is entering His teenage years, it’s only right that He should upset his parents! It’s the end of a big Jewish feast day, and Mary and Joseph had gone to celebrate the passover in Jerusalem. In the chaos of returning home with a large party of the faithful, Mary and Joseph took for granted that Jesus was alright and in the crowd. Suddenly they realized that He was not there. They raced back to Jerusalem, and actually spend three days looking for Him. Where was He? Jesus was in the temple astonishing the teachers and clerical beurocrats. the text says “they were amazed at his intelligence and his answers”.
Mary says something that other mothers have said in the course of history- “why have you done this to us? You see your father and mother have been searching for you in sorrow.” Then, from the mouth of this twelve year old comes an awesome response. “Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” It would be a long time before they really understood that statement, but Mary never forgot it.
Families must struggle to stay close, even under pressure. Families must learn to be patient with each other, even in the face of stress. Families must trust each other in order to be happy.
The Holy family got it right!

Share on Facebook

The Christmas story lingers on. Tomorrow the Church across the world celebrates the great feast of the Epiphany. Epiphaneia – literally means to manifest or to show forth. That is the name that the Christian tradition has given the beautiful section of
St. Matthew’s Gospel when strange men came from the East bringing gifts to the newborn child of Mary. This story is beautiful and filled with mystery. We don’t know who these men were, we don’t know where they came from, we don’t know what their job descriptions were. One translation of the word is that they are astrologists. We would be more comfortable with astronomers. The details don’t matter. The main point of the story is its symbolism. Jesus is born in the Jewish village of Bethlehem. Joseph and Mary were Jews. The shepherds were Jews. Herod, of course, was Jewish. The whole cast was Jewish up until the moment that these three men came bringing gifts to the newborn child. The Church has used this to symbolize that on this day Jesus is revealed beyond the community of Judaism to the whole world and today we celebrate that fact and thank God for it.

I think that faithful Christians are very conscious of the fact that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and we are thankful for that. We are also concerned about our own eternal destiny and so from time to time we forget the reality that Jesus came to the whole human family, to the entire world and we who are followers of our Savior ought to use some of that prayer, time, energy and resources to move Jesus’ message forward to the rest of the planet. If the truth were known, we haven’t done all that well in two thousand years. With the population of the planet now hitting seven billion, only about two billion on the planet today would have been directly touched by the message of Jesus. We have a great deal of work to do.

Everybody back on their camel!

Share on Facebook

Last week, I mentioned that St. Louise House is my favorite chartiy, but truly, ANY program around here that has been set up by generous people to lessen the pain and suffering in our society is on my list of favorites! Next comes Casa Marianella.

Casa Marianella began 25 years ago when a generous real estate man gave the Diocese a very plain three bedroom house in East Austin. The donor was well aware of the tremendous difficulties facing people who arrive in this country without a knowledge of the language, without friends or contacts and usually without necessary skills to make it. Thus, was born Casa Marianella. Over this quarter of a century they have helped thousands upon thousands of men and women from almost every corner of the globe, although most of their “guests” are from Mexico and Central America.

Subsequently, Casa Marianella was able to add a second house for men and then, very much like St. Louise House, they opened a third house for women and children on a beautiful little hill in East Austin. That hill had two other houses on it and since then these extraordinarily generous people have secured two other houses and these three are operated solely to protect immigrant women and their children. Although operating under the overall guidance of Casa Marianella, it functions under a separate name – Posada Esperanza.

The two directors are Jennifer Long and Patti McCabe. They can be reached at (512) 385-5571. Please consider donating something on their “wish list” as a special Christmas gift.

When you think of recent immigrants in Austin at this time of the year, you can’t help but think about Joseph, Mary and Jesus being immigrants on the road with limited resources and receiving a cold reception. Casa Marianella and Posada Esperanza provide marvelously warm, generous receptions to these Christ-like migrants as they are struggling to put their lives in order. We wish them a Merry Christmas. We need to do something to help them have one.

Share on Facebook

On September 15th, we celebrate yet another Marian feast, namely that of Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady of Sorrows? Why would we want to mark such a liturgical event? Shouldn’t we try to keep things on a happy, positive mode of remembering? Not really.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, did suffer. She suffered a great deal. Some we know from the Gospel texts, some of it we know just from using horse sense. One reason that Christians like to meditate and pray on the idea of Mary’s pain and difficulties is that it makes it easier for us to identify with her. It makes us more conscious of the fact that she understands us and is concerned about us.

