Merry Christmas, Really

In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth;

the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seventh year after the flood;

the two thousand and fifteenth year from the birth of Abraham;

the one thousand five hundred and tenth year from Moses

and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;

the one thousand and thirty-second year from David’s being anointed king;

in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;

in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;

the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome;

the forty second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus;

the whole world being at peace,

in the sixth age of the world,

Jesus Christ the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,

desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,

being conceived by the Holy Spirit, and nine months having passed since his conception, was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary, being made flesh.

Christmas Proclamation, Midnight Mass

Reflection – Merry Christmas. After this, I will not be blogging for a few days, the Christmas season being a time to spend with my community and the guests who come to share the holy days with us, not a time to spend online. Back, God-willing, on Saturday.

We see in this Christmas Proclamation the heart of the matter. It is not a fantasy, not a legend, not a theological theory dressed up in a fairy tale. Christ was born, at a specific time in a specific place to a specific woman. The eternal Son of God, the Light from Light, God from God, True God from True God, really did become a baby in time and place and history. It happened at a specific moment within the history of Israel, and at a specific moment in world history. There was an emperor in Rome; we know his name.

This is the crucial point which has to be gotten. Namely, history matters. Truth matters. It is vitally important in every way—theological, spiritual, psychological, cosmological—that this event really happened as a real event. There is no end of theologizing in the contemporary world that specifically and explicitly denies that. The theology that says it wouldn’t matter if Christ’s dead body was found in a tomb, or that the historicity of the Gospels and even of the Incarnation are naught, since what matters is some kind of spiritual ‘core’.

But the spiritual core of Christianity is that it happened. Really. Not a myth or a symbol or a metaphor. God became a baby. And because it really happened, it can really happen to you and to me. God became flesh from the womb of the Virgin; God can become flesh from your flesh and mine. God died on a cross and rose again, really. Your death and mine can yield to resurrection, really.

If it was just a metaphor or a nice story, what good would that be, really? Can a metaphor save me? Can a story die for my sins? I don’t think so. But it’s not those things, although it is indeed one heck of a good story at that.

So, Merry Christmas, really. Not a Blue Christmas, but a True Christmas, because the bottom line is, it’s all true, and it is a truth deep and all-encompassing enough to gladden the heart of every man and woman on this earth. So Merry Christmas to all, or as we delight to sing, over and over again in this season, at Madonna House:

Christ is born, glorify Him!

 Christ is come from heaven, receive Him!

 Christ is now on earth, exalt Him!

 All you earth, sing unto the Lord.

 All you nations, praise Him with joy, for He has been glorified!

Amen.

Advent - Season of Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster,

exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum:

veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,

the hope of the nations and their Savior:

Come and save us, O Lord our God.

O Antiphon, December 23

Reflection – And so we come to the final O Antiphon, the one that sums up the rest of them and indeed sums up the whole of our Christian hope and longing.

It’s kind of the point of the whole exercise, isn’t it, this ‘emmanuel’ business? Im-anu-el—with us God—this is in a sense the whole of our Christian faith. God is with us, and this is what makes all the difference between light and darkness, joy and sorrow, good and evil, heaven and hell.

It does, really, sum up all our Christian faith. God is with us in the experience of human weakness and vulnerability—we see the little baby shivering in the manger. God is with us in the experience of danger and terrible fear—we see the family fleeing into Egypt from an evil ruler. God is with us in the normal human experiences of growth and family and ordinary life—we see the child, the youth, the man living in the village of Nazareth. God is with us in the call to love and serve and labor for the good of others—we see the man walking the land of Palestine, pouring himself in an offering of love. And 

God is with us in pain and death and even in our sin—the sinless one bearing the sins of the world, the man dying on the cross for us.

God is with us—the whole entirety of human life has been embraced by the Triune God in Jesus Christ, and continues to be embraced by Him in the gift of the Holy Spirit in the Church.

And yet—we know that we have to take this on faith, quite a bit. And this act of faith can be hard, to say the least. And these O Antiphons always recognize this. God is with us, and yet we cry out for Emmanuel to come and save us. God is our king and our lawgiver—the Law of the Gospel is the very presence of Jesus Christ within us conforming our lives to His by the gift of the Spirit—and yet we still long in expectation for Him.

