“Happy New Year ” First Week of the Year, January 1-7, 2012

To understand all this week’s readings — and human life itself — see this world as a staging area. That is what it is. To see it as anything else falsifies human existence from top to bottom.

God created humans for one reason only: to share his own divine life and happiness with them forever. But he puts us first in a staging area where we will have time to integrate the human life we receive at birth and the divine life we receive at Baptism. Doing this, helping others to do it, and creating an environment that makes it easier for everyone to do it, is what human life is all about. The beginning of the New Year is a good time to remember this. A good New Year’s Resolution would be to decide on ways to keep ourselves aware of it.

The basic principle is: We make all that is human in us divine by making all that is divine in us human. This began with the Incarnation and birth of Jesus, which we celebrate, fittingly, on January 1, Feast of Mary, Mother of God. Jesus made a seed of Mary’s human flesh divine by making the divine in himself human in her. And when we give our human bodies in Baptism to become the divine body of Jesus on earth, his divinity begins to work with, in and through our human acts of thinking, choosing, speaking and acting, gradually conforming all we are to all he is.

This is what the staging area is for. We use our time on earth to grow into Christ, or let Christ “grow to full stature” in us, by putting to human use all the divine gifts we receive with grace (the life of God in us). The gift of faith lies dormant in us until we put it to work in human reflection, and express it in human thoughts and words: for example, calling God “Our Father” with awareness of what we are saying and pondering what it means.

As we absorb the mysteries of faith, they give us hope, which we express in action by striving for the “perfection of love.” As we translate these divine gifts into human action, all that is human in us operates more and more as divine, by the power of Jesus in us.

This world is a staging area in which humans help other humans to arrive, survive and thrive. We are constantly shifting, and helping others to shift: first from the “arrival dock,” where we become aware of who we are and what our divine-human identity is, to the “instruction area,” where we commit ourselves to learn what the five stages of progress are and how to advance through them (discipleship). When we are mature enough to work, we advance ourselves by helping others advance: first by dedication (as prophets) to making known the Good News of the Kingdom that is our destination; then by surrendering more deeply (as priests) to the reign of Christ in us, letting him express himself through our bodies to enhance the divine life of others; finally, by totally abandoning ourselves to live, work and long for nothing else (as stewards of his kingship) except to bring all in the staging area to the “point of embarkation” for the city that is our true home, that God has prepared for us.

Try keeping this explanation in mind as you read the Scriptures for this week.

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“Merry Christmas ” First Week of Christmas, December 25-31, 2011

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Christmas brings families together — at least in memory, when they cannot be physically. And this is what Jesus came to do: to bring the whole human race together as one family whose Father is God; in whom Jesus as Son is visible and growing to “full stature” by the indwelling presence and power of the Spirit.

Christmas is togetherness. And that is the mystery of God’s Being: God is the togetherness of Father, Son and Spirit: the Trinity.

It is striking to see how the roles of each Person of the Trinity appear in the Mass readings for Jesus’ birth:

Vigil Mass: “For the child [Son of the Father] conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

Midnight Mass: A son is given to us.... called: Wonderful Counselor [Holy Spirit], Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince [Son] of Peace.”

Mass at Dawn: They shall be called “The Holy People” [Holy Spirit, Sanctifier], “The Redeemed of the LORD” [Son, Jesus]; “Cared For,” “A City Not Forsaken” [by the Father, God of the Covenant]. And “He saved us... through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he [the Father] poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ [Son] our Savior.”

Mass during the Day: “They see the LORD [Yahweh, Father] restoring Zion.... for the LORD comforts his people [Holy Spirit, the Comforter], he redeems Jerusalem” [Jesus, Son]. “The Word [Son] was with God [the Father].... In him was life, and the life was the light [Holy Spirit] of all people.”

The readings all week tell us what this family is in which we find — and need to be constantly aware of — our identity. We are different. Stephen’s martyrdom reveals us as a people who live to die and die to live forever in Christ. John’s feast focuses us, as he does, on the “koinonia,” “communion, fellowship,” that should not only exist but be visible among us — which requires that we keep ourselves aware that we are all alive in Christ and as Christ.

