Character as Engraving

When you think of "character" you think of something firm, something stable, don't you? The word Kierkegaard uses (in his "The Present Age") is "engraved." (Character is derived from the Greek word for engraving.)

Morality is character, character is that which is engraved; but the sand and the sea have no character and neither has abstract intelligence, for character is really inwardness. Immorality, as energy, is also character; but to be neither moral nor immoral is merely ambiguous . . .

The sand and the sea don't take an impression, or at any rate one that lasts. Neither do we unless we in spirit maintain "the distance separating a thing from its opposite in quality." 

The spiritual maintenance of the separation between good and bad, otherwise known as self-mastery, takes "relentless practice" in saying no to vice and weakness and yes to what you often don't want to do but know you must. (Philip Rieff)  This is the stuff real resolutions are made of, of resolution that, in practice, marks us with virtuous habits.  Good luck with your 2013 plan of action.  Don't let any sissy-stuff keep you down!  Rather, ask for help from friends, heavenly and here on earth.

Make a difference in 2013.  Make a mark.  Show some resolve. Etch a character for yourself. 

Herod or Magi?

It's all in our perspective!  Perspective changes perception.

The Magi expected the Messiah, looked for Him, prepared for signs.  In their watchfulness they observed the rising of the star.  They followed as it led them to a child, whom they recognized as the child king.

Herod was not prepared for a Messiah, whom he viewed as a threat.  He was intent on destroying any rival.  He did not see the star's rising.

A basic difference in views: One self-centered, inward looking, fearful and closed; the other self-less, outward looking, watchful and open  The latter perspective involves risk, for it takes us out of ourselves.  But in allowing the star to be revealed, it offers the possibility of reward.  The Magi follow the star and encounter the baby Jesus, whom they recognized as Lord of all.  In their joy they offer the finest they have, and prostrate themselves, paying him homage.

Can we find the star that even today is rising and offering direction to an encounter with Jesus?  Pope Benedict in his series of catechetical talks on the Year of Faith (this from October18, 2012 second par.) writes that the star is the church, the “teacher of humanity,” which proclaims the Word (in the gospels and Creed), celebrates the Sacraments; and performs works of charity.  The church's light illumines the way to an encounter with Jesus, which involves recognizing him as a living person in relation to ourselves.

For knowing can be a merely intellectual act, while 'recognizing' involves discovering the profound connection between the truths that we profess in the Creed and our daily lives, such that these truths truly and tangibly become -- as they have always been -- light for the steps of our lives, water that quenches our burning thirst along our journey, and life that overcomes some of the deserts of our modern day.  The moral life of the believer is grafted onto the Creed, and it finds its foundation and justification therein.  

Ibid. (emphasis added)

Our search arises out of our fundamental yearning or desire as humans for the good, for God.  But desire needs a guiding star. (The Latin word for desire, desiderata has "star" at its core (sidera), showing that desire has an infinite yearning, a reaching out "to the stars".)   The guide, Benedict observes in his Nov. 7th catechesis, is the good of the other, which if honored and enacted in truth, makes another's good my own, and in its tutelage of self forgetfulness, liberates my desire, raises it up, purifies it, so it may reach its true end.

The answer to the question about the meaning of the experience of love thus passes through the purification and healing of the will, required by the very love which I have for the other.  We must practice this, we must train, and even correct ourselves, so that we may truly desire that good.  The initial ecstasy thus becomes a pilgrimage, 'an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.'

Ibid. The pope suggests we ought to develop a "kind of pedagogy of desire" to help move us along our path towards an encounter with Christ.  First, we need to re-learn "the taste for the authentic joys of life."  He includes in these joys, "friendship, the experience of beauty, the love of knowledge."  Ibid.  But, second, we must "never be satisfied with what has been achieved.  It is precisely the truest joys that are capable of freeing in us that healthy unrest that leads us to be more demanding -- to desire a higher, more profound good -- and at the same time, to perceive with increasing clarity that nothing finite can fill our hearts."  Ibid.  Benedict says, "it is not a matter of stifling desire, but of liberating it" so we can travel, the pilgrims we are, to our true "heavenly homeland," "that full, eternal good, which nothing will ever be able to snatch from us."  Ibid.

