Month: December 2018

A homily for Christmas 2018.

Hi, honey, I’m home!

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Every day, in every nation, in every language, people announce “I’m home, dear,” and the activity starts. Hugs, hoorays, dogs jumping and barking, maybe a meal. If the person who’s arriving has been away for a while, there are shouts of “What did you bring me?”, followed by a few gifts and more hoorays.

This time of year, of course, we pepper our hellos with Merry Christmases and Happy New Years, but there’s an implied I’m home.

We even have a song that promises I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.

Christmas is a time for going home to family. To friends, old and new. To places filled with memories.

We come home from school. Come home from military deployments, thank God. Come home from business trips. Come home with the grandkids to spend time with extended families.

And, at Christmas, people come home to church.

When they do, what should they expect to find?

Family, filled with love.

Friends in a community of faith and service.

The banquet set by Jesus at his Last Supper.

What else can we find this Christmas morning?

Well, there’s a Middle Eastern refugee couple in trouble. You see, they were ordered to leave their home and travel to their “official” hometown, where they found that the town had no home for them. They barely survived on the kindness of strangers, stayed in subhuman conditions while their baby was born, and became refugees again when the king decided their baby wasn’t fit to live.

Scripture tells us a lot about the Nativity itself, how the lowliest shepherds were the first to learn of the miraculous arrival of Jesus, the redeemer of the world, setting the tone for Christ’s embrace of the poor and marginalized.

We learn from the Gospels that, even as an infant who could not talk, who as a fully human child undoubtedly cried and drooled and needed 2 a.m. feedings, Jesus showed his divine nature to religious sages such as Simeon. With this birth, the world was changing for the better.

We fast-forward to Jesus at 12, staying behind in the temple as the caravan trudged on, teaching and preaching with wisdom beyond his years. He comes home, finally, and grows in wisdom and grace and age.

The Gospels leave Joseph behind at this point, other than to call Jesus “that carpenter’s son” as Christ carried out his ministries.

But during the Christmas season, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family, JMJ, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the home base from which the Word Made Flesh ventured out.

In our baptismal rite, we parents vow that we will be our children’s first and best teachers. Two millennia ago, it was the same. Home was where Jesus learned about God, whom he called Abba, Father.

Who, because of Jesus, we get to call Father, too.

Joseph, as a good Jew and descendant of King David, would have prayed, would have known the law of Moses, would have known psalms and Isaiah and Jeremiah. Probably not as well as the religious leaders at the temple, but well enough for them to steer his life. And well enough that he and Mary could teach their child, Jesus.

Joseph, as provider for his family, would have worked hard, would have worked honorably, would have worked profitably enough to keep a roof over their heads. He would have served his duty as a husband and father. And, as a master, he would have taught all these skills and ethics to his apprentice, Jesus.

Mary, as a dutiful Jewish wife and mother and keeper of the home, would have reinforced everything Joseph was doing. Love makes a house a home, and Mary’s heart linked – still links – directly to the love of God.

Love makes a house a home, and the Jewish custom of hospitality centers on the home, where, of course, Jesus learned it.

It’s a shame nobody in Bethlehem remembered it that first Christmas night. Mary and Joseph would have remembered how they were treated, and, considering how Jesus turned out, it’s safe to guess that his parents opted to make sure nobody who needed hospitality from them was ever ignored.

Hospitality – kindness – is a key theme of Christ’s mission, his mission then and his continuing mission, the mission that we, as his hands and hearts today, are called to do. Jesus sought hospitality when he needed it – remember, he once grumbled that he had no place to lay his head, meaning literally that he had no home to go to, and metaphorically that some people were not embracing his Way.

Mostly, though, Jesus offered hospitality. He offered the precious gift of time; he gave the present of presence, healing people sick in their bodies and sick in their souls. He lifted up the lowly; the rich, he sent away empty. Not out of spite, but out of a sense of justice. The justice that calls us to share our time and treasure with all of our fellow humans, tall, short, red, green, rainbow. To make a home for them in our lives.

Because when we do, as St. Matthew’s Gospel reminds us, when we feed or shelter or clothe or visit the least among us, we’re being hospitable to Christ.

