This year Christmas and New Year’s Day fall on Sundays, so the Solemnity of the Holy Family (normally the Sunday after Christmas) gets pushed back to Saturday. Most of us will not celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family this year, and we will miss the beautiful readings, prayers and homily (hopefully!) on God’s great gift of the family. So let me reflect with you on what the family means to us and to humanity throughout history.

  Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) was not given much time with his family. Karol’s only sister died before he was born; he lost his mother when he was 8 and his only brother when he was 12. Karol lived alone with his father in Nazi-occupied Krakow until one day, upon returning from class, he found his father dead. Karol was 21 years old.

    I think Pope John Paul understood God’s gift of the family more than most. He writes that the family’s mission is “to guard, reveal, and communicate love” — real love, God’s love. No one and nothing can bring authentic love to the human community as can the family. To the extent that the family fades from our culture, love will fade from our culture. Almost every social problem today is the consequence of the family’s demise. We have progressively rejected God’s plan for the family, and we are paying the price. Our acceptance of divorce, contraception, promiscuity and, now, same-sex arrangements have progressively disabled the American family. Nothing can replace it. Our social problems, our economic collapse and our individual alienation will only increase as we increasingly ignore the role of the family.

  Here’s the good news: change, yes we can! We can restore what we have lost. For Christians, it means living the life of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as best we can. For non-Christians, it means practicing the human virtues as best we can: fidelity to our spouses, sacrificial love for our children, living an honorable and decent life in the sight of all. We can rebuild the American Family, but it means some real lifestyle changes. Let us call upon Jesus, Mary and Joseph to help us (especially us men) to do just that.

Christmas Homily 2011

Christmas Carols
Why do Christmas Carols stir our hearts so deeply? I don’t mean the secular songs like Jingle Bells and Silver Bells, although those are warm and bright too. But carols like O Come All Ye Faithful and Silent Night, Away in A Manger and O Little Town of Bethlehem. On Tuesday I attended the Modesto Symphony’s Christmas Concert at St. Stanislaus. Despite the ban on mentioning God in public, our Symphony Orchestra performed an entire concert witnessing to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” we sang with them. “Glory to the newborn King; peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” So it seems there is still sin in the world, and we need God after all to be reconciled. I’ve been delighted with our local National Public Radio station. In between newscasts that generally regard Christianity as an embarrassing myth, the good folk in the local station have been playing a fine selection of sacred music these last two weeks. The name of Jesus is constantly on the airwaves. And that is what makes this time of year especially joyful. God is with us, even on NPR.

Life without God is Unbearable
Why, in December, does all the world begin singing songs about Jesus? I think it is because we heard these carols as children, and we believed in them. From our babyhood through our childhood, we believed in the goodness of the world, that our parents loved us, and we lived under friendly skies. These carols bring us back to the joy of our youth. Perhaps, just maybe, we think to ourselves at Christmas, the world is bright and beautiful. As scarred and disappointed as we have become by life’s difficulties, we long to hope that a benevolent God exists after all. We want to regain the trust and innocence of our childhood. Life is too dark—it’s really unbearable—without Christmas; without Christ. We cannot really face a world without God. We all need God.

No Joy without the Baby
God came to us first as a baby in Bethlehem. He came as one who does not judge. He came as babies are: meek, tender, dependent, and trusting. The divine child teaches us to love our littleness. To know God’s love, we must become little, childlike. At our best, we know this is true. We know that trying to control our lives and the lives of others only leads to frustration and despair. If we try to possess Christmas, it slips through our fingers. Think of the attempt to cut Christ out of Christmas—to make it into no more than some kind of winter “holiday.” It’s a commercial attempt to “manage” or “exploit” Christmas. But Christmas without Christ is flat and dull, unsatisfying, superficial, and even ridiculous. Christmas as merely some kind of economic event, a national shopping binge, or an excuse to take some days off work, will badly disappoint us. If the baby is missing, we will have no real joy, only a vague sadness that something crucial is missing.