Our journey is completed in gift-giving.  The Epiphany is the source of our Christmas tradition of gift-giving.  As our journey is fulfilled, we receive the gift of God's presence, of recognizing the face of Jesus, and we want to give him gifts . . . chiefly, the gift of ourselves, the only gift he truly desires, in his true love for us.  

The history of our church is full of the great variety of gifts Christians have given in recognizing the face of Jesus:

The Magi of the Gospel are but the first in a vast pilgrimage in which the beauty of this earth is laid at the feet of Christ: the gold of the ancient Christian mosaics, the multicolored light from the windows of our great cathedrals, the praise of their stone, the Christmas songs of the trees of the forest are all inspired by him, and human voices like musical instruments have found their most beautiful melodies when they cast themselves at his feet.  The suffering of the world too -- its misery -- comes to him in order, for a moment, to find security and understanding in the presence of the God who is poor.

Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth, for Jan. 7

Let us resolve, as this new year of our Lord 2013 begins, to join the journey of the Magi, and to seal our recognition of Jesus's face by, as Mother Theresa urged, "doing something beautiful for God."

Starting Over at Any Age

As the year draws to a close, and we plan our New Year's resolutions, it might be good to see images of hope.  The movie "The First Grader" is one such image.  This film depicts the struggle of an eighty-something former Mau Mau fighter in Kenya, who spend formative years in prison, to acquire what he never had: a first grade education.  The movie is very inspiring for all who resolve to better themselves.  I will be making my own resolutions soon, and will need motivation.  Can I have your prayers too?  2013, bring it on!

Star of Wonder, Star of Light . . .

. . . Star With Royal Beauty Bright!

The Magi were wise to spy the star, invisible to anxious Herod.

The star is still proceeding, still leading.  How can we see it?

Epiphany's first reading (Isaiah 60:1-6) advises: "Raise your eyes and look about."  A guiding star rises above Herod-like, mundane, cares and concerns. Looking up reveals the only guide through life's thicket: a heavenly one.

The star leads us to a perfect light, the true "star" of the show, God himself, incarnate in his baby son, Jesus, born a gentle king on Bethlehem's plain, to "govern . . . from sea to sea . . . with justice.  . . and profound peace."  Ps. 72. 

If I am wise enough, I will, like the magi, as the good news says (Mt. 2: 1-12): "be overjoyed" and "prostrate[] [myself] and [do] him homage."  For in that baby, I will see God our Father's love beautifully and perfectly manifested in a rule that gives all "clear sight" and "true affection" (closing prayer).

And I will want to respond, want to give him the gift he wants most . . . my very self, my love for him, poured out for others.

Epiphany actually describes the entire Christmas season and then some.  Alice Camille in Living With Christ (p. 20 in the January 2013 issue) points out that "the season of Epiphany" includes Christmas, the magi feast, the baptism of the Lord, and every third year, the wedding feast of Cana.  "All of these epiphanies honor the Christian revelation of God as realized by the four evangelists.  Humanity and divinity join hands across eternity in Jesus."

We Three Kings of Orient Are

We three kings of Orient are;
Bearing gifts we traverse afar,
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.

Refrain

O star of wonder, star of light,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.

Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again,
King forever, ceasing never,
Over us all to reign.   Refrain

Frankincense to offer have I;
Incense owns a Deity nigh;
Prayer and praising, voices raising,
Worshipping God on high.   Refrain

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.   Refrain

Glorious now behold Him arise;
King and God and sacrifice;
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Sounds through the earth and skies.   Refrain

Lift Up Your Hearts

The voice of him who speaks in love, where is it directed?  To the "dative of manifestation," the one who can hear?  Ultimately to God, source of speaker and hearer.   Out of gratitude and in love the voice speaks, to the Speaker of the Word, out of Whom the voice is knit.

Sursum Corda.  Lift up your hearts!  Here is the meditation of Heinrich Suso  (1300? - 1366) on this opening of the Eucharistic prayer, which Ford Maddox Ford called "the most beautiful passage of Christian mysticism." The Limits of Art, at 391-392.