The readings for the feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us we are a community, not of the righteous, but of the redeemed. Our “innocence” is not in our “perfect record,” but in our incorporation into Christ’s death that “takes away” our sin. When Jesus is held up at Mass as the “Lamb of God,” we are all invited to Communion. We receive Communion, not to proclaim we are “innocent,” but to say we are sinners with hope. Thursday’s readings tell us that to “keep the Commandments” means, first of all, to keep God’s words, his laws, in our hearts. We judge ourselves by the deep faith and desire we find in our hearts, not just by the success or failure of our external law observance. It is “Phariseeism” to judge ourselves or others simply by behavior.

The feast of the Holy Family — three persons united, like the Trinity, in the “communion of the Holy Spirit — promises us a “posterity” from the Father (blessed will be the fruit of our lives). It calls us to embody in our family life the love and truth Jesus embodied as Son, the Word made flesh. And it calls us (in the full text of the alternate reading from Hebrews) to design our family lifestyle by interaction with the Spirit in faith, so that our family life will bear witness to the world that we live here “as in a foreign land,” looking forward to “a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” John tells us, on the last day of the year, that we “know we know God” when our “anointing” by the Holy Spirit keeps us united to one another in the expression of our faith.

Being family is what the life of the Trinity — in God and in us — is all about.

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“Let the Clouds Rain Down... ” Fourth Week of Advent, December 18-24, 2011

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This is the week before Christmas. What it is all about is awareness, which is the first phase of growth into the fullness of life that Jesus came to give. Advent alerts us to look forward to the “blessed hope and the manifestation (the liturgy says “coming, advent”) of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). Christmas is all about Jesus as Savior.

Saturday (O Wisdom) focused on Jesus as the measuring rod of perspective who “shows us all things framed between their beginning and their end.”

Sunday’s readings make the point that Jesus is a divine Savior who came to give us divine life — not just human wellbeing.

Monday (O Offspring of the Root of Jesse) tells us Christ’s human-divine presence in our up-and-down world (and Church) as a contining member of our sinning race gives us hope.

Tuesday (O Key of David) says the Key to Christianity and Christian living is Jesus leading us out of the “prison” of merely human perspectives and into the freedom of “divine-dimensional” life.

Wednesday (O Rising Dawn) tells us God made human in Jesus is the divine, eternal light of God shining in a new way every day through the changing atmosphere (circumstances) of human life on earth — and through the diversity of his human members’ responses to different situations.

Thursday (O King of Nations) shows us Jesus “politically involved” in bringing unity, peace and happiness to earth by giving us divine gifts that work independently of human power and circumstances — if we remain aware of them and use them.

Friday (O Emmanuel – “God-with-us”) caps our preparation for Christmas by pinpointing the essence of Christianity, which is “God with us.” Paul said the mystery he preached was simply “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

The Christian greeting repeated in the Mass liturgy as “God be with you” is an edited version of the Latin “Dominus vobiscum,” which simply says, “God with you.” That is the whole Christian message in a nutshell. When we answer, “And with your spirit,” we are not narrowing our focus to some kind of spiritual presence of God just in our “souls.” We are calling each other to be aware “in spirit” that God is present in our bodies as well as in our minds and hearts. By Baptism we became the “body of Christ.” He speaks in our human words, touches people with our human hands, helps them through our human actions. We are “Emmanuel” — God still with the human race, God still in the world in human flesh as one of us.

When we say the WIT prayer — “Lord, do this with me, do this in me, do this through me” — we are reminding ourselves of the core truth of our religion, “God with us.” God with us, not just as a companion by our side, but as dwelling within us, acting in us and through us as his own body.

