holy cross christmas eve sermon 2008

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Every year at Christmas the television and the print media are filled with stories trying to get at the “truth” of the Christmas story. They address topics like “the historical Jesus”, and they try to scrape away the centuries of pious mythology, to salvage the nuggets of whatever might be empirically or historically verifiable from the elaborately mythologized Gospel narratives. There are whole cottage industries devoted to this scraping and pruning of the narratives, and most Biblical scholars at prominent universities and seminaries are hired precisely because they have demonstrated themselves to be adept wielders of the pruning hook of scientific standards and empirical benchmarks.

But that is not what Christmas is about. Several nights ago, in a moment of acute romanticism, I purchased “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and watched it. It’s a wonderful little cartoon, and I highly recommend it. It recounts Charlie Brown’s frustration with the commercialism and abstraction into which the celebration of Christmas has descended in Western culture. This, indeed, is the perennial concern of many of us, particularly those of us who are prone to sentimentalism. Charlie Brown goes around looking for the true meaning of Christmas, and he’s frustrated at every turn. Finally in a moment of exasperation, he cries out “Isn’t there anybody who can tell me what Christmas is all about?” And then Linus says very quietly and straightforwardly: “I can tell you what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” Linus asks for lights and a microphone, and he proceeds to read the Gospel lesson from this mass:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyre'ni-us was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, (because he was of the house and lineage of David,) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And Linus concludes: “That is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

We are not here to remember something that can be placed under a microscope or laid-bear before the critical scrutiny of the unimaginative. We are here to commemorate and to re-enact a myth, something that was and is and will always be totally and completely impossible. It is somehow fitting that Linus, an unreal, one dimensional, cartoon character, should be the one to remind us of what is most real and most true. For virgins do not conceive. Almighty God, whom the whole world cannot contain, is not laid in a manger. God does not grow up. God is certainly not nailed to a tree. And dead men do not live again. It is IMPOSSIBLE …Yet this is our teaching. This is our faith. This is the TRUTH. We believe and confess what is “most impossible”.

[Cf. Angelus Silesius:
"The most impossible is possible
With your arrow you cannot reach the sun,
With mine I can sweep under my fire the eternal sun.”]

The great Anglican lay-poet W.H. Auden saw the great impossibility of salvation, and he wrote a poem about it called “For the Time Being” –

Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.

Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?

The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

We, who must die, do not seek what is possible; for what is possible is telluric, “of the earth” – it is mundane, and it cannot save us. We who must die demand a MIRACLE. We DEMAND the impossible. Why? Because we want to be SAVED, and salvation is not possible.

But we believe and confess that the impossible is nevertheless ACTUAL. Virgins do not conceive. And yet a Virgin conceived. God Almighty is totally beyond our ken, out of reach; we are cut off from Heaven. Yet the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth – and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.

That is the MIRACLE of Christmas – the miracle of our Christian faith – the impossibility of the ACTUAL in the narrative of salvation (for with God, NOTHING will be impossible): “to YOU is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

hilaire belloc

In light of the barrage of distressing and at times cataclysmic economic news and prognosticating, I have renewed my interest in Agrarianism, which was born in me in part because I was occasionally, but regularly, exposed to farm life as a child, and partly probably because of a streak of Southern chauvinism awakened in me through my reading of Fugitive poetry, New Criticism (very much still the critical assumptions informing those who taught literature at Sewanee when I was there), and Agrarian essays in college. This recipe has lately and naturally been supplemented by Communitarian and Distributist sources in 19th and 20th century Catholic intellectual history.

To shuck it all down to the cob (to use an Agrarian metaphor), this has all led me this morning to the Wikipedia entry on Hilaire Belloc. I thought this quote was hilarious:

A great disappointment in his life was his failure to gain a fellowship at All Souls College in Oxford. This failure may have been caused in part by his producing a small statue of the Virgin and placing it before him on the table during the interview for the fellowship.

Which would lead me to conclude: who needs them anyway? But I know a little of the disappointment of not winning an All Souls fellowship. That happened to a very talented friend, who was indeed very disappointed.

the holy father's christmas message to the roman curia

Well worth the time it takes to read it all. A notable and timely excerpt:

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man's self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God's work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term 'gender' effectively results in man's self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition.

The great theologians of Scholasticism described matrimony - which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman - as a sacrament of Creation, that the Creator himself instituted, and that Christ, without changing the message of Creation, welcomed in the story of his alliance with men.

Part of the announcement that the Church should bring to men is a testimonial for the Spirit Creator present in all of nature, but specially in the nature of man, who was created in the image of God.

One must reread the encyclical Humanae vitae with this perspective: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against consumer sex, the future against the exclusive claim of the moment, and human nature against manipulation.

bread of life, baked in rhode island

The New York Times: "One company makes about 80 percent of the altar bread used by the churches in the United States."

Read it all.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today, in the context of our liturgy, and especially through the Gospel we have just heard, we find ourselves poised on the brink of Apocalypse. The word “apocalypse” in Greek means an “unveiling” or a “revelation” – and the Christ’s advent is quintessential apocalypse, for he is the unveiling of God himself, the manifestation of what had been hidden since the fall of man: the creator of the world within the world.

