On this last day of the Christmas season, we can receive in a new way the outpouring of the Spirit. Like Jesus, we must go to our Jordan and meet our St. John the Baptizer. There’s a person and a place that the Lord has chosen to be instrumental in lavishing His Spirit on us (Ti 3:6). Like Jesus, we will have to deny and humble ourselves to be at the right place at the right time (Mt 3:15). We will struggle interiorly to “let it be done” to us (Lk 1:38).

Let’s resist our resistance to the Spirit. The Lord wants to give the Spirit to us much more than we want to receive Him. If we would only want the Spirit more than we want our own way! Jesus, the Baptizer in the Spirit (Mk 1:8), is so quiet and gentle, “not crying out, not shouting, not making His voice heard in the street” (Is 42:2). It’s so easy to brush Him off, stifle the Christmas Spirit, and miss the opportunity of a lifetime. Yet, if we want to, we can hear Jesus breathing on us the words: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn 20:22). The Spirit descends quietly as a dove (Mt 3:16), noticeable only to those who want to notice.

“My point is that you should live in accord with the Spirit and you will not yield to the cravings of the flesh” (Gal 5:16).

 

The wise men found the infant Jesus in a house some days after Jesus had been born in a stable. Their coming may have occurred around the days of Jesus’ Presentation in the Temple forty days after His birth when Simeon prophesied that Jesus was both “a revealing Light to the Gentiles” and “a Sign of contradiction” (Lk 2:32, 34, our transl). Possibly the wise men were wise because they did not contradict Jesus, a Sign of contradiction.

Because they believed the star of Bethlehem was announcing the birth of the King of the Jews, the wise men followed the star, prostrated themselves before Jesus, and “presented Him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (Mt 2:11). The actions of the wise men did not contradict Jesus. However, Herod, after having said he would offer Jesus homage (Mt 2:8), contradicted himself and tried to murder Jesus (Mt 2:16).

We too contradict Jesus and ourselves when we say:

• we believe in God, but we don’t tell others about Him,
• we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion, but we don’t center our lives on receiving Communion,
• the Bible is the Word of God, but we don’t read it daily, and
• prayer is communicating with God, but we don’t set aside a daily prayer time.

There may be other contradictions in our lives. Yet the wise men and women are not contradictory; they are prostrate in worship of Jesus.

 

Shakespeare said the world is a stage and we are all players in the theater of life. Others say life is a party or game. Job said life was a drudgery (Jb 7:1). The Lord reveals to us that life is a Passover (see Lk 2:41) — a communal celebration of our God-given freedom from slavery. Life is not just a nostalgic look at Passovers past, but a living of Passover present. Life is losing Christ for three days (see Lk 2:46), being crucified and buried with Him (Rm 6:3-4), and searching for the Lord in sorrow (Lk 2:48; Jn 20:15). Life is also finding Christ and rising with Him “on the third day” (Lk 2:46; Jn 20:16).

All of this is “the Father’s business” (Lk 2:49, our translation). This is everyday life and family life. This is the way of holiness in life and in family. We become holy by becoming like God (see 1 Pt 1:15-16). We become like God by being baptized into Jesus’ death and Resurrection (Rm 6:3ff) and living our Baptisms through daily crosses and repeated experiences of the Resurrection. As our lives become Passovers, we and our families become holy. Like Jesus, we progress “steadily in wisdom and age and grace before God and men” (Lk 2:52). Holy Family, pray for us.

 

In the days before modern global communications, messengers ran or walked to deliver their news transmissions. They brought news from loved ones in far-off places to people who could not travel. These messengers were most welcome couriers.

Today, on this Christmas Day, we celebrate a pair of tiny, beautiful feet (Is 52:7) — those of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In times past God sent His messages “in fragmentary and varied ways…through the prophets” (Heb 1:1). “In this, the final age, He has spoken to us through His Son,” Jesus Christ, the Messenger from heaven (Heb 1:2). In Jesus, we have been given the best possible news: the fullness of divine revelation and the establishment of the Church, the Body of Christ, so that God’s messages will continue.

We who live on this earth resemble the folks from centuries past. They longed for news of far-off loved ones, but could not receive it without the intervention of a messenger. We long for news from heaven, but cannot receive it without hearing from the Messenger. Jesus is the One sent from heaven, Who knows what He is saying (see Jn 3:11-13). Therefore, believe Jesus. Prostrate yourself before Him. Choose the better portion — to sit at His beautiful feet, listen to His words (Lk 10:39-42), and believe and obey Him.

 

At the Christmas liturgies, in hundreds of nations, billions of people will look at statues or pictures of the body of Baby Jesus. Moreover, hundreds of millions of people always carry with them crucifixes depicting the crucified body of Jesus. There is something awesome and mysterious about the body of Jesus.

When the body of Jesus was just beginning to be formed shortly after Mary conceived Him, Mary took Jesus’ body “into the hill country to a town of Judah, where she entered Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leapt in her womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk 1:39-41). The first days of the presence of Jesus’ body on earth resulted in an explosion by the Holy Spirit.