Mary had a life plan worked out for herself but it was offset by the experience of the angel. Later on, she would be a refugee, an immigrant, and experience dire poverty at the time of the birth of her Divine Son. Of course, the worst suffering for Our Lady is marked by the week that we now call “Holy” because she witnessed the agony and death of her Divine Son.

The question is, did Mary know and understand that this human person that she bore and raised? There are differences of opinion but I think that most theologians and scripture scholars would say that while Mary knew that her son was awesomely mysterious and powerful, she would not have clear insight into his true make-up until after the Resurrection.

Regardless of the degree of her knowledge, Mary was magnificently faithful to Gabriel.

“Be it done to me according to thy word.”

Share on Facebook

Throughout the liturgy of the Church year, celebrations in honor of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, appear since the earliest generation and it is still very true today.  Today we celebrate the Assumption of Mary, which is the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her life.
The early Church listened carefully and fervently what was said about Mary, the mother of Jesus.  The 11^th chapter of Revelations tells us that, “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”  The early Church began to mull over their awareness that Jesus was born free of sin.  They were struck with awe about the honor that had been given to his mother and the idea began to quickly spread.  She also was free of original sin.  During the Reformation, this view would be a cause of great dissension and controversy in the Christian community.  It is a concept to which Roman Catholics have held since the first generations and holds to it strongly today.

A more practical thing to think about is that quote from Revelations.  We talk about Mary being a queen, of course.  We are using very human, earthy concepts.  However, we need such concepts in order to flesh out this awesome reality.  Mary is Queen of Heaven and earth.  This title is thus an image that has nothing to do with eternal reality but it does give our minds an image of a sign in which to convey awesome power and authority.  If we use such earthly terms, we must be conscious of their limitations.  We are simply trying to say that if Mary is Queen of heaven, she exercises that role by standing beside her Divine Son.

Just as baptism makes us brothers and sisters of Jesus so faith in his wonderful mother provides yet another family tie.  We are children of Mary.  Luke’s Gospel tells us about Mary’s journey to visit Elizabeth.  That scene presents us with that magnificent hymn which we call the Magnificat and in it, she states that, “all future generations shall call you blessed.”

This is certainly true as far as life within the Church is concerned. Hail Mary!

Share on Facebook

Most of the information that we have about the life of Jesus of Nazareth is contained in the Gospels and, to a lesser extent, in the Epistles. But other stories exist that are firmly locked in ancient tradition. We don’t have the same confidence in them that we do with the New Testament texts but still they are worth looking at and one is the story of an elderly couple, that we call Saints Joachim and Anne, who are considered by an ancient tradition to be the parents of the Virgin Mary. Today (June 26th) is their feast day.

I am sure that Mary had parents and therefore it could very easily have been this elderly couple. I just like the idea of thinking of Mary in a very down to earth context. So often when we think of our Blessed Mother, she is a statue attached to the wall of a church with her feet four feet off the ground. I would also like to think of her peeling potatoes and chopping onions in order to make stew in the kitchen. When I think of this young girl in this manner, she becomes far more realistic to me than the statue with its eyes lifted towards heaven.

Mary was real. She lived in difficult times. She knew what it was to be a refugee, an immigrant. She saw her perfect son arrested and subjected to unbelievable torture. She stood at the foot of the cross and beside the grave. She was real and she is our adopted mother. Because of Mary, I thank God for Joachim and Anne. I am sure that they appreciated the privilege that God had given them.

Share on Facebook

Today, we see conflict in the sacred liturgy. We are still in the Easter season but today we celebrate the Feast of the Visitation, realizing that the first signs of Christmas are nudging up against the ongoing celebration of the Resurrection.

This happens occasionally in the liturgical year because we have to scramble so many different celebrations, spread over 2,000 years, in a mere 365 days. Today is one of those days. The Church stops and remembers a beautiful scene in the life of our Blessed Mother when she went to visit her cousin, Elizabeth. The day has been called the Feast of the Visitation. How many times have we been praying the rosary in a rather distracted fashion and one by one we ticked off the joyful mysteries. Speaking only for myself, I know that I would call out the title, “The Visitation,” but most of the time could not get my mind around it all that clearly. Let’s try today.