Every Mass is Christmas
The world cannot live without Christmas, and without Christmas Carols. The year would be unbearably cold and meaningless without Jesus and the December Carols heralding his birth. For Christians, every season holds Christmas joy, and for Catholics, every Sunday brings us the baby Jesus. He comes to us at Mass, as humbly and quietly as he did to Mary and Joseph at Bethlehem. It is not hard to miss his presence in Holy Communion. But for those who have found him, we cannot live without the Mass. Thank you for coming to this Holy Mass to find the baby Jesus. May he bless you and your families every day of the coming year.

Christmas Homily Children’s 2011

Which Gift do you really want?
What do you want for Christmas? What will make you really happy? Once I watched two children opening their Christmas presents. One boy, Tommy, was really excited. “Wow! I got my own battleship game!” “Look at this! I got a Star Wars calendar!” “Man, I got a bracelet making kit.” His mother ran over quickly and took the bracelet making kit. “Oh, I’m sorry Tommy, that one is for your sister….” Tommy was really excited, but the problem was that the gifts kept coming so fast he couldn’t fully unwrap them before the next one came. After ten minutes, he was exhausted, and I was too.

He opened them so fast, that I wonder if any of his Christmas presents made him happy for very long. At Christmas, God asks us to choose which gift we really want. The best gifts are not those under the tree, wrapped in bright paper and pretty bows. The best gifts are not under the tree, but around the tree. The best gifts are your mother and father, your brothers and sisters. What gift do you really want: your mother, or what your mother gives you? What will make you really happy—a gift from your father, or your father himself?

God Himself
God gives us all sorts of gifts. In fact, everything you have is his gift. Your Xbox, your bike, your computer, your house, even your own body—everything is from God. We are stewards, that means, we enjoy gifts that are not our own. But once upon a time, in a land far, far away, God gave us not only a gift. He gave us himself. He himself came from heaven to a little town called Bethlehem, and he held out his tiny arms to us. He loves us so much. No one who receives the gift of this baby is ever really sad again. And he begins to see the whole world as a gift.

Choose the best gift
So what gift do you really want? You must choose. Do you want Jesus, given to us in every Mass, or do you only want the common stuff advertized on TV: Xboxes, BMX bikes, iPhones, computers. I know: you want both. And you will have both, but the Xboxes, bikes, and computers will not make you happy, if you have not also chosen Jesus, and chosen Jesus first. Choose Jesus first by coming to Mass every Sunday, and by praying to Him with your family. Then your Christmas gifts will make you truly happy. Then, even if you don’t get what you wanted for Christmas, you will be happy.

_ A Warm and Merry Christmas to all! Let this Christmas Message be my Christmas Card to all who read it. May it express my love and esteem for all of you at St. Joseph’s Parish.

   Today we mark, once again, the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Today, or tonight, depending on which Mass you will attend, a Child is born to us, which is Christ the Lord.

   A week before Christmas we all were scrambling to buy gifts for our loved ones and finish those Christmas cards to dear friends. This year, as I was preparing the annual Christmas publications for the parish, I spent an evening going through twelve years of photographs from my time at St. Joseph’s. How many beautiful faces and how many precious memories did I uncover! What a grace every day has been! At the end of the year, and I hope at the end of life, we won’t remember the hard times, but we will thank God with undivided hearts for the good times. What a blessing this parish and this life are to me!

_
   All of the good memories, and the lasting friendships, are from that small babe lying in a manger, hugging his mother’s arms tight, curling Joseph’s finger in his tiny hands. Let us thank the Good God for such a life as we will ever enjoy. Let us be good stewards of his gifts by recognizing all that He has given us, and thanking him for it. God bless you all for coming to Mass this Christmas, for thanking Him for the gift of Himself in Bethlehem, and in Modesto.