I place before my inward eyes myself with all that I am -- my body, soul, and all my powers -- and I gather round me all the creatures which God ever created in heaven, on earth, and in all the elements, each one severally with its name, whether birds of the air, beasts of the forest, fishes of the water, leaves and grass of the earth, or the innumerable sand of the sea, and to these I add all the little specks of dust which glance in the sunbeams, with all the little drops of water which ever fell or are falling from dew, snow, or rain, and I wish that each of these had a sweetly-sounding stringed instrument, fashioned from my heart's inmost blood, striking on which they might each send up to our dear and gentle God a new and lofty strain of praise for ever and ever.  And then the loving arms of my soul stretch out and extend themselves towards the innumerable multitude of all creatures, and my intention is, just as a free and blithesome leader of a choir stirs up the singers of his company, even so to turn them all to good account by inciting them to sing joyously, and to offer up their hearts to God. "Sursum corda."

If stones can speak, let my own voice rise in love to Him in whom in Love all things are made.

Living Sacramentally

It is said that only in love does one see things as they really are.  Robert Spaemann, "The Paradoxes of Love", at 19 ("Love is the becoming real of the other for me." [quoting Valentin Tomberg].)  If God is love, then to see reality is to see things and experience life in the dimension of love, the Godly dimension.  Ubi amor, ibi oculus.  Ibid, 17. ("Love lets the beloved appear in a glow that nobody else perceives.  When this glow slowly fades into the ordinariness of everyday life, then this does not mean that now, slowly, reality appears as it is, but rather the opposite.  The lover will retain the memory of the one-perceived glow as the apostles retained the memory of the transfiguration of Christ; and he will know that then true reality was shown to him, the 'thing in itself,' which, as Kant says, is the thing as it appears to an intellectus archetypus.")

I had an experience of this sort while running last Friday in Fremont, Ohio.  We stopped at a Day's Inn on our way east.  I got up and jogged in the crisp early morning along a country road, noticing:  cows gazing at me with blank, sad eyes; rows of green sprigs of winter wheat in a field I jogged through; a UPS truck traveling along the ribbon of road perpendicular to my path to an unknown destination; ice glazed on a puddle of water next to my feet; a small factory with a parking lot full of cars, no one in sight; two flowers in a picture frame in my motel room; a statue of an angel on the front lawn of a farm house.

I could go on; I felt pleased to "see" these things.  It was lovely to do so.  They spoke to me. Not as sacred in themselves, but as icons of the creation, God's gift, in love, to the world.

At the Wheaton College Christmas concert a week ago Saturday, a performer recited a poem by Richard Wilbur, "A Christmas Hymn."  It also depicts how things in the world can "speak" in the aura created by Christ's love.

A Christmas Hymn

And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”  Luke XIX. 39-

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry,
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David's city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry,
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And like within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry,
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God's blood upon the spearhead,
God's love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry,
And every stone shall cry
In praise of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

- Richard Wilbur

In love the very stones will speak, will cry out, as nature did to me, in joy, last Friday.  I think of Ps. 19:3 where "day after day pours forth speech. . . "  My prayer is, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening."

A Man's Bottom Line

My brother in law Jerome passed away last Tuesday (Dec. 11, 2012).  His wake and funeral were held on Saturday in his small town of Smithsburg Maryland, near Hagerstown, about sixty miles north of Washington, D.C.

The funeral home was filled to overflowing with family and friends wanting to pay last respects to a man whom eulogizers described as "larger than life," generous and good-spirited.  Jerome served as a village councilman, built homes professionally, coached girls' basketball, and mentored more than a few in need of advice on their road to sobriety.  Several humorously described their relationships with him, invariably describing him as a teddy bear under a brusque disguise, opinionated but straight speaking and generous with his time.

Jerome, only 65, began a rather rapid decline when he fell off a roof in 2008 while helping a friend re-roof his house.  It seems fitting that his life even in its demise was shaped by generosity.  One person reminded us that Jesus was a carpenter, and that Jerome was a carpenter's carpenter, highly professional and attentive to detail.  One young lady reminisced on his flowing blond hair and beard and piercing blue eyes.  Another affirmed Jerome's spirituality, noting that he recommended a daily prayer for strength, and regularly counseled "suck it up," in response to those who doubted its efficacy or who were tempted to fall along the wayside. (Jerome ran an AA meeting once a week for years.)  In many ways he resembled Jesus, though he rejected Catholic liturgical practice.  Yet even here he may have been close to Jesus' dislike of hypocrisy and hubris.