The body born at Bethlehem was just the beginning. Jesus is “born again” every time a baby is baptized.
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“Blessed be the Lord... He promised of old” : Third Week of Advent, December 11-17, 2011

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This week is the mid-point of Advent. Three things change. 1. This Sunday the presider’s “chasuble” (“little house” – the all –covering Mass vestment) is rose-colored to express joy. The opening Scripture verse is “Rejoice... the Lord is near.” That is why this is called “Gaudete (“Rejoice”) Sunday.” 2. On Saturday, because it is December 17, we begin using the second Advent Preface, and also 3. the weekday prayers and readings go into “countdown mode,” ruled by the “O Antiphons.” These are seven special “Alleluia” verses that introduce the Gospel, all beginning with “O” and a title of Jesus: “O Wisdom,” “O Lord and Leader,” etc. They invite rich reflection on who Jesus is and what he came to be for us.

My suggestion for this week is to read prayerfully every morning the Benedictus. That is Zachary’s hymn (Luke 1:68-79) found in the Pocket Prayer Guide bound into your reflection booklet entitled “Our Father... in Heaven.” This is a wonderful way to start each day of Advent and Christmas.

It reminds us — and remember, the first phase of spiritual growth embodied in the first phrase of the Our Father is awareness — that God has “come to his people and set them free.” Think of all you would like to be freed from. God has freed you from any and every thing that can really harm you or keep you from “life to the full.”

He has done it by “raising up a mighty Savior” — a man who is God: Jesus. And he is “accredited” — “born of the house of his servant David.” Jesus is still saving us, present and acting through “in house” saviors, the members of his body on earth today. Through sons and daughters of the Father who can trace their lineage back through all the generations of Christians to the community who gathered around the first Twelve Apostles and the historical Jesus.

“Through his holy prophets he promised....” and is realizing the promise through the prophetic voices still being raised in the Church. Voices that speak truth, denounce corruption and call for reform. Voices in which we hear God promising still to “free us from the hands of our enemies,” whoever and whatever they are.

“To show mercy to our ancestors.” Look at the mercy God has shown to his Church! To his sinful Christians who in “Catholic” Europe slaughtered each other for centuries in endless wars, many in the name of religion. Who persecuted Jews and heretics, oppressed the poor, bought and sold ecclesiastical positions and honors. The priests were ignorant, the bishops often without any religious spirit at all: political lords who plundered and fought petty wars for power. Yet God has maintained his mercy toward us— because of “his holy covenant.” Why doubt he is doing it today?

“Free to worship him.” Nothing can prevent us from that. Whether the liturgy is done well or not, we know who awaits us at Mass and what he does for us — and invites us to do with him. We are always free to worship him, without fear that anything or anyone can prevent us. “Blessed be the Lord... He has promised.”

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For “Those with a Journey to Make”: Second Week of Advent, December 4-10, 2011

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Advent calls us to look forward to the Good News. What this really means is to get serious about faith formation.

What Isaiah calls the “Holy Way” is for “those with a journey to make.” It is an axiom in the spiritual life that there is no such thing as standing still. If you are not going forward, you are falling behind. If not growing, you are stagnating.

The “comfort” God offers in Advent is the proclamation that there is a way. We can grow into a more exciting, enriching life if we want to. Jesus designed the Church to be a hotbed of energy, enlightenment and growth. If your parish is not that, someone needs to exercise some leadership. Why not you?

We may have grown up with a distorted, because incomplete, “Fear of the Lord.” True Fear of the Lord is simply perspective. It is the gift of seeing how good God is and how unsatisfying everything else is in comparison. How powerful God is and how insane it is to oppose him. But the Good News is that God uses his power “to give strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound.” It is the Pharisees who pass off “heavy burdens” as religion. Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” Whom do we believe? If we believe Jesus, why are we not eagerly shouldering the “light burden” of growing into the fullness of life?

What is the alternative? If I don’t choose the way of growthful discipleship what am I choosing? To just react haphazardly to stimuli, bouncing blindly off of life’s experiences like a pinball? To follow the values of the culture? To make myself — my opinions, my desires — the criterion of truth and goodness? This is the definition of the capital sin of Pride. It is a straight shot to insanity.

Some say they are leaving the Church because of the priests or the congregations. If so, they were never there because of Jesus. It is really the message they can’t stand, not the messengers. People criticized Jesus himself more than we do the clergy. To accept Jesus we have to accept everyone. And accept to be crucified by them. This is what turns us off.