Several months later, wise men saw the body of Baby Jesus and were compelled to give Him gold, frankincense, and myrrh (Mt 2:11).

Several years later, thousands of people touched “just the tassel” of the cloak clothing Jesus’ body, and “all who touched Him got well” (see Mk 6:56).

Today, we can touch the body of Christ in even more powerful and intimate ways by loving the Body of Christ, the Church (see Eph 5:25ff), and especially by receiving the Body of Christ in Holy Communion. That is why the season beginning Tuesday is called “Christmas,” for at Mass we touch Christ’s Body.

“Mary Christ-Mass”! Like Mary, receive the Body of Christ in your body.

 

The Lord, through St. Paul, commands and graces us to rejoice in Him always (Phil 4:4). No matter how many problems we have, no matter how bad we feel — the fact that we are “in the Lord” dwarfs everything else. How can we let a little cloud or two eclipse the Son? When we fix our eyes on Jesus (Heb 12:2), the Son of God (Mk 1:1), He will reveal to us our heavenly Father (Lk 10:22; Jn 14:6), Who is the Source of our joy. Jesus and the Holy Spirit will show us our Abba (see Gal 4:6) rejoicing over each one of us with gladness and renewing us in His love (Zep 3:17). We will see the reality that God Himself, our Abba, is at this moment singing joyfully because of us, His adopted children (Rm 8:15; Zep 3:17). Abba’s joyous singing is quite contagious — especially for His children. In the presence of Abba, we find ourselves breaking out into song and singing our parts in the Trinitarian musical. Our everlasting songs of joy drown out our passing sorrows. We “rejoice in the Lord always! I say it again. Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4)

We are walking a path through the millennia to our heavenly home. Our path is obstructed by rough, winding, mountainous terrain (Lk 3:5; see also Mt 7:14). Possibly the most difficult obstacles we face are “age-old depths and gorges” (Bar 5:7). “Age -old depths” have become very deep, and the drop-offs are steep. It is usually impossible to walk down or walk up a gorge. Climbing down or up a gorge is so dangerous that the climbers risk their lives. Spiritually speaking, “age-old depths and gorges” may be strongholds, sophistries, and proud pretensions which raise themselves in opposition to Jesus (see 2 Cor 10:4-5). “Depths and gorges” may be the sinful habits etched into our lives (see Col 3:7). To fill in these gorges of sinfulness and thus be able to continue our journey home, we must repent, deny ourselves, and lose our sinful lives (Lk 9:23-24). When we celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Lord will peel off layer after layer of blinding sinfulness, and gorges which naturally become worse obstacles will be supernaturally filled and miraculously disappear. Make one of your Advent Confessions as soon as possible. Make the treacherous ravines and “grand canyons” of your life passable. Come home.

Each Advent season begins with a reading from Isaiah, for Isaiah is the great prophet of the Messiah. This reading is taken from the latest part of the Book of Isaiah. After the return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon the Jews were passionately awaiting the coming of the Messiah. They were conscious that they had sinned and deserved their punishment, but still longed for the liberation from foreign interference that the Messiah would bring. After the coming of Christ we are in much the same position of waiting for the fulfillment of the sovereignty or kingship of God. Jesus brought the pledge of this kingship by his miracles of healing, his welcome to sinners, his teaching about the Kingdom and, above all, by his Resurrection from the dead. We no longer have any reason to fear death. We are conscious of our own failings, of our cooperation with evil, and long for the strength and fidelity that wholehearted membership of God’s Kingdom would bring us.

Three times in Mark’s gospel Jesus formally tells his disciples about his coming Passion, and each time they seem entirely deaf to it. So each time Jesus counters their misunderstanding by repeating the need of a disciple to follow him in suffering. Today’s reading begins just after the third prophecy, and—true to form— the sons of Zebedee reply with a request for the best seats at the banquet of the Kingdom! Matthew spares the two disciples by putting the request in their poor mother’s mouth. Only in a second exchange with Jesus do they woodenly accept to share Jesus’ ‘cup’ and ‘baptism’. Do they really know what they are accepting, or do they just blithely agree? The indignation of the other disciples prompts Jesus to his clearest statement in words that authority in the Church is a service. His clearest statement in action is the smelly business of washing their travel-gnarled feet at his last meal with them. The lesson is difficult to assimilate, for authority corrupts even at this level. At the ordination of a priest the Church still speaks of ‘the dignity of the priesthood’ rather than the ‘service of the priesthood.’

After the initial discussion about eternal life, Jesus addresses an issue which has always faced Christians. Are riches an obstacle to faith? Jesus’ answer is that riches can be an impediment to the life of a disciple. The astonishment of the disciples arises from the belief that material prosperity is a reward from God. Jesus does not seem to share this view.

Instead, Jesus maintains that material possessions may well be an obstacle to salvation. For this reason Christians are invited ‘to leave everything’. If this is not possible they should ensure that whatever they possess and whatever power they have is used for the good of others. The real enemy is selfishness. It is selfishness that kills love.