An ex-Marine, Jerome had bright-line opinions about many things, and didn't mince words in expressing them.  But many felt his charisma, and valued his confidence. The town obituary article labeled him "a prickly person," but we all agreed better adjectives were "passionate" and "bold."  The local minister joked about Jerome's "colorful" language while volunteering on a Habitat house Jerome was helping build.  She said she told him later that she used him as an example in a sermon, saying that his language was dubious, but that he prayed very hard with his hands.

Every life reaches a "bottom line," an accounting, and Jerome's was fondly described in his friends' good words for him, their "eu-logies."  It struck me that a bottom line arises from the vast "detail" of daily life, the daily ledger entries of efforts (not always successful) to discern and do the good.  The speakers made clear that Jerome's bottom line in carpentry, and personal and civic life, was positive.

How do we characterize the often smudged efforts that nevertheless sum up to a positive bottom line?  For a Christian it is writing figures in love.  Only these "sum up" to a positive.  I could tell from the folks at Jerome's funeral that Jerome knew his figures, for his ledger book was positive to overflowing . . . in friends!

What Habit are you Wearing?

We immediately recognize the roles people play in life by the habits they wear.  A judge's robe; a police officer's uniform and gun;  a doctor's gown; a nun's habit; a professor's cap and gown.  The list goes on and on.  The habit symbolizes the role in public, transmitting its authority so all can respond "in kind."  Any kind of regularized behavior is also seen as habitual.  We become what we are habitually.  The habit makes the man.

A previous post described how Christians think of God and the whole, according to Robert Sokolowski. Eucharistic Presence, The God of Faith and Reason.  The so-called Christian Distinction changes not only how we view God and the whole, but also how we view ourselves, and our roles, within the whole.

The word "person" as descriptive of the human being is a Christian concept, and means the role or mission we have in a world created by God out of love.  The word person, according to Sokolowski (and von Balthasar, see Eucharistic Presence at ch. 10, arose in Greek drama to signify the mask through which the actor spoke in order to be heard and to indicate his character (per - sona) and then later the actor's role in the drama.  The word was taken up by Christian theology to signify the human being's role in the Christian drama.

For the Christian, man is not only "homo sapiens," but a "rational animal" with a mission, a role in life.  A person is the description of the man with a mission (imparted through a calling or vocation). A person truly exists only when he has heard his calling and accepted his mission.  This makes sense only in a Christian setting, in a setting in which a distinction is drawn between God and the whole (cosmos).  If God created the cosmos out of love, the appropriate "reactive attitude" according to Sokolowski (citing Peter Strawson - p. 126) is gratitude and a giving back through obedience to the gift given.  It is obedience to Christ's invitation (call) to imitate him in his own redemptive mission.  For Christ, his mission was his all -- he saw himself only in terms of his response to God's vision and pro-vidence of the world, God's plan.  For us humans, we are only "more or less" involved in this mission -- more as we choose to be obedient to Christ's call -- to become a person, a human being with a mission!

The saints are those whom we recognize as having actively assumed their missions.  They are "one" with their mission, identify with it publicly.  (The videos of Thomas More, Sophie Scholl, Mother Theresa are examples cited in an earlier post.)

We become aware of our calling through prayer and discernment, and the grace that is imparted in us through prayer and the sacraments.  The rationality of our nature is fully involved in this process -- we are, after all, rational animals -- but it is "put to service" for our calling/mission in Christ.  ONLY in Christ do we find our mission, since only in Christ's redemptive plan are we called -- and so ONLY in our Christian mission do we become a person.

This is an exalted calling, and the sacraments of initiation, Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, introduce us to it, confirm us and help sustain us in it, along with the sacrament of penance and prayer and the sacramentals.  Paul's letter to the Galations (and in many other places in his letters) describes this life:  a relentless practice to avoid evil and to "put on" good.  The fruits of this practice, never ending in our life on earth, are fruits of the holy spirit:  charity, joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, faithfulness.  See Catechism 1832.

Paul describes this process of living, of imitating Christ, as taking off the old man and putting on a new, i.e. clothed with Christ.  Gal. 3:27  Through the sacraments and prayer we remove the persona of wickedness (characterized by "immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, etc. Gal. 5:19-21) and put on the persona of Christ:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Gal. 5:22.  The "new man" wears a new habit, a new habitude, a habitude of natural and theological virtue, of sanctity and grace.  The grace that gets us there is God's love working with us, as we struggle to put on our new habit, our Christian role and mission.  If that struggle is to be a dance, we must work with the grace that teaches us the steps.