Our prayer in Advent is, “Lord, make us turn to you.” But we should not expect him to do it by scaring us. God did this through the Old Testament prophets. But when Jesus came, the time for fear tactics was over. Instead of killing his enemies to show us his power, he died to show us his love. The perspective that “Fear of the Lord” reveals to us in Jesus is the difference, not between God’s power and ours, but between his unbounded love and anything we can imagine.

If we accept to follow the “Holy Way” of faith formation — of committed discipleship — we will come to know our Father as he is. And this is “eternal life”: to know the Father, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.

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The Beginning: First Week of Advent, November 27-December 3, 2011

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We are beginning a new theme. The Immersed in Christ Reflections this year will still be formation in assimilation of the five mysteries of Baptism (what Immersed in Christ and the Christian life are all about), but we are taking another approach. We are showing how, in the petitions of the Our Father, we are both asking for and committing ourselves to each of these five mysteries in turn. The theme booklet, Five Steps to the Father, explains how the first five phrases of the prayer Jesus taught us present the five phases of our growth into the “fullness of life” Jesus came to give.

The Reflection booklet, “Our Father in Heaven,” develops the first phrase, using the Mass readings for the Advent and Christmas seasons. Keep this theme in mind as you read the reflections.

This week is all about mystery: the mystery of the new identity Baptism gives us; the mystery of being real “sons and daughters of the Father” through the mystery of incorporation into Christ; through the gift of sharing, “in him,” God’s own divine life.

The readings focus us on the mystery of knowing God as only God knows himself; the mystery of sharing in God’s own act of knowing himself by sharing in God’s own life “in Christ.” And they invite us to go to the source of our human understanding and expression of this divine knowledge: the Scriptures, the word of God. St. Jerome said, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” We can continue: “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of ourselves,” because, if we do not read the Bible, we really do not know clearly what we know or where it comes from. Unless we go to God’s own words, our human understanding of our faith is all secondhand. And inevitably “dumbed down.”

This week is challenging. It invites us to ask whether we really want to know God better. Whether we have experienced the mystery of this. What steps are involved in really “hearing” the Good News. Whether we really believe Christ can “make us see.” And whether we really ask him to. Whether we find our security in knowing God or in something else? Whether our religion is real.

This week’s reflections are ruled by Jesus’ prayer to the Father: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

This is the mystery of our life, the mystery of our religion, the mystery we proclaim and become aware of every time we pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven....”

This is the mystery of the revealed identity of God and of the identity we receive by Baptism. To enter into this first phrase of the Our Father is to enter into the first phase of our growth toward the “perfection of love” — it is to enter into awareness of our true relationship with God.

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The End that is A Beginning: 34th Week of the Liturgical Year, November 20-26, 2011

Daniel chapters 1-7; Luke, chapter 21.

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Sunday, the 34th Sunday of the Year and Feast of Christ the King, begins the last week of the liturgical year. Liturgically, the Church’s “New Year” begins with the first Sunday of Advent, when we begin to focus explicitly, in anticipation, on the event with which Christian time begins: the birth of Jesus Christ.

The Immersed in Christ Reflections this week review and bring to a conclusion a year of formation. Every day we have focused on drawing out of the readings what helps us to understand and enter fully into the mystery we celebrate at Mass. By now we should all be alertly conscious of the five mysteries that are presented in turn during the Eucharistic celebration. We should have acquired the habit of actively celebrating and embracing them during the liturgy. This is what the bishops asked for in Vatican II:

It is very much the wish of the Church that all the faithful should be led to take that full, conscious, and active part in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy, and to which the Christian people, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a redeemed people,” have a right and are bound by reason of their Baptism.

All those who have read and put into practice the Immersed in Christ Reflections for the past year have been formed to do this. They have learned how to enter into the five mysteries of Baptism as they are celebrated, one after another, in the Mass.

This is an experience of the New Evangelization that the last four popes have been calling for. They say we have not truly “heard” the Good News. It has not been effectively preached to us. We have not really been “evangelized” (i.e. told the Good News).