I want to congratulate all of you on transitioning so well into the new Mass prayers. Everyone has shown great “spirit” in learning the new responses. The “new Mass prayers” are really the ancient Mass prayers, but in a new translation that restores their vibrancy and depth. The new translation is a thorough restoration of a great artwork, revealing colors and textures that had been obscured by decades of dirt and dust.

   On December 17 we entered the Second Stage of Advent, our immediate preparation for the Solemnity of Christmas. Now is the time to put up your Christmas tree (if you haven’t already!). You will notice we wait until December 17 to put up our parish Christmas trees and wreathes. Unlike the shopping malls, where they put up Christmas decorations in early October, the Church exercises wise restraint in making only a novena of nine days (December 17-25) to prepare for the great feast. Yes, we think about Christmas for months before it arrives, but psychologically we cannot sustain more than about nine days of immediate preparation. Now is the time to really enter into the Christmas spirit. Hopefully we have not been worn out by

pre-Christmas commercialization and can summon up true Christmas joy in these last nine days of Advent. Jesus is waiting for us, not so much at Walmart or even at our Christmas parties, but most perfectly at the sacred altars of our churches.

Sacred Music expressed the heart of Advent and Christmas. The Parish Music Department has broadened our repertoire this year, incorporating polyphony, Baroque, Classical and Gregorian Chant throughout the Masses. We have seven choirs here at St. Joseph’s—seven choirs of angels and seven cantors. This Christmas they all will be singing to the glory of God. 127 voices in total sing in our Children’s Choir, Bells Choir, Spanish Choir, Chant Choir, Bell Canto Choir, Adult Choir and Youth Choir. Pick your choir and join your voices to theirs this Christmas!

The Three Kings of Salvation History

Today, the last Sunday before Christmas, I would like to cover the whole Bible in ten minutes, the entire history of salvation in twelve minutes. It’s really quite simple—we can sum up the whole Bible in three kings: Adam, David, and Jesus. I’m grateful to Fr. Robert Barron, for his homily this Sunday, found on his Word on Fire website, whose ideas I’m using. Use his website often.

King # 1: Adam. He was the first man, and his wife Eve, the first woman. To both of them God said: “be fruitful; have dominion over the whole Earth.” God planted a Garden, east of Eden and gave Adam “dominion,” that is, Kingship, over this garden. He was to tend it, make it fruitful, to exercise stewardship over God’s immense gifts. But Adam failed. He was to exercise dominion over the animals, but one animal, the serpent, exercised dominion over Adam. Adam failed to be the kind of king, the kind of steward, that God had asked him to be.

King #2: David. He was chosen by God and entrusted with the same task as that of Adam—to exercise dominion over God’s people. God asked him to shape a rabble of quarrelling individuals into a fruitful, peaceful, and ordered community. David was basically a good king, but he too failed in some dramatic ways. You probably know the story of Bathsheba. King David makes his appearance in today’s first reading. He wants to build temple. But God asks David, “should you build me a house to live in?” How can man build a house for God? It is God who fashions his own temple in man. “It was I who was with you,” God tells David. I will fix a place for my people. I will establish a house for you.

And then God makes this promise: I will raise up a son after you, and I will make his kingdom firm. I will be a father to him, and he a son to me. David never built a temple in Jerusalem, but his son Solomon did, in 957 BC. However, because of Solomon’s sins, like his father’s, the kingdom itself was divided by civil war after his reign. Eventually, the divided kingdom of Israel fell to the Babylonians in 587BC, and then to the Greeks in 320BC, and finally to the Romans.

King #3: Jesus. God’s promise to David was not really about David’s immediate son Solomon, but a child to be born a thousand years later, but still of David’s own bloodline: Jesus of Nazareth. This Jesus was both son of David and Son of God, because he was born of a virgin. Like Adam and David before him, Jesus was given the kingly role of building a house for God among his people, of restoring the lost Garden of God, of bringing about a fruitful and peacefully ordered kingdom. But unlike Adam and David, who largely failed in their kingship, Jesus would not fail, because he would not sin. It is Jesus who has restored the lost Kingdom, who has replanted the fruitful garden that Adam lost.