What habit am I putting on today?  You?

Our Lady of Guadalupe

The Christian distinction between God and the world emphasizes God's radical otherness from the cosmos.  God is not part of the world, nor is He non-existent.  He is certainly no thing but He is not nothing.  Robert Sokolowski contrasts the Christian view of God and the cosmos with pagan and atheistic worldviews.  For atheists God is nowhere, non-existent.  For pagans the world contains the gods.  Christians believe there is one (triune) God, and He is so transcendent to the whole that He is not subject to the necessities of the whole.  He created them!  In fact, the whole was created by God out of love, out of generosity (gene + eros).  God would be as perfect without having created, but He did so.  And God's transcendence is so radical that he could enter (through Jesus Christ) into his creation through Incarnation, and redeem it.  Creation, Incarnation, Redemption:  All made possible by the nature of the true God, radically distinct from, but close to, the world. See Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason and Eucharistic Presence.

The Christian distinction makes all the difference in understanding and living Christian faith, according to Sokolowski.  The Christian distinction, given through revelation [man could not discern the distinction by himself] allows man to enter into God's plan of redemption and his redemptive acts.  The sacraments and sacraments are the church's ways of living the distinction:  they allow us to enter into Christ's redemptive life.

The feast yesterday of Our Lady of Guadalupe strikes me as a wonderful example of the Christian distinction revealed.  The Gospel reading from Luke (concerning the Annunciation) emphasizes (in Gabriel's words) that "with God nothing will be impossible."  That is, God is not subject to the powers and principalities, the normal necessities of the physical world.

Our lady appeared in 1531 to Juan Diego on the Feast of the Annunciation to reveal this God to present day Mexicans who were drowning in pagan religion.  They worshipped the sun and moon and practiced human sacrifice.  Mary appeared standing on the moon, and, in the words of Revelation 12:1, "clothed in the sun", her feet crushing the serpent of Revelation.  See Wikipedia article and excerpt below.  She told Juan Diego, "I am the . . . Mother of the True God through whom everything lives, the Lord and Master of all things near and far, the Master of Heaven and Earth." The Word Among Us, December 2012, Meditation at p. 38.

The entire experience of the appearance points to Christ as the true God, beyond the cosmos and above the false gods of Mexico, with Mary saying to the people of Mexico (and of all the world), "Worship the true God, not false gods."

Here is a paragraph from the Wikipedia article:

The iconography of the Virgin is impeccably Catholic:^[29] Miguel Sanchez, the author of the 1648 tract Imagen de la Virgen María, described her as the Woman of the Apocalypse from the New Testament's Revelation 12:1, "clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,"^[22][30] and she is also described as a representation of the Immaculate Conception.^[22] Yet despite this orthodoxy the image also had a hidden layer of coded messages for the indigenous people of Mexico which goes a considerable way towards explaining her popularity.^[31] Her blue-green mantle was the color reserved for the divine couple Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl;^[32] her belt is interpreted as a sign of pregnancy; and a cross-shaped image symbolizing the cosmos and called nahui-ollin is inscribed beneath the image's sash.^[33] She was called "mother of maguey,"^[34] the source of the sacred beverage pulque,^[35] "the milk of the Virgin",^[36] and the rays of light surrounding her doubled as maguey spines.^[34]

The Christian distinction invites us to enter into the space opened by God's revelation of Himself through His actions in history.  We are invited to enter into a sacramental life: to see our lives profiled against and made meaningful by the salvation history that God and his son Jesus Christ have mercifully enacted.  The church's seven sacraments exist precisely to help us to "imitate Christ" and thereby to participate with Him in the world's continuing suffering unto redemption.   For the many in a world lacking meaning, the invitation can be a life-saving grace.

Living an Invisible Principle

In the movie Harvey, Elwood (played by Jimmy Stewart) offers something worth quoting.  In fact, he says, "Quote me."  He says that his mother long ago said to him that, in this world, he needed to be, "Oh so smart" or "Oh so pleasant."  Elwood said that for years he was "smart," but that he recommended being pleasant.  "You my quote me," he added.  (The first clip below presents the scene.)

