Advent: Week 2-Day 3

Well today is the beautiful feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Last year, I did a YouTube video in honor of this day; you can check that out here . Without repeating everything I said in that video, I would like to focus on Our Lady of Guadalupe for today's reflection on Advent.

Part of the story of this apparition, which I summarize in the video, is that Mary appears to a young man named (now Saint) Juan Diego. She sends him to the bishop of Mexico to spread the message of her love and protection over the lands of the Americas. When the bishop requires proof from Juan Diego, that this is indeed the Mother of God who is appearing to him, Mary shows him where to find a large amount of roses, growing in the cold dead of winter; and he takes these miraculous roses back to the bishop as the proof he requires.

I mentioned in one of my posts last week the beautiful Advent/Christmas song "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming." Jesus is that Rose that blooms in the dead of winter. Mary is the one who brings that Rose to us. I know I spoke of her at length a few days ago, for the Immaculate Conception; but I'd just like to add to that by inviting you, in these days leading up to Christmas, to walk through these days with Mary. She above all knows what it means to prepare for the coming of her Son and to know the fullness of the joy that His coming brings. As she brings St. Juan Diego to the miraculous roses, growing in the dead of winter, let her bring you to the true Rose that blooms among us this Christmas. Imagine yourself taking the journey to Bethlehem with Mary, walking with her through the long, arduous road. And finally, imagine yourself with her when all her trials are rewarded by the miraculous birth of her Son. May the face of that Son shine upon you this Christmas, and may that Rose bloom in your heart.

Pax Vobiscum

Advent: Week 2 - Day 2

In today's First Reading from Isaiah (I'm telling you, he's got good stuff), the prophet says ,"Here is your God, he comes with vindication; With divine recompense he comes to save you." He goes on to describe the coming of God in beautiful detail and ends with the words, "Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy; They will meet with joy and gladness, sorrow and mourning will flee."

This Christmas, our God is coming to save us. We celebrate the fact that our King is coming to save His people from everything that would hold us captive, whether its our sins, our guilt, our losses, our loneliness, our grief, or just our daily struggles. The coming of Christ is an occasion of great joy, as Isaiah describes. Anything that keeps you from receiving that great joy is exactly the thing from which Jesus wants to save you.

Christmas is about the King who comes to rescue His people from the forces of evil. During this Advent season, invite Jesus into those places in your life that are in need of rescuing, anything that keeps you captive, anything that keeps you from living the life full of the joy that God has in mind for you. Invite Jesus into whatever that is for you this Advent, and ask Him to free you from it this Christmas. God is coming to save you this Christmas. Let Him.

Pax Vobiscum

Advent: Week 2 - Day 1

"Prepare the way of the Lord"! We hear these words at Mass today both in the First Reading from Isaiah and in the Gospel. The Gospel describes the appearance of John the Baptist and his role as the one that Isaiah speaks of, the one who will go before the Lord at His coming, to prepare His way. John the Baptist does this in the most literal sense possible by calling people to conversion, to turn their hearts back to God. He also does this by pointing forward to the arrival of Christ. He says, "One mightier than I is coming after me."

John the Baptist becomes for us the very model of this Advent season. This season is about preparing the way of the Lord, and John shows us how to do that. First, we do it by making room for God in our
own life. This is the conversion to which John calls his audience, to turn away from sin and back to God. The best way for us to prepare for the coming of Christ this Christmas is to turn our hears back to Him and away from the things that stand in the way of our relationship with Him. This is something we don't just do once but that we keep doing over and over again. For every time we fall, God is waiting for us to turn back to Him.

The second way of preparing the way of the Lord is to point Jesus out to others, as John does. We can do this by reminding people of the true reason we celebrate Christmas. I'm all for the songs, movies, food, and presents, but underneath our celebration is there must be the true cause of our celebration: that our Savior has come, that God has become one of us. We prepare for the coming of Christ by opening our own hearts to God and by inviting others to do the same. We can't, however, give what we don't have, which is why it is necessary that we first make room for God in our own life.

This season is ticking by, but there are still two good weeks left until Christmas. I invite you to use that time to prepare the way for the Lord, so that when He comes he may find a place in our hearts and in the hearts of those around us.

Pax Vobiscum

Advent: Week 1 - Day 7

Hurry up and wait. During this season, we tend to do a lot of hurrying up, and we hate waiting. But the whole Advent season is about waiting, waiting because our Savior has not yet come. The response for the Psalm for today says, "Blessed are all who wait for the Lord." The Advent season reminds us that, despite the current explosion of all things Christmas in the world around us, we are still waiting for Christ to be born, we are still waiting for our Savior to come and set us free.

Every time we hear on the news of the latest tragedy, disaster, shooting, act of hatred, abuse, etc., it should be manifestly obvious that we live in a world that is in need of a Savior. Something should well up in our hearts in these moments that makes us want to cry out and say, "Yes, come Lord Jesus! Come, and save this world!" That is is the very heart of this season. The more we anticipate and prepare for an event, the more we get out of it. Children intuitively understand this about Christmas. It's precisely the waiting for the day and for the presents to arrive that adds to the excitement and celebration of the day itself.