We’re making a home for the newborn king in our hearts, today at Christmas and every day.

Listen again, please.

I’ll be home for Christmas.

I’m home, dear.

That’s Jesus speaking to us.

A homily for the First Sunday of Advent, Dec. 2, 2018

Every house has one.

Maybe it’s a drawer in the kitchen, or a cabinet or cubby.

Perhaps it’s a shed or a garage or an entire basement.

But no matter what form it takes, every house has one, at least one.

It’s where we stash our stuff.

Sometimes we call our stuff “junk,” as in, “Check the Junk Drawer.”

Junk or stuff, everything we’ve stashed is valuable, critically needed, can’t do without it.

Or, at least, it was when we first got it.

How many times have you gone to The Home Depot to get a refrigerator bulb and had to buy two, because that item came only in a multi-pack?

The fridge only needed one, so what did you do with the other one?

Junk Drawer.

And we all know that anything that goes into the Junk Drawer hides when we need to fish it out. That bulb? I swear it was in there. Oh well, I’ll go buy another.

This time, of course, the multi-pack is a three-fer, not a two-fer, so even more can get lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

Sometimes we find that bulb after we’ve replaced the refrigerator, and the new one doesn’t take that size.

But do we throw it out? Nooooo, because it’s a perfectly good bulb and we might find a use for it and anyway that would be wasteful.

We never clean out junk drawers or basements or garages. It takes an act of God or an oil spill to get us to excavate.

Junk or stuff, everything we’ve stashed is valuable, critically needed, can’t do without it, remember?

This rule also applies to faded, threadbare T-shirts from concerts in 1978, varsity jackets from 1975, air and oil filters for a 1998 Escort wagon, and dozens of 1157-A taillight bulbs.

We cling to these things the way Andy clung to Woody in the “Toy Story” movies.

St. Paul had some thoughts on this.

In the 13th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians – the scripture we know best for its “love is patient, love is kind” wisdom – St. Paul talks about maturing:

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

When we put aside childish things of this world, material things like toys and clothes and stuff, where are we putting them? Are we giving them to someone who needs them, if they’re still useful? Are we tossing them in the trash if they’re not? Are we putting them in a scrapbook or hope chest to preserve them as souvenirs?

Or are we stashing them in the Junk Drawer in hopes we can use them again?

Hmmm.

Do our lives have spiritual Junk Drawers?

Because, you know, when we speak of childish things the way Paul did, we’re not talking about Mr. Potato Head.

First and foremost, we’re talking about habits, things we do almost without thinking or actively choosing. We’re looking at the way we interact with the divine, with how we follow God’s Law of Love: because, when we were children, somebody told us to do this and not that. Rote memorization of the Catechism. Blind obedience of the Commandments.

A good start. But only a start.

When we put aside childish things, we begin to examine the current state of our relationship with our living, loving God.

We ask if we’ve matured in our personal covenant with our Creator. Or if this “Being a Catholic” thing is a habit Sister Fleurette or our CCD teacher drilled into us.

If it’s merely a habit, if we’re sleepwalking and not actively, intellectually and emotionally embracing the faith, then Paul has some advice.

As we use this Advent season to prepare to sing “Glory to the Newborn King,” here are some questions we should ask ourselves. Depending on how we answer, we should be able to figure out the “what’s next.”

Do we pray? How often? How?

Do we treat God as a lifeline, as a utility belt, as a tool we carry around in our pocket in case we need him but one we forget about when we don’t?

Do we dedicate our activities – work, play, leisure – to God, who gave us the life, the abilities, the opportunities we have?

(Here’s some homework, and there will be a test: If you don’t already know, please look up AMDG and let me know what it means and how it applies to Advent and every day.)

Do we see Christ in the least among us: those in obvious need of life’s necessities such as food, shelter and clothing as the weather turns cold, as well as those with subtler needs, those marginalized because of race, country of origin, different abilities, who they love?

Will we be counted among the sheep or the goats when Jesus judges the multitudes?

Do we want to clean out the Junk Drawer filled with our spiritually childish things, and now and forever have a mature relationship with the Trinity?

God, who is Love, has open arms.