I think of the movie as a depiction of what it's like to live by an invisible principle (represented by the invisible rabbit Harvey): the Good.

This principle (of the good) is a fundamental option for each of us.  We can be "smart," i.e., cunning and self-interested, or we can be "pleasant," i.e., courteous and self-deprecating.  Only the latter attitude lets the good, i.e., Harvey, appear. For Elwood, living this invisible principle made Harvey real for him.  By the end of the movie others were beginning to "see" Harvey as well.  Along the way Elwood faced plenty of opposition.

The problem is that living a good life invites a negative response from those for whom the good is a threat.  "Let us beset the good one. . ." Wisdom 2:12-20; Jn 15:18-19.  As Germain Grisez noted in his book Christian Moral Principles (Ch.22, q. G, sec. 10 [p. 541in hardcover book])::

Anyone who truly lives a good life will be hated, [since] one of original sin's effects is to take away the moral motivation of genuine human community and make moral goodness costly.  Jesus, by dying as he did, presents us with a telling example, probably the most horrifying possible, of the situation of a good person in this sinful world. 

Elwood ended up in an insane asylum.  And in the two real life examples shown below (Thomas More and Sophie Scholl), both were beheaded!

I ask myself, do I have the courage to live the invisible principle of the good, so to make it visible in the world?  It's a serious question because here's how Grisez (Ibid, ch.23, q. D, sec. 4) sees the options:

[C]hildren of God continue to live in a sinful and largely unredeemed world, where ultimately there are only three choices: to join the world, and so abandon Jesus; to seek either to destroy evil or wholly segregate oneself from it, and so betray him by becoming a zealot or a Pharisee; or to try to convert the world with the love of Jesus, and so share in his fate. One will share his fate because not all of the sinful world accepts salvation, and that part which rejects it hates Jesus and his followers (see Jn 15.16–18; 16.1–4). “For what credit is it, if when you do wrong and are beaten for it you take it patiently? But if when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Pt 2.20–21).

 Only in life will the answer (and possibly Harvey!) be revealed. (Let's hope and pray he is!)

A world in darkness. . .

Advent is a looking ahead to the light of the Son (sun) promised by the Father.  On this feast of St. Ambrose, Matthew (Mt. 9:27-32) tells of two blind men who followed after Jesus, calling incessantly, "Have pity on us, Son of David."  Jesus asked them if they believe he could heal them.  They readily assented, and "their eyes were opened." Jesus said, "Let it be done for you according to your faith."  The prayer over the offerings asks, "may the Holy Spirit fill us with that light of faith by which he constantly enlightened Saint Ambrose."

As we approach the natural end of the annual celestial cycle, we look, in faith, to a time of greater light.  The responsorial psalm intones, "The Lord is my light and my salvation." (Ps.27). The first reading promises, "On that day . . . the eyes of the blind shall see."  Isaiah 29:19.

Christ's light is shown in compassion and love.  We enter into Christ's light, as we imitate His love.    Our book of life, as it turns, page by page, day by day, is a " book without light, unless with love we write." Moody Blues, Isn't life Strange, at 5:05. Isn't this our faith, our light in the darkness of this world, approaching as the dawn?

Once Upon a Time

The channel of grace is sacrifice, self-sacrifice.  Sacra-facere, making a sacrifice, makes a sacrament, the action or place of sacred-making.

Self-sacrifice is a finding of a place of need, of emptiness that needs filling with a spirit of caring.  Last night I kneeled before the wheelchair of Eleonore, who resides at the Dupage Convalescent Center.  She had attended the St. Michael Christmas party for the aged.  Some Holy Name members helped push those in wheelchairs.  I was waiting for the bus to arrive to take her home.  Kneeling brought me close to her, close enough to listen and to speak as the swirl of activity -- boy scouts, basketball practice -- encircled us.

We reminisced over days gone by, when our children attended St. Michael's school, her's my age, and mine her grandchildren's.  But those memories lit up her face, as she remembered walking to mass at St. Mikes, her husband (now deceased) commuting by foot each day to his job at the post office in Wheaton.  She couldn't quite remember her age, or her kids', but she did remember her happy days in Wheaton "once upon a time."

It was fitting to kneel before her, waiting in our old age, in quiet conversation, for the visitation of Jesus in his full glory.  Our brief visit brought Him closer:  In communion waiting, a sacrament making!