Mary is a very young girl, probably only 16 or 17, and she has just had this extraordinary message from an angel telling her, and she is a virgin, that she is going to carry a child and that this child would be, in some sense, the Savior. If that astonishing message was not enough, Gabriel also tells Mary that her older cousin who lives outside of Jerusalem is also six months pregnant. The text tells us that “Mary set out…in haste into the hill country to a town of Judah where Elizabeth and Zachariah were living.”

Okay, so much for the text. Let’s try to visualize that – a young girl who had plans for her life suddenly finds them extraordinarily changed in a mysterious way that she does not understand and that, in some sense, her cousin, Elizabeth, is involved in the same overall program. In the text, we know nothing of any companions so we can assume that Mary went alone on country roads to find her beloved relative. Imagine how her mind must have been spinning trying to figure out the whole thing. Even though she did not understand everything that was going on, she had a consuming faith that motivated her to respond positively to the message she had received from the angel. Her faith is made stronger when she comes into Elizabeth’s house. When Mary was in Elizabeth’s presence the as yet unborn John the Baptist stirred in his mother’s womb and Elizabeth, being filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Who I am that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

Like the average person who grew up a Roman Catholic, I probably said that line in the Hail Mary a million or two times. Would that I could say what Elizabeth has said. Would that I could mean it with clarity and a profound faith. Every time we receive communion, what is true of Elizabeth is true of each one of us. Who am I that the Lord should come to me? Domine, non sum dignus. Lord, I am not worthy. While it would be normal to be overcome with awe, an even better response is a joyful acceptance of this central point of our faith. God loves us, he has visited us, he invites us, he is with us, he is within us.

Share on Facebook

I have always thought that the season of Advent was a little out of control.  We talk about it as a period of solemn expectation and prayerful preparation.  We talk about discipline and additional prayer but the fact is that we have Gaudete Sunday right in the middle of it, almost blowing the whole spirit of solemnity into the air.

Then comes the 4^th Sunday.  We have only allocated four weeks to symbolize the eons of time between our first humans and the coming of Jesus but even the 4^th Sunday can’t hold up as being solemn or glum as today we go straight into the preparation for Christmas.

The Gospel is that magnificent quotation from the first chapter of Luke.  An angel appears to this young Jewish girl who has a commitment to virginity and he tells her, “Rejoice, oh highly favored daughter.  The Lord is with you and blessed are you among women.”  Mary, of course, was nervous, disturbed and confused but the angel continued, “You have found favor with God.  You shall conceive and bear a son and give him the name Jesus….and he will be called the son of the most high.”  Wow!

What is a young, peasant girl to do about that?  Angels are in short supply but here is one right in front of her telling her that her earlier plans are not going to be fulfilled.  Mary’s response is that wonderful statement of humility and obedience. “I am the maid servant of the Lord.  Let it be done as you say.”

Let us all follow Mary’s example of saying YES to our Lord.

The next scene will be the birth of Jesus!

Share on Facebook

Throughout the liturgy of the Church year, celebrations in honor of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, appear since the earliest generation and it is still very true today.  The early Church listened carefully and fervently what was said about Mary, the mother of Jesus.  The 11^th chapter of Revelations tells us that, “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”  The early Church began to mull over their awareness that Jesus was born free of sin.  They were struck with awe about the honor that had been given to his mother and the idea began to quickly spread.  She also was free of original sin.  During the Reformation, this view would be a cause of great dissension and controversy in the Christian community.  It is a concept to which Roman Catholics have held since the first generations and holds to it strongly today.

A more practical thing to think about is that quote from Revelations.  We talk about Mary being a queen, of course.  We are using very human, earthy concepts.  However, we need such concepts in order to flesh out this awesome reality.  Mary is Queen of Heaven and earth.  This title is thus an image that has nothing to do with eternal reality but it does give our minds an image of a sign in which to convey awesome power and authority.  If we use such earthly terms, we must be conscious of their limitations.  We are simply trying to say that if Mary is Queen of heaven, she exercises that role by standing beside her Divine Son.

Just as baptism makes us brothers and sisters of Jesus so faith in his wonderful mother provides yet another family tie.  We are children of Mary.  Luke’s Gospel tells us about Mary’s journey to visit Elizabeth.  That scene presents us with that magnificent hymn which we call the Magnificat and in it, she states that, “all future generations shall call you blessed.”

This is certainly true as far as life within the Church is concerned. Hail Mary!

Share on Facebook