It is the great paradox of the Gospel that we live with both these realities ongoing. Jesus is really here, and we cry out for Him to come. Jesus is saving us, and we cry out for him to save us yet. ‘Which is it?’ I remember someone challenging one of our Madonna House members once. Is God with us or not?

To which the only answer is ‘yes, both’. He is with us, and we long for Him to be with us in fullness. He is with us in sign and sacrament and the hidden veiled dark knowledge of faith which wraps us in a great mystery continually. We long for Him to be with us so that all flesh can see and every heart know that God is God and reigns in heaven and on earth.

God became man so that we could see Him and be saved, St. Hippolytus tells us in the Office of Readings today. So we would like Him to come and be seen again, not even so much for our own sakes (I’m OK with sign and sacrament and dark knowledge of faith, personally, at least for the next 40-50 years or so!), but for the sake of those who just cannot seem to find their way to faith.

If He could just be seen a little bit more clearer, just make Himself a little more obvious—this is our great prayer and longing. The world is wrapped in darkness and dread, in much suffering in this year 2013, and in every year man has set his foot to trod the earth. We long for God to come and be with us, and be with us further, and be with us more clearly, so that the nations may take hope and be saved, so that lives may be conformed more to the Law of Christ which is the Law of Love.

We long for all men and women to truly celebrate Christmas, in other words. Not the tinsel and glitter, conspicuous consumption, reindeer and elves Christmas, although all that has its good and proper place. But… Christmas. God with us. The baby. The hope. The salvation. That Christmas. And that is my prayer for all of you reading this, as we draw very near to that great and glorious day.

Advent - Season of the King

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,

lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:

veni, et salva hominem,

quem de limo formasti.

O King of the nations, and their desire,

the cornerstone making both one:

Come and save the human race,

which you fashioned from clay.

O Antiphon, December 22

Reflection – So we return today to the theme of Christ as king, the king of the nations. What does this title add to what we have already prayed. We prayed to the Root of Jesse to establish his authority over the kings of the earth, and to the Key of David to set us free. What particular prayer, what hope do we bring to the King of the Nations?

It is to be made one. The nations go each their own way, and the world is ravaged still by violence and war. Even when there is a measure of peace, there is little trust, little sense of the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God.

The English don’t like the French. The French don’t like the Americans. The Americans don’t like the Russians. The Russians don’t like the Chinese. I won’t here go anywhere near the mare’s nest which is the Middle East, or the terrible conflicts that rack the various nations of Africa. If Canada is largely ‘liked’ it is because Canada is too small and insignificant to pose any great threat to anyone. We can be ignored.

O King of the Nations, indeed. Do we even want to be one? It seems that for a great part of mankind, it is still the better course to hunker down in our little tribal allegiances and despise everyone else. This happens between nations, and within nations it happens along political, ethnic, socio-economic and (yes) religious fault lines.

The right despises the left. The left despises the right. Rich and poor continue to be the great two solitudes living radically different lives within the same city bounds. Racial, ethnic, and religious tensions ran high in 2013 in many places. People have died because of their tribal identification, religion, race. The unity of the human race, the coming together of all people as one, has taken quite a beating in 2013.

O King of the Nations, come. It is my firm belief that Jesus Christ, and only Jesus Christ, has the grace we need to overcome the terrible wounds of division, suspicion, hatred that constantly threaten to overwhelm the human race. I do realize that, to those who do not believe in Jesus, that sounds like just one more divisive statement. Jesus can become just one more fault line separating brother from brother.

I realize it must seem that way to a non-Christian. But I believe, nonetheless, that there is power in the Name and in the Person of Christ that is the healing of the nations and can effect the reconciliation and peace we so need. I even go so far as to believe firmly that this reconciliation and peace happens as we are all brought into the one communion of the Catholic Church. I know it is politically incorrect and perhaps offensive to say so, but that is my firm conviction—God wishes to make us all one by drawing us to His Son Jesus and thus into the Church he founded.

What is really needed here is a new creation. That is why we pray for the King to save the human race which He fashioned from clay in the beginning. In the beginning, there was no division. In the beginning, we were just ‘man’, not white, black, brown, left, right, and so forth. In the beginning, God created the human person, and He made us to be one family, a true brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God.

