HOMILY– 3rd Sunday in Advent – Dawn On Us

 ___________________________________________________________

This Advent, Fr.  Bryan and I are exploring the topic of being beacons of hope in challenging times.

This weekend, Gaudete Sunday, we called to rejoice.

But how do we do that?

In today’s Gospel, we see John the Baptist approached three times by three different groups seeking the answer to the question: “What should we do?”

Don’t we all ask this question of God sometimes in our lives?

What should we do to be better follower of Christ?

It is a question that has the potential to lead us disciples to take the next step in living our faith with integrity.

Real faith is not about how we pray or feel or about our personal relationship with Jesus. Real faith is about how we live our faith by what we do.

This is the secret to discovering hope in our lives. 

Hope can be a tricky thing.

Sometimes hope lies in the weeds and hides from us. Sometimes hope sneaks up and knocks us for a loop.

In these moments when hope breaks into our reality, we discover Christ in our lives, and our hearts are finally able to rejoice! 

I hear a beautiful line in the Divine Office morning prayer during Advent that touches on this reality: “Your light will come Jerusalem; the Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty.”

This is how the hope of God works in our lives. Hope dawns on us in radiant beauty.

Advent is a time of expectant hope as we prepare for Christmas. Gaudete Sunday is a time of joy. It’s why we wear the color rose symbolic of the rising of the sun.

But for some, the hope and joy of Christmas can be blunted by a tragic event or painful memory or a major health challenge.

I’m sure there are some of us here this weekend who are finding it hard to feel that expectant hope or joy in these challenging times.

I don’t remember how I lost the hope and joy of Christmas early in my life.

Sometime during my teenage years, the annual Christmas feeling disappeared from my heart.

Perhaps it happened after my father’s tragic death when I was fourteen. Or maybe it was an angry teenager shedding all things heartfelt from a painful childhood.

I don’t remember Christmas having the same impact as I trudged into adulthood.

Christmas meant nothing to me. My heart had little or no compassion for people in need. The people John the Baptist is pointing us to today.

I know I’m not the only person who has had a personal tragedy silence the hope and joy of Christmas in their heart. 

Christ was born to turn our despair into hope. Christ was born to fill our hearts with love and joy. Christ was born to bring “Peace on Earth, Good Will to all.”

It’s just sometimes in our lives when we experience too much pain, we become numb to hope. 

But God can grace us with a moment when we realize the many blessings we do have and count them all. 

In other words, there are times when we are graced with a moment where Christ dawns on our lives in radiant beauty! 

For me, joy and hope returned Christmas Eve 1986.

It was a foggy, still night. My new wife (the one true Catholic in the family at the time) wanted to go to Midnight Mass.

I begrudgingly went along not sensing what was about to happen.

As we drove to the nearby parish, Mary popped in the new cassette of Mannheim Steamroller Christmas music (she has a near obsession with Christmas music).

As we rode along the song Silent Night came out of the speakers. I remembered this song being a favorite for my baby sister back when we were little kids.

Every Christmas, my sister Erin, my brothers Dan, and Jim, cousin Annie and I would reenact the manger scene at family gatherings.

My sister Erin loved Christmas. She was born with a congenital heart defect and found joy in only a few things thanks to hundreds of doctor’s visits and numerous heart surgeries.

           But love Christmas she did. And she loved her beloved toy piano she got in the final months of life.

That Christmas in 1967, a few months before she died, Erin unwrapped the toy piano after we had regaled the family in the true story of Christmas. I can still hear her playing it in my head.

As I daydreamed while driving, the closing strains of Silent Night snuck up and knocked my cold, stony heart for a loop.

At the end of the song, after the rushing of what sounds like some celestial wind, the song concludes with a child’s toy piano playing the opening stanza of Silent Night.

As I drove, tears streamed down my face. And I felt it!

The joy and hope of Christmas returned. God’s loving mercy penetrated my heart. And I have never lost that Christmas feeling.

           I pray you experience the expectant hope and joy that comes with Christmas. I pray your heart rings out with the love of Christ, and you show mercy to others. I pray Jesus dawns on your life in radiant beauty! Rejoice!

            The Lord is coming. Let our hearts be ready. 

HOMILY– 1st Sunday in Advent – Gratitude

                 __________________________________________________________ 

Gratitude is the attitude we need most during these pandemic times.

Haven’t we all found ourselves mired in feelings of depression, or unhappiness or frustration or despair, during these past 20 months of isolation and social distancing?

I know I have. Certainly, you have, too.

Jesus is calling us to change our perspective and see our lives and our situations the way he sees them.

Gratitude is the attitude we need most.

Advent is a good time to put into practice this change to our perspective.

This weekend, Jesus is reminding his disciples that a change in attitude will help them to be ready for his coming at the end of time.

In our scripture this weekend from Luke's Gospel (called the little Apocalypse) Jesus is speaking about the great and fearful day of the coming of the Son of Man at the end of time. This is the third week we’ve read from the Bible’s apocalyptic literature where we hear of the culmination of history and the revelation of the reign of God. This is all designed to prepare us for Jesus' first coming at Christmas.