In the same way, we are still waiting for Christ. We wait now so that we can embrace Him with all the more joy, as the greatest gift of all, on Christmas Day and the days after Christmas. The best way to prepare for Christmas is to develop in your heart a sense of waiting. With every sadness in your life or in the world around you, let your heart yearn for God to come and make things right. Jesus wants to come to you in a major way this Christmas. Bring to Him the ache in your heart and ask Him to come there this Christmas. Then all you have to do is wait.

Pax Vobiscum

Advent: Week 1-Day 6

Today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. For a defense of this beautiful teaching of the Catholic Church, check out my two-part post on the subject from two years ago. For today's purposes,  I want to focus on the First Reading and the Gospel for today. The First Reading tells the very first promise of the coming of a Savior to redeem us from our sins. This is in Genesis 3, immediately after Adam and Eve have fallen and given in to the temptation of the devil. God says to the devil, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." Jesus, of course, is the offspring who will strike at the devil's head, making "the woman" not Eve but Mary. Our Lady is the only one who is truly "at enmity" with Satan, meaning directly opposed; they are on totally opposite sides because she is without sin.

The Gospel for today is the Annunciation, in which the angel Gabriel famously calls Mary "full of grace". Only someone who is full of grace, completely overflowing with the life of God Himself, can truly be at enmity with Satan. But this grace is not something that Mary has earned for herself but is something that God, in choosing her to be the Mother of His Son, has freely and generously bestowed upon her.

You and I are also called to be at enmity with Satan; but every time we sin, we continue to make compromises with him. We, like Mary, need to be full of grace. This does not mean we strive to be perfect; that is ultimately contrary to God's will because it is relying on our own efforts apart from Him. Rather than striving to be perfect, we are simply called to be open and to receive, as Mary did -specifically, to be open to receiving the grace of God in our life. Sin gnaws away at the life of grace in us. The more we avoid sin, repent and confess our sins, and stay close to Christ, the more we open ourselves up to receive His grace.

This Advent, ask Our Lady to show you how to be open to God's grace in your life and to remove anything that is standing in His way. I pray that God will send His Holy Spirit upon you this Christmas in a new and powerful way. Don't worry about being perfect. Just keep your heart open to God, and let Him do the rest.

Pax Vobiscum

Advent: Week 1-Day 5

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven." These words from Our Lord in today's Gospel remind us that it is not enough for us to simply profess the name of Jesus if we deny Him by our lifestyle. He goes on to tell the parable of the two men who build there houses, one on sand and the other on rock. When the storms come, the man whose house is built on sand is blown away (literally, not figuratively); but the man whose house is built on rock remans firm, solid, and safe. 

The Christmas story as we know it only happens because Our Lady and St. Joseph follow the will of God in all things. They do what God tells them, and they follow His will most perfectly, no matter how hard and no matter what it requires from them. You and I can often try to resist God's will in our life, but we do so only to our own detriment. His will is the very thing that brings us our own freedom and salvation, just as the faithful obedience of Mary and Joseph brings the Source of all salvation into the world. 

When we surrender our will to God's, we are the like the wise man who builds his house on rock. If our life is built on anything else (our selfishness, our ego, our guilty pleasures, our sense of control, etc.), we will be like the man who builds his house on sand. And when the storms of our life threaten us, our foundation will not be strong enough to sustain us.

As you prepare your hearts for Christ this Christmas, ask yourself what you are building your life on? Make room for Jesus this Advent to be your one and only foundation. Build your life on Him, and follow His will in all things, like Our Lady and St. Joseph. Then even the worst storms of your life can't hurt you.

Pax Vobiscum 

Advent: Week 1-Day 4

Today is the feast of St. Nicholas, about whom I have already said quite a bit, both in a previous blog post from 2 years ago and in a video from last year. For a better appreciation of this wonderful saint, I would encourage you to go back and check those out; but since I have already said a fair amount about him in the past, for the purposes of this post I am going to focus instead on the readings for today.

The First Reading from Isaiah (remember him?) speaks of the coming of the Lord as a great feast of "juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines". Then the Gospel tells the story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fish and feeding the multitude. In this Gospel, Jesus says, "I do not want to send them away hungry." Like the multitude, we too are hungry in a way that Jesus alone can satisfy. And like the multitude, Jesus does not want to send us away hungry.

It's significant that when Christ is born, He is born in a manger, in a feeding box for animals. The food with which Jesus feeds us is His very self. He alone can satisfy the deepest hunger of our hearts. And so even from the moment of His birth, He makes Himself our food. The feast that Isaiah speaks about isn't just food and wine. Our Savior comes to feed us with the great gift of Himself. And nowhere is this more true than in the Eucharist, when He literally feeds us with His own Body and Blood.

During this Advent season, I invite you to consider what are the deepest hungers of your heart and how are you filling that hunger with the wrong things? Only Jesus can fill that hunger. During Advent, remove the counterfeits in your life that take His place, and you'll be in a much better position to receive Him this Christmas. Jesus is coming to feed you. Do not fill yourself on anything less than Him.

Pax Vobiscum