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Month: December 2007

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Homilies, ,

Solemnity of the Nativity of our Lord

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.

So begins the Gospel of John.

This preface to John’s Gospel, along with great Christological hymn found in the Second Chapter of Philippians, tell us much of what we need to know about Jesus.

It is an important lesson.

The importance of this lesson is exemplified in the fact that this Gospel is read every time the Traditional Rite of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered, just after the dismissal. It is read aloud to remind us of the deep and awesome mystery we have touched. It reminds us that Jesus was not a moment in time, but the true nature of eternity. God among us.

Jesus is God. Jesus was from the beginning, co-eternal with the Father. He came and dwelt among us.

He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.

Jesus is the breath of God that moved across the waters. The breath of God that brought everything into being. There is nothing in existence that is apart from Him.

What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.

Jesus gave us life, and not just life, but life that is perfect. Life that is at one with, and completely united to, God.

This life is the life of light – the life that is within each and every human being. The life we are called to, and the life we will experience in heaven. This is the fullness of life with God.

He was in the world,
and the world came to be through him,
but the world did not know him.

At a moment in history God became incarnate in the world in the person of His Son, Jesus. He was in the world.

Jesus, Who brought all things into being; Jesus, Who created a life of perfection, was in the world. He came down and dwelt among us.

The why is obvious. Because we have made and make choices that destroy the perfect life that was created for us. That brokenness needs repair. That brokenness needs healing. Without the healing Jesus brought, each of us would miss the sign, each of us would miss knowing God. Each of us would miss eternal life in heaven. We would be utterly alone.

We would be alone in bondage, not to men, but to the idea that there was no hope.

Jesus’ coming into the world changed that. We are not in bondage. We are free. Free to know God and live in unity with God.

He came to what was his own,
but his own people did not accept him.

All but a few rejected Him, nailing Him to the cross. A cross He was born to accept. A cross He chose to take up.

But to those who did accept him
he gave power to become children of God,
to those who believe in his name,
who were born not by natural generation
nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision
but of God.

We stand here this Christmas day because we accept Him. The only Son of the Father. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.

God who came to dwell among us.

He is ours and we are His, not based on our own study or desires, but because God called each of us by name.

He called, so we came to Him in the waters of baptism saying —I believe.— We came to Him and asked the Church to call the Holy Spirit down upon us in Confirmation. We said: —I believe.— By our belief we are born of God into the new life Jesus provided.

And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth.

He came in flesh and blood to give us grace in abundance, grace that comes from following the only truth that exists. He lived among us to teach us.

Each and every time we hear His word and stand in front of this altar we see His glory and receive His grace. Grace that draws us closer to God and brings us to perfect unity with God.

From his fullness we have all received,
grace in place of grace,
because while the law was given through Moses,
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

He did not come to give us laws and regulations, but instead a new covenant in His blood. A gift freely given.

We must decide whether we will pay the entry price.

The cost is small, for in light of the magnificence of God, resplendent this day in His Son in the manger, we have the full assurance that God loves us beyond measure, and measures only our willingness to live in accord with all the things His Son has shown us.

No one has ever seen God.
The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side,
has revealed him.

Because of Jesus we know God, God face-to-face.

It is joyous news for the whole world. God is revealed to us, merciful, full of love and compassion, abundant in grace, offering us the light which darkness cannot overcome.

Take up the light you see this Christmas day. Believe and be born anew into the only life that matters.

Amen.

Christian Witness, Perspective, ,

The Christ has come, we were unprepared

Yet He came to us anyway
To Provide for us

Icon of the Nativity

What it means for us

The iconographic portrayal of Christ’s birth is not without radical social implications. Christ’s birth occurred where it did, we are told, by Matthew, “because there was no room in the inn.” He who welcomes all is himself unwelcome. From the first moment, he is something like a refugee, as indeed he soon will be in the very strict sense of the word, in Egypt with Mary and Joseph, at a safe distance from the murderous Herod. Later in life he will say to his followers, revealing the criteria of salvation, “I was homeless and you took me in.” We are saved not by our achievements but by our participation in the mercy of God -God’s hospitality. If we turn our backs on others we will end up with nothing more than ideas and slogans and be lost in the icon’s starless cave.From Rescued for Christmas by Jim Forest as found at In Communion, the website of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship

My Wish for you

I pray that Christ’s coming will renew you, break down every obstacle, bring light to every aspect of your life, and reconnect all that is separate. He is our hope, therefore we rejoice with one voice.