And that’s the whole Bible. That’s the story of our salvation. But there is one more detail: the women. Adam was not to exercise his kingship alone: God gave him Eve to help, as his Queen. But it was Eve who encouraged him to sin, to give up his kingly dignity. The very woman who had so much potential to help Adam—she too failed to help him. In a similar way, David sinned with a woman, Bathsheba, who did not resist his sin. She participated in it. And Jesus--no less did he depend on the help of a woman, his mother Mary. But unlike Eve, unlike Bathsheba, Mary did not sin. She helped him. She never said “no” to God. She said only “Yes” to God. And so God was able to build his temple within her, to plant his Garden of Paradise in her heart.

God wants to dwell in each of us; he wants to plant his garden within each of our hearts. He wants to transform the prisons of this world into temples of peace and joy, and the wasteland of our world into a garden that surpasses Eden. He comes to us daily, like he came to Mary in her home at Nazareth. If we say “yes” to him, he will come in. If we say “no,” he will stay out. He courts Mary, not forcing himself on her. She surrenders herself to him, and the Holy Spirit rushes upon her. From that moment, the still center of history, humanity’s redeemer is conceived in her womb and begins to grow. He is still growing, in the Church he founded.

The Lord God awaits our permission, our “yes” to build his temple within us. He asks us, as he asked the young Virgin Mary, for the gift of our purity, the gift of our will, so that he can plant his garden within us.

One final thought: about silence. God comes to us in silence, not in noise. He came to Mary in the silence of her room, where she was probably praying. In silence, the plants grow, and the stars turn, and the sun rises. In silence the Son of God was born, in the quiet time of the night, when all of the world was at peace. In silence, he will come to us. We need times of silence in our lives, especially in this last week before Christmas. The constant noise and entertainment of our culture is from the devil. He wants to shout down the quiet Word of God. Make a space for God to speak to you this week. Get alone, turn off every electronic device (iPhone, radio, CD player, MP3 player, TV, iPad, Xbox, etc). Turn it all off, get alone, and just let God come to you. He wants to build his house, he wants to plant his garden, in the silence of your heart.

_ America is rich with various cultural traditions. Along with ethnic foods, music, and art, religious cultural traditions express themselves with distinct radiance. One such tradition are the Mexican festivities surrounding Our Lady of Guadalupe, which will take place tomorrow. On an early December dawn in 1531, the poor indigenous man Juan Diego met the Mother of God. All around her, the cold desert blossomed with flowers and birdsong. Mexico will never forget that morning, and neither can the rest of the Americas. I invite you to share this Dawn with St. Juan Diego, his fellow Mexicans, and the Blessed Mother. The Festive Mass is at 6am tomorrow (Monday), and if you want the full experience, “mañanitas” at 5am, and rosary at 5:30am, in the church.

_   And now an Announcement. I will be leaving St. Joseph’s on August 1, 2012. Bishop Blaire has given me permission to spend three years as chaplain to Thomas Aquinas College near Los Angeles for three years. I came to St. Joseph’s in September 1999 and was named pastor on July 1, 2000, for a six-year term, renewable once. In 2006 the Bishop renewed my term for another six years. Over the past five years I’ve been asking to spend some time in college work after my second term was complete. It will be very hard for me to leave our parish. It is the longest I’ve ever spent (13 years) in one place all my life. I have developed a deep love for this parish and her people, and I think the parish also loves me, despite my human inadequacies. It will be most difficult for me to leave you. And of course many of you will find the transition to a new pastor difficult as well. I am fairly sure, however, that it is God’s will, and I do look forward to working with Catholic students and faculty. The Bishop’s office and I hope to name a new pastor in a few months and to work on a smooth transition. I will reflect more on what this parish means to me in months to come. Please pray for me.