This was lost by our rejection of that fatherhood, and from Cain and Abel down to today’s headlines of bloodshed, we’ve been killing each other and breaking the family of man ever since. We need a new creation.

I believe that this is what Jesus alone offers to us. And this is why we must continue to proclaim the Gospel of Christ, even if we are accused of being divisive, intolerant, exclusive, obnoxious. The King of the Nations is our only hope, and so we simply must continue to preach His Gospel.

Of course these O Antiphons make it clear to us that ultimately Jesus Himself has to come and save us. We can work for peace—we must do this—and strive to love our neighbors and reach out to heal the wounds of history and the wounds our own sins have caused. Yes, always. But ultimately the healing of the nations and the unity of the human race will come only when the King comes on the clouds of heaven.

It is prayer and longing, not social action and charity, that will ultimately bring the human race the peace and the unity we need so badly. And that is the whole substance of our Advent prayer: Come Lord Jesus, for we need you so very badly. Amen.

Advent - Season of the Dawn

O Oriens,

splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae:

veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Dawn,

splendor of light eternal and sun of justice:

Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Antiphon, December 21

Reflection – So right on cue with the winter solstice we have the triumphant cry ‘O Dawn!’ As the world is in its darkest hour (well, the northern hemisphere at least), we proclaim the coming of the light and the end of the night, of every night, the rising of the morning star and the triumphant sun.

OK, so it’s a bit obvious. So what? The Church in its liturgy is never afraid to be a little obvious, even a little trite at times. We’re trying to appeal to a broad audience, you might say (that whole ‘catholic’ business, eh?).

Meanwhile we have these great lumbering symbols just lying around wanting to be used. Darkness. Night. Sunrise. Morning. All events that occur, by definition, every day, and that have nonetheless surprising power to speak to us of the spiritual life and its underlying structure.

‘Evening came and morning came’, the first day. Even before sun and moon were created, the first thing was light shining in the darkness. It is the fundamental created disjunction. Light is being, the first created thing, and darkness then is non-being, symbol of what is not. ‘And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.’

This is the deep point, isn’t it? That being is stronger than non-being. What is prevails over what is not. Life stronger than death, and good stronger than evil. But that takes some believing, doesn’t it? It’s not exactly crystalline in this world of ours that being, life, and goodness are always stronger. Non-being, darkness, and evil sure seem to get their licks in, sure seem to win a few rounds here and there.

It is really no great wonder that metaphysical dualism has always hung around the great human questions about the world. The philosophical idea that there are two great and roughly equal principles—light/goodness/spirit and dark/evil/matter—that are in constant cosmic struggle is an appealing, even obvious answer to what we see all around us every day, even in the nightly setting of the sun, let alone in all the horrors of violence and death that are our human tragic lot.

But this is not our Christian answer. We hold that Light Itself, not the created good of light, but the Uncreated Light of the Trinity, has come into the world and shines in the uttermost darkness of it. Jesus comes into the world, and so there is always light, even in the grimmest and most desperate situations. A glimmer of light, a trace perhaps, but enough to bear the one sitting in darkness towards the kingdom of all light.

And yet… well, we believe this, and we do believe in Christmas and the Incarnation and the Redemption… and… of course we believe all that. Of course we do. But, yet, we cry out, ‘Come!’ I think it is the common experience of all people that the darkness can get mighty dark yet, that evil and pain and fear can have their seasons in all our lives, Jesus or no Jesus, that life can get very deathly and shadowy no matter how hard we try to stay in life and light.

And so we cry out ‘Come!’ These O Antiphons are remarkable prayers, even or maybe especially when they are very simple, obvious prayers. A light has shone in the darkness—Jesus—and those who have faith in him know that light to be real and splendid and beautiful. But we need more of it, please! ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’ The great ‘prayer’ of Oliver Twist is appropriate here. The light is good, Father, but we need more, please!

Too many sit in darkness still; the shadow of death is cast too long yet. And so we pray, on this murky winter solstice, for the true light to come and set all shadows to flight and enlighten the minds and hearts of all men and women in the truth and the love that sets us free. Come, Lord Jesus.