The key to the New Evangelization is to re-affirm — to explain and show people how to experience — what was lacking or “dumbed down” in the religious instruction we received. What was not brought into focus for us was the mystery embodied in every doctrine we profess, every sacrament we receive, every action we are called on to perform; and above all, in every celebration of Eucharist.

A “mystery” is “a truth that invites endless exploration.” Catholics who think they have “learned their religion” have misunderstood everything they were taught (probably because it was not taught). If they are not actively exploring the truths of their faith, they don’t know they are “mysteries.” They think they have “heard” the Good News, so to them it isn’t news any more. That means they never heard it.

Faith formation is not the same as instruction in the faith. Formation is “reiterated instruction combined with insistent intentionality” — in other words, we have to keep telling people the truth until it sinks in (and then, because it is a mystery, it will be in them “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life”); and we have to keep urging and showing them ways to live it out in action.

That is the guiding principle and goal behind the Reflections offered each year by Immersed in Christ. Next year we will take you through the same deep mysteries of Baptism as they are found in the prayer Jesus taught us to say: the Our Father.

“Go: the Mass is ended.” And just begun.

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The Bottomless Cup: 33rd Week of the Liturgical Year, November 13-19, 2011

1Maccabees chapters 1-6; 2Maccabees chapters 6-7; Luke, chapters 18-20.

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The mother of the seven Maccabee boys had a view of life it would be good to wake up with. She told her son, “It was not I who gave you breath and life, nor was it I who arranged the elements you are made of.... It is the Creator of the universe who shaped the beginning of humankind and brought about the origin of everything.”

The starting point of human consciousness should be: “I am basically nothing. Nothing explains my existence except the fact God is choosing to give me being right now. My existence is simply an ongoing act of God.”

This should be encouraging. If God is choosing right now to keep me in existence, he must see it as a good idea. My life on this earth must have some value for him. He is “voting” for me.

So are other people: all those who love me. The truth is, God has arranged things so that no one comes to be on this earth unless, in addition to himself, at least two human beings vote for it: a father and a mother. We are born with a support group, even a fan club!

The same is true of the divine life of grace. God adds that only by the unanimous vote of the Father, Son and Spirit. And, although a single human can give it to us by baptizing us, Baptism is, in fact, an entrance into and reception by the whole Church. And, consciously or not, by every redeemed human being on earth.

Why do they vote for us? Why does God?

God wants us to exist so that we can enjoy what he enjoys. With him and forever. We know that because Jesus told us. But he has another reason: Just as he doesn’t give life to anyone without the cooperation of other humans, he has arranged it so that the life he gives depends on other humans’ work to survive and develop. The same is true (normally, if not absolutely) of the life of grace. We are all our “brother’s keeper,” responsible for the well-being, both human and divine, natural and supernatural, of every other man and woman on earth. We all have a job to do, and God is giving us both existence and divine life so we can do it.

We are stewards. Everything God is giving us, from our existence to the latest good thought he has inspired, is an investment. We are charged to use, to work with, to manage all that we have and are for the good of others. Those are the terms of our existence. When Jesus comes at the end of time, he will ask us how we have given to others what he has given to us.

We mustn’t allow anything or anybody to stop us from doing that.

And nobody can. Love may be the only commodity there is that we can have as much of as we want, just by using it. And we can give it constantly: at every moment, in every situation, and to every person, whether it is received or not. Nothing can stop us from loving except our own choice not to.

To love is to give life. And we have it in a bottomless cup.

Keep this in mind as you read the Immersed in Christ reflections on the readings this week.

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The Gift and Liturgical Experience of Wisdom: 32nd Week of the Liturgical Year, November 6-12, 2011

Wisdom chapters 1-19; Luke, chapters 17-18
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This week’s readings are loaded! The theme of them all, New Testament as well as Old — and of the Rite of Communion, on which Immersed in Christ focuses us during this season—is “wisdom.” But we have to keep in mind what “wisdom” is. It is defined both as “the habit of seeing everything in the light of our last end,” and as the gift of the Holy Spirit that is the logical consequence of that: “the taste for spiritual things.”

