Be Vigilant: Daily Meditations for Advent (3 page)

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

"Blessed is she who believed that the message made her by the Lord would be fulfilled." Here is where most of us fall short. We really don't believe, silently we distrust. In our actions we loudly show our unbelief.

Elizabeth praises Mary for her trust.

What do you and I really trust in?

Today ask the Blessed Virgin to give you a stronger faith, one that looks to God expectantly at every waking moment of your day and sleeps at night with the same assurance.

O King of the Gentiles and their desired One, the Cornerstone that makes both one: Come, and deliver man, whom You formed out of the dust of the earth.

The Lord is with you! Both Mary and King David hear this in the readings and Paul reminds us that it is God's presence that strengthens us to live out the Gospel. Being aware of God's presence in our midst is a central theme of Christmas. The shepherds will find Our Lord in the baby lying in the manger. The magi will search for him from afar and find Him after leaving the palace of Herod behind. Herod will hear of Him and seek to kill Him.

What about us? Will we be aware of His presence in our midst or will we continue to live like He is yet to come?

St. Ignatius urged his retreat ants to spend some time before every prayer period fostering a sense of God's presence--doing something that made the pray-er aware that God indeed is everywhere and is with you. In the East pray-ers will kneel and touch their forehead to the ground (incidentally, ,the children of Fatima were taught by an angel to pray in this manner). Whatever the way, it is important to know that we are praying to a reality that is present and not just to the wind.

David is told by God through the prophet, "It was I who took you from the pasture and from the care of the flock to be commander of my people Israel.
I have been with you wherever you went
, and I have destroyed all your enemies before you". God was always there, indeed He was leading David as He does us.

The message to Mary today, is a message to all of us: "The Lord is with you!"

O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Savior of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God.

Today we hear of the birth of John the Baptist which is welcomed with great joy. I once read in a commentary that if Elizabeth had borne a girl that the relations and neighbors would have mourned rather than rejoiced, such was the plight of women at the time. But nonetheless the joy is soon met with conflict when Elizabeth insists on naming the boy John. The relatives look to the mute Zechariah for confirmation, he motions for a writing tablet (symbolic for the "law"?) and writes"He is to be called John." We hear then that the people are astonished and that Zechariah's speech returns.

The contrast between the births of John and Jesus are often said to symbolize the differences between the old covenant and the new. Zechariah could not believe that God would grace he and Elizabeth with a child at their old age. He was struck dumb by such a gift. Mary also was surprised at the miraculous birth announced to her by the angel, but she accepts it.

Most of us are still a lot like Zechariah. We don't believe God could ever use us for anything good because we have a thousand reasons why we don't deserve for God to use us. We aren't holy enough. We sin too much. We don't pray enough. But grace is a free gift from God, we can do nothing to earn it.

As we approach Christmas we should open our hearts to God and accept the gift of grace that he offer with humility. We are right to protest that we don't deserve it--we don't, but God wishes to give to us anyway.

"Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has visited his people, he has come to their rescue..." the words of Zechariah in what Christians have come to call the Canticle of Zechariah. A prayer that is prayed every morning as part of the hours of the Church. It is fitting way to end Advent. In the one line we have the Christmas message--God Himself has come to us in order to rescue us.

God will save us from our enemies. God will free us from fear.

Perhaps on this day before Christmas we should contemplate who are enemies are, what it is we fear and allow the Christ child to come and rescue us from them. As the Christmas carol says well, "the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight."

A few nights ago we watched a show on one of the cable stations that advertised itself as a program that explored the origins of Christmas. The winter's solstice was mentioned. The origin of Rudolph as an advertising symbol for Montgomery Ward's was mentioned. The transformation of St. Nick to Santa Claus was mentioned. And oh yes, 45 minutes into the program some mention was made of Catholics and a few other main line Protestant churches having special services on Christmas Day to commemorate the birth of Christ. It was all very enlightening.

Today's Gospel points to the origin of all creation--"In the beginning was the Word.." Before anything there was Christ. The Word is responsible for everything that exist. Nothing exist without His willing it.

It is fitting that the season of Christmas is over for those who don't acknowledge Christ and that it is just beginning for those who do. Because when all the gifts that we exchange have rotted and even when this mortal flesh that we hold on to has wasted away in some far off grave--Christ will remain. Hopefully the Word will call us forth on that distant day because of what we celebrate on this day..."the Word became Flesh and pitched His tent in our midst."

Merry Christmas!

The day after Christmas we celebrate the feast of the first Christian Martyr. The gospel for today places before us the message of the adult Jesus to his followers "Beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved."

If we think these are just nice words and we needn't worry we have St. Stephen placed before us. Stephen a deacon is stoned to death for being a follower of Christ. His death in many ways mirrors the death of Jesus, in his final words he hands over his spirit.