Prepare the way for Jesus this Advent

Romance: finding our way back home
Who wants more Romance in their lives? I don’t mean cheap harlequin romance or the superficial love stories you see on TV and movies.  Those romances last about 48 hours before they go south. Authentic romance is the heroic quest to recover our true love, our true home. It is a lifelong search for our lost childhood. All of the great stories tell tales of this heroic search. The world’s first novel, the Greek Odessey of Homer, is perhaps the best example. The hero Ulysses wanders the Aegean for ten years searching for his lost wife and home. Don Quixote is Europe’s great novel, where Alonzo Qixano wanders about Spain in a rusty suit of armor searching for lost virtue. More contemporary examples include The Lord the Rings, the three children in the Chronicles of Narnia, Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. All of the great stories are “romances,” heroic requests to recover a lost childhood, to find life’s true love, to find our way back home.

The Glad Journey Home
Advent is a season to focus on this journey home. What makes Advent and Christmas joyful is the founded hope that we will, at the last, recover the lost joy of our youth. We will find the child after a long journey, like the Three Wise Men. The First Reading is taken from Isaiah Chapter 40, the so-called Book of Consolation. The prophet addresses the Jews who are returning to their homeland after 40 years in Babylonian Exile. “Comfort, give Comfort to my people. Speak tenderly to her, that her guilt is expiated.” You have paid double for your sins, and you can now return home. Isaiah describes the road back: “Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Zion, be the herald of Glad Tidings, for here is our God. These Glad Tidings define Christmas. Happy Holidays means nothing because it excludes God, the source of happiness. Merry Christmas, on the other hand,means that we can be merry because, although we have lost our innocence, we are on the way to recovering it. God is on His way to meet us, and we are on our way to meet Him. The World needs a real Christmas wish at least once a year.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ
St. Mark opens his tale, his romance, in these words: The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. First, what is a “Gospel?” The word means “Glad Tidings,” the same glad tidings Isaiah proclaims. In Greek, the word is Eu-angelion, the “good message.” It comes from the same word as “angel.” meaning “messenger.” The Gospel is the angel’s good message. And what is this good message, these glad tidings? Simply one word: Jesus. We find Jesus, we have found it all. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the Resurrection.

So how do we find Jesus? How do we find our way back home? One thing’s for sure, we won’t find him if we stare at a TV screen with a remote dangling from our fingers. Jesus comes to us, but we must come to him. We must search for him in the desert. A voice cries in the desert—not on MTV. You will never hear this voice on MTV or the myriad entertainment venues of our time. We’ve got to turn off MTV and seek him. We’ve got to embark on the Romance, the search for him. Note that the crowds came out to hear John the Baptist. They left Jerusalem; they left their homes and came to him on the edge of the desert. Advent must be in some way be a desert experience for us.

Prepare a Way
John the Baptist is the greatest man of woman born because he made the journey to the desert, and there he found God. For us, Advent must be in some way a desert experience too. To find our way back home for Christmas, we have to get away from the TV, the computer, the iPhone. We have to enter the silence of the desert. “Souls of prayer are souls of great Silence,” Mother Teresa would say. What are we doing this Advent, in between all our Christmas parties and shopping trips, to find silence? I recommend this Advent: a significant penance on Fridays, such as no snacking, or no desert, or no meat, or drinking only water at meals. I further recommend: daily Mass when you can, a good confession, the family rosary at least three times a week, and a holy hour in the adoration chapel once a week.

If we don’t make room for some silence, we will never hear the Eternal Word. Christmas will be just another disappointment. Prepare a way for Jesus, by prayer and penance, this Advent.

_ Today I turn 50. A friend shrugged and said, “just another day, father.” Aside from the fact that I can now officially join St. Joseph’s Seniors Group, I suppose turning 50 is just another day, although I did enjoy being a forty-niner last year. My Mom said the 50s were her favorite decade. She’s about to enter her 80’s, so she’ll let me know in a few years if they beat the fifties.