It figures: if we really see everything we do, everything we use, buy, seek and experience, in the “light of our last end,” we will have a “taste” for, a desire for whatever leads us to that; i.e. for “spiritual” things. Things like prayer, Scripture reading, Mass, the sacraments, the mysteries of our Baptismal consecration (three of them, remember?), whatever makes us more aware of the mystery of Christ’s presence in ourselves and others, and of the real value and significance of the time we have to work with on earth.

The “end time” is the special focus of the Rite of Communion. If we understand what we are celebrating during this part of the liturgy, we will see how it gives us--and is an experience of--wisdom.

Communion is not just a private, one-on-one experience of receiving Jesus into our bodies and souls. It is a communal experience. The “Bread of Life,” the Bread of heaven, is only served at a communal meal: the “wedding banquet of the Lamb.” We receive Christ in communion with others or we don’t receive him. That says already that we can only receive Communion if we accept the condition of total, universal forgiveness and reconciliation that is a characteristic of the “peace and unity of the Kingdom.”

That is the “end time,” the “last end” on which the Rite of Communion focuses us, and which the Gift of Wisdom keeps us conscious of in every choice we make while interacting with the created reality of this world. We evaluate every pleasure, every joy held out to us by asking how it fits, how it prepares us for the total joy of heaven. We deal with every suffering, every loss, trial and challenge, by placing it in the perspective of the “end time,” when “every tear will be wiped away.” More mystically (that is, with more awareness of the mystery of our life as members of the body of Christ on earth), we see how all that we do and suffer here and now, whether through afflictions, hard work, frustrations or other emotional distress, is a participation in the redemptive suffering of Jesus. With Saint Paul, we see that “in our flesh we are completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.” That is the gift of wisdom.

The Rite of Communion is inseparable from the Eucharistic Prayer, when we celebrate and make present the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Seeing Communion in the light of the cross helps us to see our crosses in the light of the communion to which they lead: the full and glorious communion with God and others in the “wedding banquet of the Lamb.”

Keep this in mind as you read the readings and the Immersed in Christ reflections on them this week.

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An Image of the Church: 31st Week of the Liturgical Year, October 30-November 5, 2011

Romans chapters 11-16; Luke, chapters 14-16.

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If we take this week’s readings as a whole, they present us with a beautiful, an inspiring image of the Church. It is not in every respect the Church that is — Vatican II was explicit about that: “The Church... will attain its full perfection only in the glory of heaven, when there will come the time of the restoration of all things.” But in another sense, the true image, even of the sinful, struggling “pilgrim Church” we see, is the image of the Bride of Christ already radiant in splendor. The Church we see is the Church that will be. And she will be “without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish.” No picture of the present is complete without the projection of the future.

Knowing this, and seeing what the Church is called to be, we have to work for that as faithful stewards of the kingship of Christ.

What the readings this week particularly focus on is a Church united by several factors, none yet perfectly realized, but all promised as part of the victory of Christ. What do we see?

1. Equality with diversity. In the Church there are different ministries and different gifts to support them. But no gift and no ministry makes anyone “higher” or more important than another. In every ministry, it is Christ himself who is acting, and the same Spirit of Christ present in every gift. As Paul said, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” we say today: “There is no longer pope or bishop, laity or clergy, male or female; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus.

This does not eliminate the different offices or states of life in the Church. Paul was not saying there were no more ethnic Jews or Greeks, slaves or free people, men or women in the Church. He was saying that “differences make no difference” when it comes to the respect we show all, the acceptance of each one’s gifts and ministry, the right and call all have to speak and be heard, to act and be encouraged. The readings tell us that, yes, there are popes and bishops, laity and clergy, the teachers and the taught (Newman’s ecclesia docens and ecclesia docta), but all are exercising the ministry of Christ, and all must work together in unity and respect for one another. And in love.

2. We are all stewards. We are all charged to find, not faults but ways: ways to honor and respect each other, to serve with graciousness and generosity, to preserve peace through mutual recognition of each one’s gifts and ministry. This is the work of all, and all will enjoy together the fruits it produces.

This week we celebrate the Feast of All Saints. We need to celebrate it every day.

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