The word martyr literally means witness. Jesus tells us that our persecution is an opportunity to witness. Stephen's witness is before a man Saul who will become the greatest Christian missionary to ever live--St. Paul. Our opportunities to witness happen daily with how we react to the every moment. Do we rely upon the Lord for what we will say?

John left us his own words of what he witnessed to in his first letter:

Beloved:

What was from the beginning,

what we have heard,

what we have seen with our eyes,

what we looked upon

and touched with our hands

concerns the Word of life-

for the life was made visible;

we have seen it and testify to it

and proclaim to you the eternal life

that was with the Father and was made visible to us-

what we have seen and heard

we proclaim now to you,

so that you too may have fellowship with us;

for our fellowship is with the Father

and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

We are writing this so that our joy may be complete.

His intention is that "our joy may be complete." There are many rivals that promise the same but in the end prove to be false advertising. Yet with those who follow Christ in the end there is an empty tomb.

Father Aidan Nichols has argued rather convincingly, I think, that a new feast of the holy innocents should be established for the modern day victims of abortion. The feast we celebrate today celebrates the witness of those who died without knowing Christ, but who died because of the jealous rage of a king who wanted nothing to interfere with his lifestyle. So any rival claimant to his throne must be killed.

Joseph is warned in a dream to leave. I imagine that the parents of all the children who died were also warned but perhaps ignored the dream as nothing more than the result of something they ate the day before. Most of us can point to similar experiences of ignoring warnings that were given to us of impending doom or disaster.

The witness that the Holy Innocents give to us is that accepting Christ demands a decision, will we accept His complete lordship over our lives? Or will we, like Herod, seek to kill whatever will interfere with our pursuit of pleasure.

Consider the Holy Family. At first the whole marriage is called into question when Joseph finds out the Mary is pregnant. He decides to divorce her. But then when he receives inspiration in a dream he relents. So Jesus being born into a single parent family is averted (although as Mother Teresa once pointed out to Father Benedict Groeschel all children have God as their father--so there really is no such thing as a "single parent" family for the believer).

Next we have the family setting out for the census taking. They haven't made reservations though, and so they end up living a nightmare that I have had the chance to experience myself a few times--no vacancy at any of the hotels. So Our Lord is born in a cave.

Then when Herod seeks the life of the child the family flees into Egypt as political refugees.

Really the holy card image of the Holy Family lacks any of the struggles and hardships that in reality were the lot of the Holy Family. Evidently Joseph died before Jesus was thirty since he is never mentioned later in the Gospels. Of course Mary will endure the death of her son three years later at thirty-three. The joy of the resurrection will be tempered by His absence forty days later at the Ascension. The Holy Family experienced almost any tragedy that we can place in our experience of family life. When we call on Jesus, Mary and Joseph we should be mindful of that...the struggles of life are not ours alone to bear. Heaven lowered itself not into a plush life but into the very sorrowful existence that is ours.

It is important to focus on the reality of the Holy Family so that we can capture the meaning of the prophecy that is made by Simeon today. It is one that sees God's promise fulfilled in the infant Jesus but at the same time predicts hard times. God's blessing is not always what we might expect. It is not the Gospel of wealth and prosperity that is sometime proclaimed by the televangelist--it is one of being misunderstood, contradictions and the piercing of the mother's heart as she witnesses the death of her Son--the Son of God.

May the Holy Family bless us with the sense to find meaning in the events of our daily lives, no matter what they may bring.

Prayer and fasting are what Anna had been doing for years at the Temple. Now she is rewarded with a visitation of God made man who is at this moment an infant. But because of her life of prayer and fasting she is able to recognize the Christ.

It makes one wonder how often we ourselves have visitations that we miss because we are preoccupied with other things. We can change. Prayer can be done anytime at anyplace--by simply turning our hearts and mind toward God in all circumstances. Prayer necessarily requires fasting, forgoing much of what we think we need and turning instead to what we truly need---God.

Two readings that fit for the last day of the secular year. In the first reading John tells us that this is the "last hour" and that many antichrists have appeared. He tells us that they came from "our number" but they really didn't belong. As we close out this year we might think of the "antichrists" that we have listened to in the past year. What gospels have we accepted that have moved us further from Christ?

The Gospel reading is from the Gospel of John and is the same as the Gospel for Christmas Day--"In the beginning was the word..." As we begin a new year we should seek to align ourselves with the "Word," Our Lord.

So in the midst of our celebrations, let us be out with the old false gospels and in with the ever new gospel of Our Lord who speaks to us in the events of everyday.

If I were preaching today, I would be short. When I was young this was the Feast of the circumcision and the Gospel reading was one line. "On the eight day the time for the circumcision of the child came and he was named Jesus the name the angel had given to his parents." Somewhere along the line the church changed this to the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God and attached World Peace Day as well. So tying all of this together at the beginning of this new year we invoke the Theotokos, "the Mother of God" to intercede for us and our families that this year will be filled with God's blessing and peace. The first reading provides us with the words...

"The LORD bless you and keep you!

The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!

The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!"

Happy New Year!