Christmas

Tuesday after Epiphany

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Today’s Gospel reminds us why Christmas happened at all. The compassionate gaze of Our Lord is the same as the one he had from Heaven when he saw his creation lost and disoriented by sin, hungering for meaning in their lives. Even now back at the Father’s right hand he directs that same compassionate gaze toward us. Maybe we don’t see him seated before us and teaching us, speaking quietly to his disciples and asking them to take care of us too, but in every celebration of the Eucharist the same thing happens.

In parishes and chapels throughout the world we all form small groups of believers, but all those groups are gathered around Christ, who through the Blessed Sacrament is able to be with all of us. The Word of God is read and its meaning explained by bishops, priests, and deacons who’ve been entrusted with continuing Our Lord’s mission to preach the Gospel and to care for his flock. Simple bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, the Bread of Life that eventually will end all hunger in us and satisfies our deepest needs.

A few days of the Christmas season remain. Let’s show our gratitude for Our Lord’s compassion by being his instruments of compassion to those we know who are in spiritual or material need.

Readings: 1 John 4:7–10; Psalm 72:1–2, 3–4, 7–8; Mark 6:34–44. See also 1st Week of Advent, Wednesday and 2nd Week of Easter, Friday.

Monday after Epiphany

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The readings in this last week of the Christmas season bask in the glow of Christ as the light of the nations, something underscored on the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord. In today’s Gospel John the Baptist’s mission is ending and Our Lord’s is beginning, but they are one and the same: to preach conversion and faith because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. John prepared the way; now the Lord has come.

John preached conversion and faith to people who knew in their hearts that it was needed, not just for the world, but for them. The Lord’s phase of the mission is not just characterized by awakening consciences, but by showing the power of God. People not only received teaching and the Gospel, but physical healing to show the power of repentance and faith. Just as John had told the Pharisees, priests, and elders, they hadn’t seen anything yet. Now the Lord had come and proved John’s words were true.

If you didn’t live Advent well, it’s not too late to have Our Lord come with power into your life for Christmas and the new year. Clear a path for him in your heart and he will come and transform it.

Readings: 1 John 3:22–4:6; Psalm 2:7bc–8, 10; Matthew 4:12–17, 23–25.

Epiphany of the Lord

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An incandescent light bulb contains a filament that glows brightly but sits within a glass bulb in order to produce light. That light is meant to go beyond the confines of just the bulb. In celebrating the Epiphany of the Lord today we celebrate the first moment in Our Lord’s childhood when it was revealed, as Paul recalls in today’s Second Reading, that all nations, not just Israel, would be able to benefit from the promises Our Lord has made through the Gospel. The Three Kings come from afar bearing gifts because they see the signs in the stars that a great king had just been born, great enough to warrant leaving their countries behind to see him and pay him homage.

The First Reading speaks of how Jerusalem will be radiant when the Lord shines upon it, so much so that Jerusalem itself will attract others by its light to the Lord. Christ is the filament without which there’d be no light at all. Israel is the glass bulb; in becoming flesh Our Lord choice a place, a time, and a people in which to become flesh, and that people, prepared by the Father, is Israel. Like a light bulb, that illumination is not just for Israel alone; all peoples will be drawn to that light until they reflect it too. The Three Kings represent all the peoples of the earth seeing that light in the distance of their cultural differences and heading toward it. A distant light, a star, became a beacon that led them to Jerusalem. The prophecy regarding Bethlehem lead them closer to their goal, and then the star itself ushered them to the baby Jesus.

Thanks to this episode we know that Christ’s light reaches to all the nations, and leads us even above and beyond our cultures. All the nations of the earth can benefit from his light. Let’s pray today for the grace to follow his star in our lives as well, and offer him the best gifts we have in homage so that his light shines in us too.

Readings: Isaiah 60:1–6; Psalm 72:1–2, 7–8, 10–11, 12–13; Ephesians 3:2–3a, 5–6; Matthew 2:1–12.

Christmas, January 2nd

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After the Christmas octave end a few days of the Christmas Season follow before the liturgy returns to Ordinary Time with the Baptism of the Lord, the moment in which Jesus begins his public ministry. So in today’s readings we’re catapulted from the events around Jesus’ birth and early childhood to the ministry of John the Baptist, a ministry that immediately preceded Jesus’ public ministry after thirty quiet and private years in Nazareth.

John’s ministry is a preparation for Jesus’, but many people don’t know that yet. John starts to get noticed, so priests and Levites come to see John at Bethany and submit him to a questionnaire regarding what prophecies he was supposed to be fulfilling. It was not a pilgrimage of conversion and faith, just a fact-finding mission. John starts right off by answering the central question: he was not the Christ. So then they start asking him about the other prophecies: Moses said a prophet would come, was it John; other prophets said Elijah would come again, was it John? He was neither, and told them he was fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah to prepare a path for the Lord. That’s wasn’t good enough, so the Pharisees come too and ask him why he’s doing Messianic things if he’s not the one. Again John responds that someone greater is coming after him. Ultimately they would have to see for themselves when the moment came: they couldn’t just classify and file away John’s ministry.

The Jews had built up a lot of preconceived notions of how the Savior was going to come and what he was going to do. Some of them never accepted Our Lord as the Lord. We may have the benefit of a community of believers and witnesses, but we too can have preconceived notions of how Christ should be and what he should do. The New Year has begun: let’s prepare the way for Christ this year by fostering openness to whatever he wants to do in our lives, and to how he wishes to reveal himself to us.

Readings: 1 John 2:22–28; Psalm 98:1–4; John 1:19–28.

 

Mary, Mother of God

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Today a new year begins and the Christmas Octave concludes with the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. We begin the new year celebrating the generosity and fiat of Mary that made her the Mother of God. In the early Church a group of heretics called the Arians claimed that Mary was not the Mother of God because Jesus was not God. This feast celebrates both the divinity of Christ and what that implies for Mary’s maternity.

When the shepherds in today’s Gospel told Mary that angels had spoken to them, she surely remembered that fateful day nine months earlier when she conceived of the Holy Spirit after the visit of Gabriel. Again in this moment the heavenly choirs can’t contain themselves at the birth of the Savior. Jesus in his public ministry would tell his listeners that the angels in Heaven rejoice more over a repentant sinner that over scores of holy people. Here they celebrate the salvation at hand for everyone, and share the news with people pretty low down on the social scale: shepherds were marginalized in the culture of the time, which is why they usually kept to themselves. That didn’t matter to them now; they found the Holy Family and shared the good news with “All who heard it.”

Mary, in contrast, takes in the incredible mysteries of God that are unfolding in silence and contemplation. We can only imagine how she described these events years later to the first Christians, perhaps to Luke the evangelist himself, so that they would be narrated for future Christians. As this new year is beginning we remember this moment of salvation history as a beginning of a new phase of Mary’s relationship with God. Inspired by her example let’s strive to begin this new year as a year of a deeper love for Christ; in that way it will truly become a happy new year.

Readings: Numbers 6:22–27; Psalm 67:2–8; Galatians 4:4–7; Luke 2:16–21. See also Christmas Octave, 5th Day and 6th Day.