We don’t tend to think of our preparation for Christmas as preparation for Apocalypse, yet that is precisely what it is. We live between the two advents of the Christ: this is the last hour. John Henry Newman put it this way:

“Once the Christ had come ... had suffered, and had risen again ... Earth had had its most solemn event, and seen its most august sight; and therefore it was the last time. And hence, though time intervene between Christ's first and second coming, it is not recognized (as I may say) in the Gospel scheme, but is, as it were, an accident. For so it was, that up to Christ's coming in the flesh, the course of things ran straight towards that end, nearing it by every step; but now, under the Gospel, that course has… altered its direction, as regards His second coming, and runs, not towards the end, but along it, and on the brink of it; and is at all times equally near that great event, which, did it run towards, it would at once run into. Christ, then, is ever at our doors; as near [two thousand] years ago as now, and not nearer now than then; and not nearer when He comes than now. When He says that He will come soon, "soon" is not a word of time, but of natural order. This present state of things, "the present distress" as St. Paul calls it, is ever close upon the next world, and resolves itself into it. As when a man is given over, he may die any moment, yet lingers; as an implement of war may any moment explode, and must at some time; as we listen for a clock to strike, and at length it surprises us; as a crumbling arch hangs, we know not how, and is not safe to pass under; so creeps on this feeble weary world, and one day, before we know where we are, it will end.”

This is the state of the world before the apocalypse of God, groaning, in one of Isaiah’s favorite images, as though it were about to give birth (cf. Isa. 13.8).

And so the apocalypse of God begins with pregnant anticipation. Poised, as we are, on the brink of this annual apocalypse, the Gospel reading today brings before us the pregnant anticipation of our Lady, the blessed Virgin. In doing so, it situates the apocalypse, our salvation, within the context of the whole narrative of salvation history. For Mary, like John the Baptist, is a figure who stands astride the border between the old and the new covenant. She is the chosen daughter of Zion, a descendent of Abraham, and Israelite. But the sound of her fiat will reach the ears of all nations – for the salvation that begins with her devout ascent to the call of God is the WORLD’S salvation, and so her voice reaches beyond the confines of Nazareth, beyond Bethlehem of Judea, beyond Jerusalem, and encompasses Ephesus, where tradition says she would die, Rome, Paris, Canterbury, New York, and Dallas. In Mary – literally IN Mary: inside of her womb – the Lord “remembers his mercy and faithfulness to the house of Israel” and, more wonderful still, in Mary “all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God” (Ps. 98.3).

The world sits on the brink of the apocalypse, and it is as though a breathless anticipation settles. For what is the world waiting? For what is the Lord waiting? We are waiting for the grace-filled response of Mary – for one who can, in total purity of heart, say “Yes” to the call of God, holding nothing back, and insensible to the cost.

This is what God is ever looking for, not least in us, now, as we await the Lord’s second and final advent and our own renewal, and the renewal of the heavens and the earth: he wants each of us, in purity of heart, to say “Yes” to his call – to say, with Mary, without reservation: “Be it done to me according to thy word.”

In the 12th century, St. Bernard of Claivaux addresses the Virgin in such terms, and he might well have been addressing you and me, poised on the brink of decision:

Let God hear your voice! “If you let him hear it, then he will let you see our salvation. Is not this what you have been waiting for, what you have been weeping for and sighing after day and night in your prayers? Answer, O Virgin, answer the angel quickly; or rather, through the angel answer God. Speak the word and receive the Word. Offer what is yours and conceive what is God’s. Breathe one fleeting [little] Word and embrace the ETERNAL Word.

“Why delay? Why be afraid? Believe, speak, receive! Let your humility be clothed with courage, and your reserve with trust. In such circumstances, O prudent Virgin, do not fear presumption, for although the reserve which makes you silent is [lovely], how more important at this juncture is it for your goodness to speak!

“O Blessed Virgin, open your heart to FAITH, your lips to speak, your womb to your Creator. Behold, the long-desired of the nations is standing at the door and knocking. Oh, what if he should pass by because of your delay and again in sorrow you should have to begin to seek for him whom your soul loves? Rise up, then, run and open! Arise by faith, run by the devotion of your heart, open by consent.

“And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.’”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

for the time being

This image, by Benedetto Bonfigli, a 15th century Umbrian master, puts it quite well. Mankind awaited salvation, groaning as in travail; and then quietly, anonymously: unto us a child was born, unto us a son was given: the only Son of God. Christmas, like life itself, is tinged for us with the knowledge that this child has come to save us, that even as he lies in the manger, he is on his way to Golgotha to present himself alone, on our behalf, in perfect filial love to the Father. It is easy to crowd around the sublime Christmas crib with the Magi and the Shepherds. But who will stay with this child to the end?

This poem, by WH Auden, expresses the problem of which the Bonfigli painting is the solution.

For the Time Being

 by W. H. Auden

Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.

Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?

The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

mockingbird: true community?

Mockingbird: True Community?

This is from my friends at Mockingbird, a young adult ministry in New York City. The sleight of hand that substitutes virtual reality for regular reality is pernicious, pygmalionic, and kind of pornographic. The "real world" is already several scales removed from the REAL real world -- light inaccessible.