   I don’t think I’ll make it to a hundred, especially the way this old world’s going, so I suppose I’m about two thirds the way “there.” Now where is there? “There” is Heaven, we hope. I’m two thirds the way to Heaven, with a stop in Purgatory, I imagine. The sooner I get to Purgatory, the sooner I can get to Heaven. Let’s just hope your dear old pastor doesn’t get to Hell, and none of us for that matter. For that, we must depend entirely on the grace of God.

_But to return to my subject (it’s my birthday, and it’s my fiftieth birthday, so I get to ramble a bit in this laptop). My Subject: Growing Old. We all complain about getting older, but really, it’s not bad at all. Remember how we used to complain about being too young? Every age has its joys and sorrows, but I think getting older is a beautiful gift from God. Because the older we get, the younger we get. The older we get, the closer we get to rebirth, to real living.

   In 1997 I took a group to World Youth Day in Paris. We took the train to Lisieux to see St. Therese. In her basilica, at the altar depicting her death, was written in French, “I’m not dying. I’m entering into life.” I smelled beautiful roses at that altar, and was filled with a certain conviction that death, and growing older, is a gift. That day, death lost its sting for me. St. Therese obtained this grace for me. Growing older is simply letting God have more of my life, day by day. Life doesn’t slip away as we grow older — we give it to God. Death will be like resting secure under the skillful hands of a perfect surgeon. I’m glad to be fifty, 50 years closer to that day.

The Catholic Church in the English-speaking world has only a few weeks to wait until the new Mass translations are unveiled (on November 27). Many of us who knew of the translation project have been waiting for thirty years…. This long-term translation project may be compared to building a bridge.

Do you ever take the Bay Bridge into San Francisco? If so, perhaps you have noted with interest the eastern span of the bridge that they’ve been rebuilding over the last ten years. The original span, an icon of the Bay Area, was completed in 1936 and serves as a vital transportation artery—more than the population of Modesto passes under its cables every day (almost 2 million vehicles per week). It is a beautiful and essential part of the City’s culture.

And yet, they must rebuild it.

The existing bridge was the best construction available at the time, although a section of it did collapse during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It was built rather quickly (in three years), and certainly not with the technology available today. It served the Bay Area for 80 years, but now we are in a position to replace it with a much more beautiful and solid structure.

The current English translation of the Mass used resources available at the time, although it has led to liturgical collapse in some areas of our worship. It was done rather quickly (in two years), and certainly not with the scholarship available today. It has served the Church for the last 40 years, but now we are in a position to replace it with a much more beautiful and accurate translation. 

Like the eastern span of the Bay Bridge, the translation project of the new Mass prayers has taken well over ten years. The work was done with utmost care, employing experts and input from thousands of sources. The Church was able to craft English prayers with 40 years of experience as to what works and what doesn’t in real parishes. The first translation was serviceable, but the second is a work of art.

The Bay Bridge is one of the world’s longest spans, almost five miles long. An engineering miscalculation of just one inch would result in a disastrous gap when amplified by the entire length of the bridge. In a similar way, one small word mistranslated or omitted in the Mass, when repeated by billions of Catholics over forty years, would result in disastrous defects in our understanding of the faith. And it has. For example, the 1970s translators routinely omitted the word “holy” when referring to the Church. Over forty years, this error has led Catholics to think of the Church less in terms of her essential holiness, less as a divine institution, and more as a human organization.

The Mass will be “under construction” for a few months. Like driving over the eastern section of the Bay Bridge just now, this will be a bit frustrating. But be patient, and try to see the beauty and depth of these newly-translated prayers. The effects of praying these truly authentic words will not be evident at once, but in the long run they will bring us to love the Holy Mass with a whole new depth and passion.



Additional Study:

• St. Joseph's Roman Missal, Third Edition page
• Official Page of the Roman Missal, Third Edition on the USCCB web site