Here Jesus is reminding his disciples that the coming of the Son of Man at the end of time will be a cause for joy, courage, and hope. Not fear for believers.

Jesus comes into our human existence three times: at his birth, now in the ministry we do for him, and at the end of time. Our hearts must be attuned to this reality.

This is the change our perspective we all need. This is a change of perspective we can work on this Advent. This is a change of perspective that can transform our lives.

I’m reminded of a popular scene from a favorite Thanksgiving movie for many:  Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I’m sure most have seen it.

It’s a story about an uptight and intolerant advertising executive (Neal Page) who gets paired with a goodhearted, but annoying salesman of shower curtain rings (Del Griffith) after their airplane from New York to Chicago gets diverted to Wichita in a snowstorm.

They share together a three-day odyssey of misadventures as they attempt to get Neal home to his family for Thanksgiving.

The memorable scene comes at the end of the movie when Neal is finally on the Chicago light rail (known as the “L”) heading home.

As he’s reflecting on his experiences with Del he starts to realize something about his annoying new friend (it dons on him in a flash of memories): Del is homeless.

In that moment, Neal’s perspective changes as he returns to the light rail station where he left Del and gets the full story about Del’s reason for being a traveling salesman: He has no home to go home to after the death of his wife years earlier.

Neal invites Del to join his family for Thanksgiving dinner at his home and thanks Del for helping him to see the world differently than he did before.

So many people fail to show gratitude for their many blessings and understand there are many in this world with fewer blessings than we have.

We who live in the United States are blessed abundantly compared to the rest of the world. We should rejoice in these many blessings. Instead, of wanting more or feeling we don’t have enough.

           It is especially good to be reminded of this during the current pandemic, and during Advent.

           How do we grow in gratitude during this Advent to change our perspective?

           I’m thankful for author Emily Jaminet of Catholic Digest for offering these great ways to grow in gratitude:

“Prayer impacts our perspective!

If you are struggling with being grateful, take this matter to your prayer time! Ask the Lord for more graces to accept each moment of your life, as it is, and to overcome whatever is holding you back from being grateful. 

Surround yourself with people who are grateful for life.

Gratitude is an important virtue and flows from humility. ‘If souls are humble, they will be moved to give thanks,’ St. Teresa of Ávila said.

Materialism fuels our ingratitude.

Our culture and greed often lead us into a vicious circle of materialism: The more we get, the more we want. Materialism leads to the ‘give me’ mindset in which ‘stuff’ fills the void of our hearts. It is important to focus on the non-material world where we share our thanks with words of affirmation, kind deeds, and prayers of thanksgiving.

A major obstacle to being grateful or growing in this virtue is refusing to forgive.

When we refuse to forgive it leads us to grow in hard-heartedness. Consider forgiving those who have hurt you or robbed you of your joy. Seek to mend that relationship. When we seek out to strengthen our relationships with others, we grow closer to Christ. In the meantime, we grow in gratitude.

Worry and anxiety can also lead us away from being grateful.

There is a direct link between screen time and anxiety” (So, lose the smart phones and enjoy the now.)

Advent is a time of year when we are called to focus on shedding the things we don’t need in order to grow closer to Christ in all his comings.

Gratitude can help us to always be ready for Jesus, to always stay focused on what is important in our lives, and to always grow closer to God who is the wellspring of all our blessings in this life.

By showing gratitude always in all things, we become beacons of hope in these uncertain times. And draw others to be closer to Jesus.

HOMILY– 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – The End

            ________________________________________________________________ 

I saw an intriguing story in Catholic media this weekend about a deacon who died hours after delivering a homily about being ready for death.

In sharing this with you, don’t think this deacon doesn’t worry about tempting the same fate.

Here’s a quote from an article on the unexpected death:

"On a sunny Sunday afternoon Deacon Michael Puscas stood before his congregation and spoke of judgment day — he told parishioners to always be ready to meet the Lord, for they never know when they will live the last hours of their lives.

Just a few hours after speaking those words at Guardian Angels Parish in Colchester (Connecticut) on Nov. 7, the 68-year-old died suddenly, but peacefully, while swimming."

This weekend Jesus is talking about the end of the world. Pretty scary stuff.

But what he is really talking about is our readiness for, not only, his coming, but the end of our time here on earth.

We, Christians, are called to always be ready to meet Jesus and live our lives as if we could meet the Lord at any moment.

After all, we know neither the day nor the hour when He will return – just as we know neither the day nor hour when our journey in this life will end.

As we come to the close of the liturgical year, we are hearing readings from the Jewish Apocalyptic literature.

These readings are designed to get us thinking about the end.

Yes, Jesus is talking about the end of the world. To the audience in Mark’s Gospel, they thought the end was coming soon.

We should all be as prepared as Mark’s audience for the coming of the Lord.

When the Lord comes, or when our time on this earth comes to an end, all that will matter is the person we have become and what we have done to build up the Kingdom by serving others -- especially the poor and marginalized.