Christ has come! Alleluia!

PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

My gift to you

In my ethic tradition, we shared our gifts after the Wigilia (Vigil) supper and before attending the Pasterka (Shepherd’s) Holy Mass at midnight.

If would like to offer you, my readers, several gifts this Christmas.

I will provide eight (8) annual subscriptions to God’s Field, the official newspaper of the Polish National Catholic Church and ten (10) copies of the Polish National Catholic Church’s wall calendar for 2008.

The first eighteen people that make a request will get one or the other.

Please send me an E-mail using my contact form and provide your name, mailing address, and the gift you would prefer.

Of course I wish all of you every blessing on this Vigil of the Nativity of our Lord. The Christ is our true gift. Amen.

Homilies,

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

When Joseph awoke,
he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him
and took his wife into his home.

Tomorrow evening we will gather in this church to remember the incarnation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

In preparation we recall, through today’s readings, what it means to ask and to obey.

Here we have Joseph, the righteous. To the best of his knowledge he’d been cheated on. His betrothed was pregnant.

I cannot imagine Joseph just falling into a deep sleep. He was troubled by this news. It is likely that he was tossing and turning, asking over and over, —What should I do? What should I do?—

Joseph was asking. Should he expose Mary? She would be stoned to death. In Deuteronomy 22 we read:

“If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you.—

He decided that he would divorce her quietly.

It was a practical decision. Stoning was falling out of favor. The Rabbis were concerned with the credibility of witnesses and the extent to which capital punishment had been used.

Joseph was asking, and had reached a decision based on the knowledge that was available to him.

God had other plans.

Brothers and sisters,

We hear the word of God quite often, at least weekly. The readings for the week are posted in the bulletin. The ambitious among you might try reading those. The really ambitious might pray Vespers each day.

We hear and we study. The Sacrament of God’s word is provided for us.

Based on the knowledge available to us, how do we react?

The reading from Isaiah tells of Ahaz:

The LORD spoke to Ahaz, saying:
Ask for a sign from the LORD, your God;
let it be deep as the netherworld, or high as the sky!

Ahaz received the word first hand. What was his response?

But Ahaz answered,
—I will not ask! I will not tempt the LORD!—

Was Ahaz afraid?

He most certainly was. Ahaz was the King of Judah. He saw the balance of the Northern Kingdoms falling. He himself had fallen into idol worship. He reigned for sixteen years, afraid and looking for answers.

But when God told him to ask, when God told him to be unafraid he refused to ask.

Ahaz had it figured, and he wouldn’t ask, because he was afraid, because he thought he had the answers.

Contrast Joseph. Joseph already had his answer, but when the Lord came to him he responded in the way the Lord asked. Joseph received the sign and he listened.

Ahaz sought answers. He asked and did not obey. Joseph sought answers. He asked and obeyed.

St. Paul tells us:

Through [Jesus Christ our Lord] we have received the grace of apostleship,
to bring about the obedience of faith,
for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles,
among whom are you also, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ

Paul is talking to us. He is telling us to ask and to be obedient to what has been given. Our chosen reaction is to be one of faith.

Regardless of the obstacles, our fear, our preplanning, we are to ask and to obey as true apostles of Jesus Christ.

Ahaz wouldn’t ask, but God gave the sign anyway. Ahaz was long dead, but the sign was given.

Now we have to live with that sign —“ and in conformity with that sign.

Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters wroteThank you to Ben Meyers at the Faith and Theology Blog through which I located this quote.:

—Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.—

We have been taken to that place. By God’s mercy we can sit here, invoke his name, and in spite of our sinfulness He sees us washed in the blood of His Son. The ceiling will not fall in, only grace will fall down upon us. He sees us as apostles —“ bearing the message of the Kingdom.

We are at a place from which we can never return —“ we are changed. So, we are to ask every day. We are to obey His teachings. Ask, obey, and we will live forever.

Amen.

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